[MPlayer-users] RFC: docs update for "how to create a high quality DVD rip"

[Jason Tackaberry]

On Sun, 2004-06-06 at 19:46 -0400, D Richard Felker III wrote:
> It doesn't work with inverse telecine or other filters that drop
> frames (or add them), it doesn't work with field-coded DVDs (and it's
> difficult to tell in advance which ones are field-coded), and it
> causes A/V desync. Also it has no useful purpose.

I wonder if maybe I misunderstand how 3-pass works.  I figured the first
pass was to compress the audio with VBR.  The next two passes work just
like regular 2-pass, because now the (average) bitrate of the audio is
known.  Given that, I don't see why filters that add/drop frames don't
work with 3-pass.

Require enlightenment ...

> Um, let's see. 900/96 video/audio bitrate, or 804/192? I'll take the
> former any day! It's an absolutely HUGE difference! For me. I

A good part of the movie experience for me is the sound.  I put a lot of
money into my home theatre setup, and when I hear crap in my rear
speakers because my receiver is trying to find a channel in the high
frequencies that has been compressed to hell, I go batty.  It's really
annoying. :)

If I was watching a movie on my laptop under a pair of headphones, I
absolutely would prefer 900/96.  But when I'm surrounded by speakers and
a very capable receiver, I'll take 804/192 any day.  Actually, I'd much
rather have 2000/448. :)  When the point is to preserve the movie
experience that DVD brings you as much as possible (under the practical
constraints of MPEG4), leaving the audio channel untouched is
sacrosanct.

> Otherwise (whenever you have a size constraint, no matter how big)
> most of your recommendations are the exact opposite of what helps, and
> stupid users will try them anyway...

I wonder if "most" is true.  Out of all the points in that text, I think
the only ones that will hurt a size constraint is "don't scale" and
"don't transcode audio."

Speaking of "don't scale," what's your opinion on cropping to multiples
of 16, or cropping to the exact rectangle and then scaling up to a
multiple of 16?

> That's not very much. I could fill a few terrabytes at sane qualities
> (1200 kbit)...

Now that we're out of the locker room I'll confess: yours is bigger than
mine.

> And several hundred more gigs for backups? :) Storing your only copies
> on hd is not very smart...

They're not my only copies.  I have perfectly good backups sitting on a
shelf in the other room: the actual DVDs. :)

If one of my disks explodes, then I have to re-rip the lost movies, but
that's not a terribly big deal.

> I _know_ you'll see them if you leave black borders, but insane
> bitrate might mostly compensate, as least with qmin=1. With unaligned
> dimensions I haven't tested, but in theory it should have a similar
> effect.

I guess that makes sense.  Lower bitrates means you have a lot less room
for mistakes in cropping, scaling, etc.

Cheers,
Jason.