Yep, I figured out yesterday that this is the lossless way to go. I have since gone and just demuxed them and I'll play with them today and see if I can figure out what I want to do.
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OK, here are my notes on what I've done so far....

I bolded the part where I think I may have gone wrong. I have done nothing yet to the video. I haven't added chapters or anything. I just did the "Add to DVD" button and it started the encoding and this is what I ended up with. Shouldn't the new video and 'old' video be the same size and have the same avg bitrate since I haven't done anything to them?
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I don't know if MovieGate can accept VOBs straight but I'm pretty sure you could have had MPEG Streamclip convert the VOB to MPEG rather than demuxing it. I've had badly authored DVDs in the past and the MPEGs I've extracted from the dodgy VOB files in order to reauthor have always been differently sized which I've put down to some kind of difference in their headers. The difference in bitrate seems to me to more of a concern. Maybe the timecode breaks have a bearing here ?

Ask the boffins at videohelp ?
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I'm a PC freak, so I can't help with a Mac program. Seems that you did all steps OK, what your soft allows to losslessly author a DVD. Small difference in total size of files is because of different size of menu(s).

Time difference can be due false information about DVD contents written by some standalone recorders, which is seen by computer players and authoring programes twice as large - the same video is "repeated".

However, if original video stream has an error, your authoring programe may not import whole video, so compare original and reauthored DVD if everything is OK.

Video bitrate can be changed two ways - see your program manual:

1. Lossless by patching header of the first or all frames. It's like writting a text information to a video file, and not recompressing video itself. It's not neccessary. Sometimes it's done for (old) DVD players which incorrectly read information from the stream. For example first video header is set to maximum, and such bitrate is expected for all frames and red continuously by a player, while the real bitrate changes from frame to frame (variable bitrate, VBR). Also, headers of DVB captures usually have bitrate set over 10 kbps, which is outside DVD standard.

2. Lossy: by rencoding video stream.

Anthing else to clarify?
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well i noticed that many people cant make a menu.. whats the problem?
ive downloaded some dvds and almost all the menus simply dont work.. its a part of the movie, a single chapter, before the actual concert starts..

how come? im sure its not me who does someting wrong

now i have to edit all dvds and make a menu for it..
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Really? Is the menu not working on both the computer and the DVD player? I have rarely come across a menu that doesn't work. I've come across a few where they goofed on a song or two (where Song A actually links to Song B), but I've rarely, if ever, come across one that plain doesn't work.
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i didnt burn these dvds yet, the menu's from all of the 8 dvds i downloaded from this site and dimeadozen dont work

with all my other dvds i dont have problems with... so i cant understand what it is..
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Lynne, how did that dvd authoring program look to you? until i get a new comp, i'm needing a temporary solution for authoring a bunch of shows that are edited and takin up harddrive space...i refuse to use that pos iDVD and can't run DVDSP on this intel mini...those wankers at apple are beginning to disappoint me]

and i like the new av always wondered about the front
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I got sidetracked with server issues, so the farthest I got was what I wrote above. I do plan on continuing with the project when I have some more time.


Hehe. You guys kept asking for the front, so.....
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keep me posted, i'm lookin for somethin that isn't too basic, and'll do the job well [need a good compression prog too, unless i can get Compressor to run on this comp ]
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This may be slightly off topic, but ...

Using MPEG Streamclip, you can also determine the stats for your DVD (rather than using the more complicated method explained in the FAQ).

With a vob file opened in the main window, choose "Show Stream Info" from the file menu (or command-i). It provides all of the stats required by TTD in one handy window.
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That's great MisterPitiful! Do you mind if I add that to the FAQ (with credit to you)?
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Hi.

Please use it in the FAQ. No need to credit me.

However, you'd better use this screen grab instead. The last one had an error in the video bitrate (because I hadn't fixed the time code breaks). Also, this one uses the current version of MPEG Streamclip.

Cheers.
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I just added it here: http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/...aq_video_stats I think I got all the steps correct. This is soooooo much easier than the method we were using before!
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just want to note that MPEGStreamclip does not give completely accurate video bitrate info, due to the fact the it doesn't distinguish between CBR and VBR encoding...so if you run it on all vob files, the bit rate is just an average [when it comes to VBR compressed discs]...not a big deal, but worth noting ffor anyone reading this down the road
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