Compress DVD While Keeping DVD Structure

[SDeGonge]

Is it possible to compress a DVD to a smaller size AND retain the DVD structure so Sage still thinks it's still a DVD? Can VOBs be compressed individually? Would an ISO file be able to do this?
I think the answer is no to all (searched the forum but couldn't fine anything related to this).

[reggie14]

Out of curiosity, why do you want to keep the DVD structure?

Tools like Nero Recode and DVD Shrink can do what you're asking for.

[SDeGonge]

Originally Posted by reggie14

Out of curiosity, why do you want to keep the DVD structure?

Tools like Nero Recode and DVD Shrink can do what you're asking for.

I want to keep the menus & special features. Looks like DVDShrink will do the job.

[stanger89]

IMO you won't get "meaninful" compression out of DVD Shrink. It's not re-encoding to another codec, it's just adjusting the stock MPEG-2 compression, so you won't get the 50, 60, 70+% compression some do with H.264.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by stanger89

IMO you won't get "meaninful" compression out of DVD Shrink. It's not re-encoding to another codec, it's just adjusting the stock MPEG-2 compression, so you won't get the 50, 60, 70+% compression some do with H.264.

Good point, I should have mentioned that. DVDShrink, and other tools, will noticeably reduce the quality of the video. I didn't notice a quality change (recompressing an double layer DVD down to fit on a single layer) when I had a standard definition TV, but it became much more noticeable when I got an HDTV.

[Fuzzy]

with the costs of storage, there really isn't much use in converting DVD's anymore... you can figure an $80 1TB hard drive can hold $1,400.00 worth of DVD's (assuming $12/disc). Why give up ANY quality for that minuscule cost?

[reggie14]

I convert TV show DVDs mostly because I don't want to have to go through the DVD menus to find individual episode I want to watch, and partly to make it easier to move individual episodes to my laptop when I go on trips. Of course, I'm using Handbrake so I can get a moderately significant drop in storage space without a noticeable (for me) drop in quality. I'm probably less picky about video quality than other people though.

So I guess I'm sort of the opposite of the OP. I often want to get rid of the special features and menus.

[Taddeusz]

I've started to use MakeMKV to convert my DVD's losslessly (although no menus) to MKV. It works most of the time. There are some DVD's that come out the correct size but won't play. Supposedly they're working on a new muxer that is supposed to begin to correct the problem.

Even with that problem it's a nice program. Much easier than the manual method I was using before.

Granted, it doesn't keep the menus. But one of the major reasons I convert to MKV is so the movies can be played over Placeshifter. You can't play a ripped DVD in SageTV over Placeshifter. The only thing I won't get over Placeshifter are subtitles. I can live with that until/if they ever add subtitle support to Placeshifter. I figure that's more likely than them adding support for ripped DVD playback.

And all I really care about is the main feature. Very rarely do I watch the extras. Yea, they were neat when DVD's were new. But I quickly tired of watching them. I'd rather leave the behind-the-scenes with the film makers and enjoy their creation. Movies themselves are enough of a time sink without all the extras.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by reggie14

I convert TV show DVDs mostly because I don't want to have to go through the DVD menus to find individual episode I want to watch, and partly to make it easier to move individual episodes to my laptop when I go on trips. Of course, I'm using Handbrake so I can get a moderately significant drop in storage space without a noticeable (for me) drop in quality. I'm probably less picky about video quality than other people though.

So I guess I'm sort of the opposite of the OP. I often want to get rid of the special features and menus.

Yep, that's the reason I encode my DVD's also.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Yep, that's the reason I encode my DVD's also.

My change of attitude came after I got my HDTV along with later getting 2TB of additional storage for movies. I really never noticed it that much on my SDTV but once I got my HDTV I really began to notice how poor my converted DVD's looked. Now that I have a lot of storage available it's not a much of a problem to store the uncompressed video and audio. Sizes of my MKV's vary from about 3-7GB depending on the length of the movie and the quality of the audio and video the production company used.

To me the full quality from the DVD makes the movie more enjoyable to watch. If there are a lot of compression artifacts it tends to distract me and detract from the movie itself.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

I really never noticed it that much on my SDTV but once I got my HDTV I really began to notice how poor my converted DVD's looked. Now that I have a lot of storage available it's not a much of a problem to store the uncompressed video and audio.

This basically happened to me. I'm going through and reencoding my DS9 and West Wing DVDs now because I was a little too aggressive when I did encoding originally (and also because there were bugs in VFR encoding that caused audio sync problems on the DS9 DVDs). I'm not completely sure, but I think in the case of my DS9 DVDs, the encoded video looks a little bit better (with the new versions of Handbrake, at least), since I can use variable frame rate encoding to detelecine the scenes filmed at 24fps.

In my case, archived storage space isn't an issue. It's mainly a matter of convenience- its easier to have individual episodes pulled out of DVDs, and as long as I'm not very aggressive on compression I don't notice a video quality difference on my HDTV. Storage space is a still a slight factor because its easier to move ~500-700MB episodes to my laptop than 7.5GB DVDs when I go on trips.

[Taddeusz]

Everyone has their individual needs. Aside from BD's which are still too large to store conveniently I'd rather stick to full quality. The biggest thing I notice about converting is the amount of detail that's lost due to the filtering that's used during conversion. This isn't as noticeable at HD resolutions where even transcoded 1080p video still looks loads better than a non-transcoded DVD. But at the 720x480 of a DVD the filtering is obvious.

I've even begun to take issue with the transcoding DVD Shrink does. Certainly not as bad as when converting to H.264 using x264, which handbrake uses, but the loss in visual quality is evident when played on an HDTV.

But again, everyone has their individual needs. After converting DVD's to H.264 for the last couple years and then getting an HDTV I've begun to have my personal foibles against the practice.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by reggie14

This basically happened to me. I'm going through and reencoding my DS9 and West Wing DVDs now because I was a little too aggressive when I did encoding originally (and also because there were bugs in VFR encoding that caused audio sync problems on the DS9 DVDs). I'm not completely sure, but I think in the case of my DS9 DVDs, the encoded video looks a little bit better (with the new versions of Handbrake, at least), since I can use variable frame rate encoding to detelecine the scenes filmed at 24fps.

In my case, archived storage space isn't an issue. It's mainly a matter of convenience- its easier to have individual episodes pulled out of DVDs, and as long as I'm not very aggressive on compression I don't notice a video quality difference on my HDTV. Storage space is a still a slight factor because its easier to move ~500-700MB episodes to my laptop than 7.5GB DVDs when I go on trips.

Y'know, you CAN simply remux the episodes keeping the original mpeg2/ac3. This will get you individual files, and would be a WHOLE lot quicker than reencoding them to save a bit of space that isn't important.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Y'know, you CAN simply remux the episodes keeping the original mpeg2/ac3. This will get you individual files, and would be a WHOLE lot quicker than reencoding them to save a bit of space that isn't important.

Yeah, I know. There are a variety of reasons I use Handbrake to encode things to H.264 rather than remuxing things. First, while archival space isn't a big deal on my media server, space does matter on my laptop. So, it is convenient to have smaller files when I frequently copy them over to my laptop. I'm more inclined to copy TV shows to my laptop than movies since usually when I'm traveling 2 hours would be a long time to sit down and watch something, but a 20/40 minute show is just about right.

Second, it sounds like people have more problems remuxing the mpeg2. Maybe I'm wrong with some of these things, but I've gotten the impression the tools are harder to use, and some manual steps are needed. Also, it sounds like people sometimes have problems playing back the files that are created. In contrast, Handbrake is very easy to use. Though, if I'm wrong about that and there are ways that are as easy and reliable as using Handbrake to remux to mpeg2/ac3 files, I might start redoing my ripped movies.

Third, I'm mostly convinced the quality has improved on my DS9 DVDs after detelecining the scenes that are filmed at 24fps. That was actually what started me down the road to encoding TV show DVDs, and I've since expanded to West Wing DVDs (though, they don't seem to have the same problem with telecined material).

Fourth, while storage space is a minor issue, encoding time is a non-issue. My quad-core machine keeps up with standard-def video in Handbrake fast enough to not bother me.

And fifth, which is perhaps the biggest one, I'm a creature of habit. I've been using Handbrake for a while, I'm comfortable with it, I'm happy with the video quality (now that I've switched to using the constant quality settings), so I'm not inclined to change.

[Fuzzy]

actually, in most cases, if you no the track that an episode is on the DVD, you can usually just copy the .VOB to the HDD, and rename it to .MPG. Most players will pick this up just fine, and play it back without a hitch. Certainly not much easier than that. I woudl prefer remuxing into a true mpg container, as it will save some space by allowing me to remove some unneeded tracks (I don't need commentary, other languages, or subtitles).

[wrems]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Y'know, you CAN simply remux the episodes keeping the original mpeg2/ac3. This will get you individual files, and would be a WHOLE lot quicker than reencoding them to save a bit of space that isn't important.

Fuzzy,

I’m curious to know what would be the steps required to do this? Any particular software that you recommend? I searched the threads but have not turned anything up yet.

TIA

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by wrems

Fuzzy,

I’m curious to know what would be the steps required to do this? Any particular software that you recommend? I searched the threads but have not turned anything up yet.

TIA

Depending on how the DVD is structured you should be able to do that with MakeMKV. Otherwise if the episodes are basically chapters within a larger VOB set you'd have to use a utility like DVD Shrink to extract just the chapters you want. Then you should be able to use MakeMKV on what you extracted.

BTW, what Fuzzy suggested is not quite true. While VOB's are MPEG program streams they are actually slightly different and should be treated differently. If you don't run the VOB through a converter, such as VideoRedo's quick stream fix, you could end up with audio sync problems. Particularly when watching the videos across Placeshifter, but it's not strictly confined to just that application.

MakeMKV does the conversion on-the-fly so you don't have to. It's pretty much a one-click process. Granted, there are currently some issues with some DVD's but it's not a mature program yet. It is still in beta and as such is going to have bugs which I'm sure will be worked out in time. Overall though, most of the movies I've run through MakeMKV work flawlessly. I'd say only about 1 in 10, maybe even 1 in 20 give me a problem. It all depends on the structure of the DVD.

[wrems]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

Depending on how the DVD is structured you should be able to do that with MakeMKV. Otherwise if the episodes are basically chapters within a larger VOB set you'd have to use a utility like DVD Shrink to extract just the chapters you want. Then you should be able to use MakeMKV on what you extracted.

BTW, what Fuzzy suggested is not quite true. While VOB's are MPEG program streams they are actually slightly different and should be treated differently. If you don't run the VOB through a converter, such as VideoRedo's quick stream fix, you could end up with audio sync problems. Particularly when watching the videos across Placeshifter, but it's not strictly confined to just that application.

MakeMKV does the conversion on-the-fly so you don't have to. It's pretty much a one-click process. Granted, there are currently some issues with some DVD's but it's not a mature program yet. It is still in beta and as such is going to have bugs which I'm sure will be worked out in time. Overall though, most of the movies I've run through MakeMKV work flawlessly. I'd say only about 1 in 10, maybe even 1 in 20 give me a problem. It all depends on the structure of the DVD.

So, are you preserving the full integrity of the DVD with MakeMKV? I don’t care about the space requirements I can buy another hard drive. All I really want is a single mpg, mkv whatever that is not compressed. Can I do that with MakeMKV?

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by wrems

So, are you preserving the full integrity of the DVD with MakeMKV? I don’t care about the space requirements I can buy another hard drive. All I really want is a single mpg, mkv whatever that is not compressed. Can I do that with MakeMKV?

Yes, that is the sole goal of MakeMKV. To keep the video, audio and subtitles as is and to just copy the streams into an MKV container.

[heatvent]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

Yes, that is the sole goal of MakeMKV. To keep the video, audio and subtitles as is and to just copy the streams into an MKV container.

I have been watching this thread for a couple of days because I have been experimenting with how to get some movies on my server. The mkv route sounded great but to me, there are noticable artifacts from the transcoding compared to the original DVD. It's a shame because I personally am a bit torn. I have a 50" plasma HDTV and to me it doesn't make sense to not try and preserve 100% of the video quality...otherwise I might as well have gotten a lesser TV. However, I also thin 5GB+ for a movie is a lot of real estate to give up.

FYI, I gave MakeMKV a quick try and it rips the dvd in less than a half an hour. Personally, I don't see the point when it comes to Sage, if you are not getting space savings, I would much rather have menu support.