this is why i prefer rebuilder to shrink

[blutach]

That's quite a long time cynthia (9 hours+). Must have been a very big backup.

Regards

[Taelon]

@cynthia, Thanks for the time comparisons from that it would seem Best takes roughly 10% longer than Normal, I'm still curious as to if it makes another pass, or if it's a more thorough analysis phase, or something else entirely

@jdobbs, Thank you for the in-depth explanation of how the % "Steal space" reduction is calculated.

I understand binary I just meant wacky in regards to the interface in that most GUI's are set-up for laymen, and therefore will usually start with one instead of zero. Also it seems an odd choice, since for example Cell #1 of the main title = v01000000001001.m2v but the interface reports - Creating M2V for VTS_01 segment 0 "seems kinda wacky".

[laserfan]

...I probably will send jdobbs the $10...

You should hurry, this is a fantastic deal for a great program. I've only used it a couple of times now, and it's worked great I think, and I haven't even gotten into the Filters aspect of using it.

I see tremendous promise in Filters--I hope someday that some of y'all who have spent many hours (as UncasMS for example) tinkering with filters, will post successes you have had with specific filters/settings/scripts so that us newbies to the "filters" opportunity can use-and-learn from them.

I have played-with an awful lot of these programs over the last several years, and while I consider myself an "advanced hobbyist" when it comes to DVD re-authoring, capping of laserdiscs and OTA HDTV, conversion for media network playback, etc., I'm still intimidated by avisynth and the whole subject of filters (requires great technical knowledge of video & film).

DVD-RB will be the "killer app" when more folks use the integrated filter capability to clean/sharpen/upscale their favorite (but technically marginal) movie and video programs.

P.S. Yes I've seen the sticky--what would be great though is a site/thread where "specific DVDs and settings that fixed them" were posted.

[UncasMS]

if I had used HALF D1 + Steal Space it would actually look better because the bitrate would be higher, even though it was at half resolution?

NO

the bitrate will stay the same
but a certain bitrate, let's say 3000kbps, is allocated to a single frame

a single frame in dvd resolution might be some 720 x 576 pixel => 414720 pixel

now image you reduce this framesize to half d1 resolution which should be 352 x 576 pixel => 202752 pixel

in this example your half d1 frame would receive the SAME bitrate but for less than half the amount of pixel; so each pixel will be allocated more than two times the bitrate compared to full dvd resolution

now think of your 3000kbps bitrate reduced by 25% => 2250 kbps

this bitrate allocated to a FULL frame is a critical value and cannot look as good as the same bitrate allocated to half d1 resolution, where it would be distritbuted to less than half the pixels

what would be great though is a site/thread where "specific DVDs and settings that fixed them" were posted

that's hard to generalize
some folks dont want to use filters, others like them every now and then

i do like a little denoising via fluxsmooth with certain titles, but i will not recommend to use fluxsmooth each and every time - not only because it slows down the encoding process considerably

but it might be interesting to collect some filterings - when applied - and talk about it

i used undot + fluxsmooth 7/7 for alien 1-3 for example as i consider the source not as clean as i'd prefer it to be (alien 4 resurrection was better)

i used the same filters for goodfellas as well - this title too was not very clean

the very first screenshots i posted in this rebuilder forum dealt with a german titel called *der untergang* which was slightly noisy as well - so same filters for me


then there are matrices:
i used autoq2 a lot lately since it is said to work good for bitrate between 1800 and 3500kbps

[UncasMS]

I did a test - using the three modes - this is the result.

An example of the time for the various options. This test performed on an AMD XP2000+ 512 Mb:

• 09 h 15 min - Fast
• 09 h 43 min - Normal
• 11 h 11 min - Best

I thought there should be a higher time difference between fast and best. So I can't find any reason for selecting anything else than 'Best' based on the time factor.

here is my comparison:
entire movie (126min) + bonus (~35 min)

hc 015 FAST - 205 min
hc 015 BEST - 257 min

athlon64 - 3500

so between fastest and slowest may be an hour difference but NORMAL - BEST will be much less

all in all we are talking minutes not hours in terms of profiles and i definitely prefer BEST every time

[laserfan]

...that's hard to generalize some folks dont want to use filters...but it might be interesting to collect some filterings - when applied - and talk about it...i used undot + fluxsmooth 7/7 for alien 1-3 for example...then there are matrices: i used autoq2 a lot lately since it is said to work good for bitrate between 1800 and 3500kbps

Yes I understand you can't "generalize" re: filter usage, which is why I'm asking that folks post DETAILED info about "what I used & was very pleased with" such as your Alien 1-3.

The subject of bitrates seems to be a difficult one also. I mean, you don't really know what bitrate RB is going to produce for a given "movie with extras w/x% taken from extras" until you actually run it, right? Then once RB has completed the titleset, you look at the bitrates and decide "hmm I should go back and use autoq2 on this one"??

Anyway my point in raising filter usage is that even folks with lots of time on their hands may not want to SPEND their time experimenting with filters, so someone coming here & saying "Final Countdown was very fuzzy & letterboxed, so I converted to 16:9 and sharpened and whatever and it looks wildly better" (including lines from Filter Editor) would be very useful.

[UncasMS]

I mean, you don't really know what bitrate RB is going to produce for a given "movie with extras w/x% taken from extras" until you actually run it, right?

no

when you use 3 click method and run PREPARE, you'll be given these details:

++++++++++++

- Reduction Level for DVD-5: 46,8%
- Overall Bitrate : 2.381Kbs
- Space for Video : 2.950.490KB
- Movie improvement from extra reduction = 7,5%
- HIGH/LOW/TYPICAL Bitrates: 3.169/600/2.381 Kbs
[21:10:35] Phase I, PREPARATION completed in 3 minutes.

++++++++++++

given these bitrates one might decide to use matrix XYZ and filter ABC

now make your settings and save all as a project (to be used for batch if you like) or switch back to 1 click method (the time one looses for the preparation time can be neglected if you asked me - but you may be able to have your pc shut down when the encoding is finished)

[laserfan]

Ahh, so little time, so much to learn!

Great, thanks UncasMS!

[UncasMS]

Ahh, so little time, so much to learn!

we all had to learn using rebuilder properly, but those of us who have a little experience will gladly be of help

[blutach]

Also use Rebuilder Matrix Editor to encode little bits of the movie/extras with various matrices to see what looks better. Take a fraction of the time.

Get it (and RB-Opt) here.

Regards

[blutach]

Speaking of add-on, you might also wanna play around with RB Keeper on (link is on my previous post). Not sure if it works on current version though. But the original intent was that you can keep the BR at the orig on parts of the vid that you want and just re-encode the others.

This is useful for DVDs where the movie fits on a DVD-5 and you have room for a few extras and all you want to do is encode the extras.

Check it out.

Regards

[Taelon]

Also use Rebuilder Matrix Editor to encode little bits of the movie/extras with various matrices to see what looks better. Take a fraction of the time.

Nobody answered my question about being able to Test Encode an individual Cell to test matrices/filters, so I'm guessing that this add-on does something like that? And assume these add-on will only work with RB-Pro?

Oh and one other Big Question, RB doesn't touch menus at all? Considering the size of animated menus in recent years, this seems like an unfortunate choice, and pretty much forces the user to apply other tools for pre or post processing the menus to try to maximize the space available for re-encoding the main title.

[laserfan]

Your confidence is remarkable, and good to see! I have only done a couple of DVD-RBPro conversions recently using HC0.16, but I haven't been able to watch them yet. One is "Bourne Identity" which I've never seen but expect it to be a slam-bang challenge for the process...

I watched this RB/HC-made disc tonight, never having watched the original, and it's perfect as I'd hoped.

I'll look at the original sometime to compare, but for now I'm very happy w/RB-Pro.

[blutach]

@Taelon - I wouldn't know if it's a Pro only thing - but I strongly suspect so. See the help file. But RME does work independently after the Prepare phase. You just run it and select a matrix and a cell and encode with that matrix. Then have a look at it.

As for the menus - MenuShrink is definitely the go - or pre-processing with VobBlanker/PgcEdit to remove crap/language units etc.

Regards