Upgrading Dvd Rebuilder (freeware)

[wheelz]

Ok last night I finially downloaded dvd rebuilder. I've been messing with it today ,and trying to get the feel for it. I ran across the sticky above and they have a newer dvd rebuilder than the one I've downloaded which is v97 I believe. I like the idea of outputting the backup to imgburn automatically ( which I use exclusively and this would save me some time rather than use the build mode in imburn). If I were, and if I can upgrade to v98. Should I unistall my last one, and reinstall the new? Or should I just ovewrite everything?

[blutach]

Overwrite is fine. There's a link in the sticky to 98.

Regards

[wheelz]

Thanks blutach!

[wheelz]

Well I did my first rebuilder burn. It took awhile I used HC encoder on the fastest setting to see what I would get ( 254 min. for 7,579 mbytes). I'm wondering how slow the slowest setting is? I didn't know if this would fit on a dvd-r disc. I didn't see anything telling me otherwise. I got to thinking wonder if this thing quits 3 and half hours into it! First shot I missed the boat on the imgburn I had to do it manually anyways. I think that is great you can have a blank disc in your drive and it will automatically burn it when your done. I will try that next time it just told me there was an error in writing the disc. I was about freakin after all that time. So I did it manually in build mode it burned. I never did that before in build mode. I am starting to learn more about imburn as well with this program.

Anyways I watched some of the movie on my pc and it was real dark looking. I thought oh well what do you expect for that kind of compression? So I put it in my standalone and it appeared to be not as dark. I seen the usual compression quite a bit in the opening trailors. I had the settings to 50% ( steal space from extras). I wasn't expecting a whole lot better than than what the extras were giving me it wasn't as dark as the pc was showing. Usually my pc looks better than my standalone. It then arrived to the main movie, and wow! This looked great for the entire movie/menues/ credits on one -r 4.7GB disc. Some spots I could see a little compression ( not the horrible kind) other times it was pushing my analog television "close" to the 480p look. It seemed to make some scenes smoother looking like what progression scan does for a dvd source.

I haven't encountered any bad pixelation ( the horrible kind/ colored blocks) yet with two burns i've done. This is great i've been battling this problem for a long time. I did reinstall my ide drivers as of lately and updated my nvidia graphic drivers, but I still think it's from the encoder how stable it is. I will see as time goes by hopefully one of them upgrades solved the problem. I also used the worst media I had in the house Ridata 8x because It was my first time. I got to say everything turned out great with that media. I think it worked pretty darn good with dvd rebuilder and imgburn. Awesome encoder, rebuilder to say the least ( and of course Imgburn). I got to say I was realy getting on a speed kick with ripping and burning as fast as possible. I am starting to see the light for the ultimate quality. As for dvd rebuilder I only wish I used it sooner!!

Thanks to Jdobbs, Rockas and to all the encoders who made this freeware version possible.

[blutach]

Just a note: If something goes wrong 3 hours in, starting DVD Rebuilder again will start at the segment it crapped out on (so long as you don't do a prepare).

Not sure if the freeware edition has this, but consider encoding all extras in "half D1 for extras" and stealing about 25% space from them. At Half D1, they would look tolerable even at BRs of 2000 kbps.

And, of course, encode in best mode.

Regards

[wheelz]

Thanks Blutach I just changed the settings for next time. I did rebuild the same movie with QuEnc with the options set to standard quality, single pass encode ( I haven't yet burned it. took 86 minutes). I was wondering is there anyway of previewing the movie while it's being encoded with QuEnc? I didn't notice any option while I was encoding. I did change it to red though.

[blutach]

I don't use QuEnc, so I wouldn't know. Previewing does take a bit of processor power anyway, so it's little or no use. I never use it with Procoder (even thogh it is available).

Regards

[wheelz]

Thanks sometimes I just like to view where it is at, and if it's doing ok I guess. I was toggling it on and off on the HC encoder.

[hank315]

@weelz
Nice you liked the output but I'm with blu here, better to use best profile or at least normal profile.
Normal profile is just a bit slower but quality is much better.

About encoding speed, the time needed doesn't depend on the nr. of bytes on the original DVD but only on the nr. of frames to be encoded.
And yes, 254 min is indeed very long...

Just to show it can be done faster:

[15:04:05] One Click encoding activated...
-----------------
[15:04:05] Phase I, PREPARATION started.
- DVD-RB v1.10.8
- HC encoder selected 
- "Movie Only" mode is enabled.
- VTS_01: 3,516,506 sectors.
-- Scanning and writing .D2V & .AVS files
-- Processed 256,599 frames.
-- Building .AVS and .ECL files
- Reduction Level for DVD-5: 56.1%
- Overall Bitrate : 2,608Kbs
- Space for Video : 3,268,060KB
- HIGH/LOW/TYPICAL Bitrates: 3,726/1,658/2,608 Kbs
[15:06:56] Phase I, PREPARATION completed in 2 minutes.
[15:06:56] Phase II ENCODING started
 - Creating M2V for VTS_01 segment 0
 - Creating M2V for VTS_01 segment 1
 - Creating M2V for VTS_01 segment 2
   ...<SNIP>
 - Creating M2V for VTS_01 segment 40
 - Creating M2V for VTS_01 segment 41
 - Creating M2V for VTS_01 segment 42
[16:14:23] Phase II ENCODING completed in  68 minutes.
[16:14:23] Phase III, REBUILD started.
- Processing VTS_01
  - Reading/processing TMAP table...
  - Rebuilding seg 0 VOBID 1 CELLID 1
  - Rebuilding seg 1 VOBID 1 CELLID 2
  - Rebuilding seg 2 VOBID 1 CELLID 3
    ...
  - Rebuilding seg 40 VOBID 1 CELLID 40
  - Rebuilding seg 41 VOBID 1 CELLID 41
  - Rebuilding seg 42 VOBID 1 CELLID 42
  - Updating NAVPACKS for VOBID_01
  - Updated VTS_C_ADT.
  - Updated VTS_VOBU_ADMAP.
- Updated IFO: VTS_01_0.IFO
- Correcting VTS Sectors...
[16:22:26] Phase III, REBUILD completed in 8 minutes.
Done.
[16:22:26] PREPARE/ENCODE/REBUILD completed in 78 min.

Movie: Lord of the Rings, Fellowship, PAL, running time 171 min.
Using DVD Rebuilder Pro, multiple encoder enabled with HC018, 2 pass, normal profile.

[wheelz]

@hank315 you got 78 minutes? That is pretty good for the quality that is coming out. I see it was main movie enabled? I dont' have that with the freeware version. I also don't see multiple encoder enable option. Is the option in the encoder when your actually doing the encoding? I was just looking at rebuilder's options.

[blutach]

Those are pro version options.

It's the best $30 you'll ever spend wheelz. I held back for ages myself, but although you might not realise it at first and use its extra features, the pro version is IMHO, great value for money.

Regards

[wheelz]

I believe it! I will upgrade when i'm sure I dont' have any hardware problems. I think this may have taken care of previous problems i've been having. I am curious do you need a dual core processor to take advantage of the speed of multiple encoder enabled? I only have a single AMD 2700+ ( throughbred core). It's still got a nice speed I think for what I do. 2.1gh with 1g of ram.


EDIT: Just for the record the dark images I was getting on my pc had nothing to do with dvdrebuilder, or HC encoder. I just checked and I was getting the same darkness with the original source. It must be my new nvidia graphic drivers I installed.