BD ReBuilder Beta. The BEST software EVER !

According to the beta testers at Doom9 (where I dare not speak) the program still has quite a few bugs, but it seems to have great potential. If it could decrypt we would be talking about a sort of "BluRayShrink" (sweet...)but it seems that for the time being AnyDVD is the only option in that front.

This is great news. I haven't visited Doom9 for a while so I was unaware that this existed. I've been a long-time user of DVD Rebuilder Pro and it's the absolute best compression package for DVDs anywhere. If J Dobbs has ported over his technique for compressing BD discs into a more manageable size then I'll be a very happy camper. He doesn't compromise when it comes to picture quality, which is my No. 1 priority (not much point in going with Blu-Ray if you're going to have it look like a standard DVD when you're through).

I concur, this is the most amazing software in my 8 years of HTPC.

I shrunk The Dark Knight BD onto a DVD+R DL WITHOUT picture quality loss, absolutely amazing!!!

The audio track was recompressed to 448 Dolby, but I don;t care. Now I can archive my movies on HD for 1/5 the space without any picture loss

I watch my movies on a 100" screen from a NEC XGLC CRT 8" fully balls to the wall PJ at 1080i@96hz

This is awesome software! But I will need to buy a new PC. It took 22hrs to do the encode lol!!!

On a Quad core it should take abbout 5 -7 hrs for a 2hr movie

You're insane, you can't do that kind of compression without loss of quality. You may not percieve the loss in quality, that doesn't mean it's not there. I've played around with the 10gb or so 1080p rips that float around, they are no where near the same quality as a full BD, although they do look great. THis is on my 42" 1080p LCD.

Yeah, you'd think that but the results speak for themselves. I have no doubt that there is missing information but it's done in such a way that it's very difficult, if not almost impossible, to see it. But isn't that what really counts? JDobbs is an absolute whiz when it comes to compressing the heck out of a movie without screwing it up visually. I've been a fan of DVD Rebuilder for quite some time now and have been truly amazed at how good the results look. I think it blows DVD Shrink and any other compression apps right out of the water.

I also "shrunk" The Dark Knight to a DVD+9 size (i.e., movie only option) and the picture quality is absolutely amazing. I haven't checked to see what it did to the sound tracks but I'm hoping it retains the original HD audio. The only downside I'm seeing so far is that it takes a ridiculous amount of time to process a single movie. The Dark Knight took about 24 hours to process, but then again I was doing it across a network interface. The original iso file is located on my unRAID server but I mounted the image locally on my PC to work with it. I'm not sure that matters all that much but I thought I'd toss that out there in case it did. I have no propblem playing back remotely mounted iso's of ripped BD's via my HTPC.

Those rips are not from BD Rebuilder, and until you try it scoff all you want. Try it then get back to us. You will come back and admit my original statement. Then everyone will get out their 8x magnification software to find a pixel here or there.

So no, I'm not nuts, and been around long enough not to throw around statements such as I did in AVS forum without being sure of the statement.

Try it, then get back to us, Take The BD Rebuilder challange

Or you can spend the next couple of days arguing we are all nuts without trying it. Go on, don;t be like the rest, give it go then comment

I'm going to give it a try, as the price is right, but I'm going into it with the a bit of skepticism. This reminds me of the arguments that I had with my friend over 10 years ago when he said that a 3MB MP3 was of the same practical quality as a 20MB+ WAV file, because the encryption only takes out the "stuff that you can't hear." If a lossless compression was possible, why wouldn't studios have done so? (That's ignoring the tin-foil hat conspiracy theorists who think that it's done so you have to buy a new player. They could just as easily create DVD+ players that use the same optical media storage, but promise this better output, for much less money than the BD - HDDVD war cost.)

Sounds like a fair position to me, look forward to your report. FWIW I encode to DVD9 (DVD+ DL size) as my setting, going to DVD5 is to small.

Sounds amazing!

Will this software allow you to strip out extras and audio tracks you do not want and leave the menu system and chapter structure intact?

I dont want any compression, but I also dont care for the 3-4 other language tracks or extras.

Yes

Cool, I'm all for a "BDShrink" app, but I don't want any recompression done. So I'll be giving it a try.

Be aware that it takes loong time depending on your machine it could be long. On mine it took 24 hrs to Rebuild The Dark Knight.

Download a copy of imgburn and that is all you need

Why does it take so long with no recompression?

32gb (TDK) of data to process takes a longtime. If you have a quad-core it is much faster, probably 8hrs. I read the new i7 cores can do it even faster. Sonme say 5hrs for a 2hr movie

Yeah, but it's only maybe a couple hours (tops) to remux manually. So what I'm reading is that BD ReBuilder doesn't have a no-compression, just-strip-extras mode. It always runs the video through x264.

What players would be able to play hte resultant DVD-9's?

You can't play them in a standard DVD player.

I'm not sure if a Blu-Ray player could play these.

The only player I could see is the PC.

Are there others?

I belive some Samsung BD players are capable. ther is a list of compatible players out there. But as this is the hTPC forum "The only player I could see is the PC." does not seem to be a problem

This is even worse than the MP3 conversation.

This is we have a 320kbps mp3 and down converting it to 128kps mp3.

These original movies have already gone through lossy compression. A single frame of 1920x1080@24bit = 6MB

A no compression version of a 90 minute 24fps movie would be 750GB. Granted I'm sure you could have a lossless compression that would probably close to halve that.

Anyway I'm not trying to say that the quality off of this thing isn't good, but don't say it's the same, because with the amount of data that's getting thrown out, that's impossible. Especially when they aren't even using a different codec.

I remember when divx came out and you could get maybe 95% quality for a 8GB DVD @ 2xCD or 1.4GB. But this was because they were using mpeg4 instead of mpeg2.

So I guess that means your not going to try it, but make judgements based upon your opinion. Try it, otherwise your no better than belly buttons, everyone has one.

Again, try it then come back and tell us your opinion then it is based upon observation not just 'Well I think'

How did you get on?

Did anyone else try?

I might very well try it, but I don't have expectations of lossless compression to 1/4 of the size with the same codec.

Try it, then tell us how you got on. Your feedback is more valuable then your opinion now, based upon not having tried it

Still have to commit to a new Motherboard. Will do once I get one.

That wasn't his "opinion". It is technically impossible to recompress to 1/4 size using the same codec without quality loss. A different codec maybe but I don't think one that efficient has been invented yet.

I've played with the Dark Knight 11GB rip off the internet, as well as the 9.7GB Hulk. They look nice. Hard to see any difference on a 40" screen. But when I put them on my projector at 116", the difference is there. Not to mention the DVD-quality sound. If I wanted DVD-sound, I'd get the DVD.

No thanks.

You should be basing your opinion on a direct BD rip and not some unkown file you downloaded off the net. The audio difference will only be noticeable if you're playing it back on a system that can decode the HD audio formats. Otherwise, you'll only get DD 5.1 or DTS anyway (i.e., DVD quality sound). I would imagine that the difference in image quality would be noticed on a 116" screen, but then most of us don't have that large of a viewing surface in our HT setups. You should definitely stick with an original BD or untouched BD rip for playback on the large screen for the best possible quality. The fact that you can't see a difference on a 40" screen means that it will work for the vast majority of people just looking to save a great deal of storage space. The limited exposure I've had to BD-Rebuilder outputs were viewed on a 60" Sony HDTV and they looked extremely good.

I never saw an answer, is there a mode in this that does not run video through x264 and re-encode it? You said it does, but your processing times don't add up if that's the case.