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DVDShrinkSupport: Qualitty Settings

DVD Shrink will typically have to compress your DVD so it will fit onto a DVDR recordable disc. Depending on the original DVD and the amount of compression required, the video quality of your backup may suffer. Although the default compression algorithm usually provides adequate quality in typical viewing conditions, DVD Shrink 3.2 offers you various additional options which may improve the quality of your backup.

These options are available in the Backup window:

Deep Analysis

The deep analysis option will encode your DVD in two passes. This will take significantly longer, but it serves two purposes:

1. It will improve video quality by allowing DVD Shrink to better distribute the required compression throughout the various scenes in your DVD.

2. It will ensure that DVD Shrink accurately meets the target size.

This option will be disabled if you already performed a deep analysis of the same DVD. DVD Shrink will remember the results of previous analysis, so there is no need to do it again. This option will also be disabled if no compression is required.

Compress video with high quality adaptive error compensation

When video is compressed, small errors or artifacts are introduced. This is an unavoidable consequence of video compression, and DVD Shrink cannot prevent this from happening. However, it can keep these artifacts to a minimum.

This option will adaptively compensate for any artifacts introduced by the video compression, so as to prevent them from propagating into the next pictures which are compressed. This requires DVD Shrink to dynamically decode and compare both the original and the compressed video, so that it can detect if artifacts have been introduced and compensate for them accordingly.

AEC (adaptive error compensation) requires a lot of CPU power, and depending on the speed of your computer, it may take an hour or more to complete your backup. However, it will often provide a far superior video quality. AEC will also benefit from deep analysis.

If you enable AEC, you can select from the following modes:

The default option is Sharp, which will tend to preserve the sharpness of the original video. This may be at the expense of fluidity or smoothness, where individual frames of the video are perceived to blend smoothly together. Video compression, like many other things, is all about compromise.

Which settings should I use?

If you are concerned about speed, then you need not enable any of these options. Your backup will be completed as quickly as possible, and you may be perfectly satisfied with the output quality.

If you are concerned about the quality of your backup and you don't mind taking a longer time over it, then the best results may be obtained by enabling both deep analysis and AEC options.

Depending on the source DVD, the quality of your viewing equipment, and the amount of compression required, you may prefer either the smooth or sharp options. Please take the time to try one or the other and determine which is best for your backup.

Try and use less compression!

Please remember: there is no substitute for less compression. You can minimize the amount of compression required by disabling unnecessary audio and subpicture streams, by setting some extras to still image or still picture compression, or even by re-authoring your DVD and keeping only the main movie. You will often find that little or no compression is then required, and the video quality of your backup will be indistinguishable from the original.

Also bear in mind that you can redistribute the required compression among the various parts of your DVD. For instance, you could set Menus or Extras which you rarely watch to maximum compression, and this will preserve more space (and therefore more quality) for the main movie.

For more information about this, refer to the Guides section.