Hi
As usual, my poor wallet is forcing me to find a solution for backups.
The easier solution is to backup a DVD9 to DVD5 using DVD Shrink or DVD-Rebuilder, but this solution is also disc consuming. Trying to save DVD (please, don’t laugh, my wallet is really in shortage ) I thought to convert original DVDs to avi (xvid with autoGK) or mkv (currently testing Handbrake).
I’d like to know feedback about what is the best choice that allow me to retain best video quality with smaller file sizes.
When I use autoGK to convert a series DVD to avi, I select 550 MB as file size for each episode.
There is a precise reason why I use this file dimension: it is possible to burn 8 files on a single layer DVD filling the disc at about 98% (a reasonable safe filling level: I never fill my DVDs at 100%).
With AutoGK I can get reasonable encoding times, but Handbrake is very time consuming: after about 2 hours is still encoding a single episode (currently 78% of second pass).
Being so time consuming, I’d like to know some suggestions. There is a sort of thumb rule about quality that can be obtained with H.264 compared to xvid? I know that results are related to the source DVD, but with the same source what codec has the best chance to get better results?
I know that 550MB is good to compress a single episode with xvid, but if quality of H.264 is better, how much can I reduce file size still retaining a good quality? There is a sort of thumb rule for this too? Running tests with many file sizes is too time consuming for my CPU, an Intel E8400 (with a Sandy Bridge processor maybe I can run tests easily, but I can’t afford a new computer ).
Thanks