Video quality transcoding (much) worse than on Windows

[vtpeters]

I've been using Windows computers for a long time. I've also been using a licensed version of DVDFab Blu-ray Copy for the past several years.

I bought a new laptop and decided to go for a MacBook with M1 processor. Having used DVDFab Blu-ray Copy a lot I also bought a lifetime license for the Mac version of the program.

I've used it now for a few weeks and noticed recently that the video quality of the transcoded video stream was nog what I was used to on my Windows computer.
I decided to install CrossOver and install the Windows x64 version of DVDFab Blu-ray Copy (for which my license is still OK) and transcode the same movie (with the same settings and everything).

And I discovered that the same version of DVDFab Blu-ray Copy does a (much) better job than the Mac version in transcoding video. The video transcoded by the Mac version is seriously lacking in quality.

I've uploaded two screenshot of the same scene / moment in the same movie. The difference image quality is very obvious.

As things are right now, I'm seriously considering swapping my lifetime license for DVDFab Blu-ray Copy for Mac to a Windows version so I can run it using CrossOver (which costs me additional money for a license).

Does anybody using the Mac version have the same experience?

[Mona]

1. BD Copy bd50, passthrough, should be same. Same as source.

2. Compress bd25, if use hardware, maybe there is a difference.

3. Compress bd25, if using software encoding, should all use x264, the result should be similar.

Maybe you can provide both logs of macOS and windows to better check the problem, thanks.

[vtpeters]

1. BD Copy bd50, passthrough, should be same. Same as source.

2. Compress bd25, if use hardware, maybe there is a difference.

3. Compress bd25, if using software encoding, should all use x264, the result should be similar.

Maybe you can provide both logs of macOS and windows to better check the problem, thanks.

Is THIS what you mean with using software encoding?

[vtpeters]

Something else happened with my DVDFab Blu-ray Copy for Mac...

All of a sudden my lifetime license for DVDFab Blu-ray Copy has been revoked and it's now a "free" version, with a banner via which I can buy a license.

From the first screenshot that I've attached you can see the active licenses that I have of DVDFab.
On the second screenshot you can see the licenses within the application after I (again) activated te license.

Can you please fix this?

In the mean time I'll do another re-encoding run of the same movie with the option for hardware acceleration disabled to see whether this results in similar quality video as with the Windows version.

[vtpeters]

Something else happened with my DVDFab Blu-ray Copy for Mac...

All of a sudden my lifetime license for DVDFab Blu-ray Copy has been revoked and it's now a "free" version, with a banner via which I can buy a license.

From the first screenshot that I've attached you can see the active licenses that I have of DVDFab.
On the second screenshot you can see the licenses within the application after I (again) activated te license.

Can you please fix this?

In the mean time I'll do another re-encoding run of the same movie with the option for hardware acceleration disabled to see whether this results in similar quality video as with the Windows version.

It seems one of your colleagues switched my license from Mac to Windows.

I've now asked to switch back the lifetime license from Windows to Mac so I can do another re-encode of the same movie with altered settings to see if that solves my issue.

[Mona]

Is THIS what you mean with using software encoding?

Yes, that is the codec. The developer meant that if you use Software on both your Mac and Windows, the result should be the same.

[Mona]

It seems one of your colleagues switched my license from Mac to Windows.

I've now asked to switch back the lifetime license from Windows to Mac so I can do another re-encode of the same movie with altered settings to see if that solves my issue.

I've updated it for you, you may try again now.

[vtpeters]

I've updated it for you, you may try again now.

Thanks.

I performed a re-encode again to BD25 (according to the software only 95% of the original size) with the setting you suggested, but the results did NOT improve and were as bad as before.

I'll include the logs of this re-encoding for further analysis.

My old license for the Windows version of DVDFab Blu-ray Copy and DVDFab DVD Copy are still valid until november 2022 and the CrossOver trail license expires over 7 days. So I can manage for about a week with the Windows version. After the week I'd need to purchase a license for CrossOver to be able to keep using it. But for the future I would love the Mac version to be as capable as the Windows version is.

[october262]

Thanks.

I performed a re-encode again to BD25 (according to the software only 95% of the original size) with the setting you suggested, but the results did NOT improve and were as bad as before.

I'll include the logs of this re-encoding for further analysis.

My old license for the Windows version of DVDFab Blu-ray Copy and DVDFab DVD Copy are still valid until november 2022 and the CrossOver trail license expires over 7 days. So I can manage for about a week with the Windows version. After the week I'd need to purchase a license for CrossOver to be able to keep using it. But for the future I would love the Mac version to be as capable as the Windows version is.

are you doing full disc or main movie ?? try again using just main movie only and see if there's any quality difference.

[vtpeters]

I'll have to do more testing with various settings to be certain, but at first glance it looks like when I use the settings in the attached screenshot the compression artefacts that degraded the quality of the video before are gone or at least less obvious. I'll return when I've done more testing.

Oh, and for the question asked by 'october262'...
I copy only the main movie to BD25 with only one (the best) audio track and only 2 or 3 subtitle tracks.

All my findings mentioned above are when copying only the main movie to BD25 size.

[vtpeters]

I'll have to do more testing with various settings to be certain, but at first glance it looks like when I use the settings in the attached screenshot the compression artefacts that degraded the quality of the video before are gone or at least less obvious. I'll return when I've done more testing.

Oh, and for the question asked by 'october262'...
I copy only the main movie to BD25 with only one (the best) audio track and only 2 or 3 subtitle tracks.

All my findings mentioned above are when copying only the main movie to BD25 size.

I've re-encoded the movie (again) this time using the settings shown in my previous post. The the artefacts that were clearly visible when I re-encoded / compressed the movie using software encoding are now as good as gone. The image quality is similar to the video quality when re-encoding / compressing the movie with DVDFab Blu-ray Copy for Windows.

This means that the advice given earlier in this thread is (at least on my MacBook Pro 14 inch with Apple M1 Pro chipset) seems not to be the ideal settings for optimal video quality when 'shrinking' a blu-ray movie to BD25 size.

Maybe some developer at DVDFab can shed some light onto this issue...?

[october262]

I've re-encoded the movie (again) this time using the settings shown in my previous post. The the artefacts that were clearly visible when I re-encoded / compressed the movie using software encoding are now as good as gone. The image quality is similar to the video quality when re-encoding / compressing the movie with DVDFab Blu-ray Copy for Windows.

This means that the advice given earlier in this thread is (at least on my MacBook Pro 14 inch with Apple M1 Pro chipset) seems not to be the ideal settings for optimal video quality when 'shrinking' a blu-ray movie to BD25 size.

Maybe some developer at DVDFab can shed some light onto this issue...?

since your using main movie, try setting the output to no compression. see post #3 in this thread - https://forum.dvdfab.cn/forum/dvdfab...-best-fidelity

[vtpeters]

since your using main movie, try setting the output to no compression. see post #3 in this thread - https://forum.dvdfab.cn/forum/dvdfab...-best-fidelity

Most main movies are too large to fit on a BD25 with 'no compression'. So this is not an option in this case. The final goal is to burn the movie to a BD25 disc for playback on a standalone blu-ray player. I know it's old fashioned, but I like it that way.

Besides, the Windows version of DVDFab Blu-ray Copy had no such issues and delivered good video quality after compressing the main movie to fit on a 25GB BD-R disc.

[vtpeters]

An update on my experiments with the Mac version of DVDFab Blu-ray Copy...

Last evening I watched a BD25 which was a full-disc backup of a documentary on BD50 (it's actual size was 42 GB) om my stand-alone blu-ray player. The full-disc backup was made using the settings that I've described above and which have on my Mac yielded the best results so far.

I noticed that certain scenes/shots were OK, but other ones had the same kind of compression artefacts (as if a veil was draped or dragged over the image).

I still think the video quality is (far) worse than the video quality of a BD25 re-encoded with the Windows version.

[Mona]

Most main movies are too large to fit on a BD25 with 'no compression'. So this is not an option in this case. The final goal is to burn the movie to a BD25 disc for playback on a standalone blu-ray player. I know it's old fashioned, but I like it that way.

Besides, the Windows version of DVDFab Blu-ray Copy had no such issues and delivered good video quality after compressing the main movie to fit on a 25GB BD-R disc.

Did you set the same output size for BD25 for both the Windows and Mac versions?