KDVD: Intervideo DVDCopy?
 

After looking at the tests in http://dvd.box.sk I decided to give the Intervideo transcoder a try. :compress:

I tried it with Shrek, doing the whole DVD, all languages and extras (~7G). It's an easy to compress movie, but that's a lot of compression, _for a transcoder_.

It does not have many options, it's more like a black box. :(

First problem: it won't transcode to a hd folder, you have to burn it from the program. If you try to transcode it to a folder, it goes the whole process and then after it's done, it immediately deletes all files! :!: I've managed to overcome this by waiting until all files were created and then marking all of then read only. There are other workarounds if you have a NTFS partition. :idea:

It's quick like DVDShrink, DVD2One, etc. (it doesn't take forever like Instant Copy). :)

I did the same movie with DVDShrink 1.3.4.

Then I opened both and the original in BitRate Viewer and saved their bitrate/Q curves as excel files (it's on the "seconds" button).

Comparing DVDShrink Q curve with the original, you see it follows the same "shape", but it's overall higher, like if it had an offset. So, the quantization "behaves" like the original, only it's more quantized. Nice. :)

Now, comparing IV dvdcopy with the original... The Q curves match _exactly_!!!! I don't know what miracle is this, that it can almost halve the bitrate without messing with the quantization! 8O

I'm currently running PSNR, VQM and SSIM metrics on both trancodes (it takes an eternity :zzzsleep: ) and I'll also do a careful visual comparison, of course.

Anyway, if this transcoder is real good, perhaps we could revive the idea of not caring if our KDVDs are a little oversized and using the transcoder to make it fit.

PS. I'm testing version 1.2