Ahh, well, having just been to Best Buy to scope out prices on DVD-9 media, I can say it's still prohibitive. It's $40 for 15 Memorex discs. That's $2.67 per disc. I can buy 50 Sony DVD-5 discs for $24, or just .48¢ per disc.

Dual layer media isn't produced in the volume necessary to get that price down. Hopefully, it will be soon.

Verbatim DL + media on sale now at BB for $35 for 20 ($1.50 per disc). These go on sale every few weeks. Verbatim is the only good DL discs out there now.

Careful with the Sony's (unless they are made in Japan). You get what you pay for. If you watch the sales you can generally get good Verbatims for about the same price. Or you can get TY on line for a few cents more.

Even when the discs cost 3 or more dollars I still used them for larger movies. What is the point of having a backup if the quality is so poor that you can't watch it?

i use aepvideo dvd copy with 40-60%, it is acceptable.

I think it also depends on what bitrate a DVD needs , not just the bitrate the source DVD has. It has always seemed to me that animated movies will tolerate much more compression, probably because not much changes frame-to-frame compared to an action movie.

(But it could also be that the animated movies started with a higher bitrate...I never thought to check.)

How do you change these values for a DVD-RB pro 1.10.5 & CCE SP trial 2.7 combo?

I generally just make copies of my movies for casual viewing, so I don't need to go to my shelf for the original... they're also great for lending out to people when you don't want to risk careless treatment of your originals (my family is pretty awful in this respect). Also, I don't have an HDTV, so it's usually pretty difficult to tell the difference between the original and a copy; especially when they aren't side-by-side.

Sometimes I've found even something around 50%-55% can look decent. Even on my aunt and uncle's HDTV, my backups of the Arrested Development (which generally averaged 55% compression) didn't look that bad, as far as LCD screens go (1366x768 for such big panels is terrible, IMO... even true 1920x1080 for such big screens is pushing it). That's basically the reaosn I don't have an HDTV... either somebody does a lot of work on large-panel LCD technology, or I think we should stick to CRT HDTVs (which I have considered buying).

Recently, when I'm backing up a TV show or something else which needs to be reduced below 60%, I've taken to letting DVDShrink do a deep analysis.

I suppose I'd rather use DVD+R DL discs, but they're still a bit expensive to consider for backing up my entire DVD library.

Yesterday I backed up a DVD for the 1st time with DVD-REB and CCE.
Cause of DVD Shrink not able to keep the main movie and menu in re-author mode (I usually dont back up "making of's"and extras).
Especially when you want to make a backup of a movie with a DTS track on a DVD 5,thats why I dont get it that people still make backups on DVD 5's with multiple audiotracks resulting in 50 % compression or more for the image you'd better buy a nice price original one on a VHS tape (do they still sell those? )
I backed up the movie 3 times,main movie with only the DTS audio track, with Shrink in auto mode, deep analysis and DVD-REB with CCE.
I could see a clear difference esp. in the darker scenes, Shrink auto backup had an almost lightgrey background, deep analysis a dark grey one and the backup done with DVDREB and CCE almost pitch black with very sharp contours.
The DVDREB and CCE backup had a reduction level of 66% and a bitrate of 4.346 kbs.
IMO its not only the high/low/typical bitrate that counts,the average bitrate of the movie(different scenes having different bitrates in the same movie)much compression in an action packed scene looking blurry,same compression in a dialoque scene looking crystal sharp, also with how many passes you encode and with what software you make the backup with.

Where are you buying your media? We can get verbatims (DVD5) for $4.99 for a 25 pack (less than $0.20 each). DVD9 Verbatims are on slae about every 3 or 4 weeks for $24.99 for the 20 pack - just make sure you are getting MIS and not MII.

Very helpful thread. So if, according to BV, the avg bitrate of a movie is 8359 and DVDfab will copy the main movie at 70% quality, that should still look pretty good, right? Because of the high bitrate?

Thanks,
Harold