I just found this today while browsing dvd.box.sk looking for subtitles:

http://dvd.box.sk/articles8.php

It's a comparision of the most popular DVD transcoders.

The final ranking is:

1st: InterVideo DVD Copy (winning by far, according to the article)
2nd: Pinnacle InstantCopy
3rd and 4th: DVD X Copy XPRESS and DVD2one
5rd: Clone DVD
6th and 7th: Nero Recode and DVD Shrink(losers)

/me gets himself some Intervideo DVD Copy ...

BTW ... check this thread over at cdfreaks ...

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=87269

When these tests were made? 18th century? 19th century?

I know DVD Shrink 2.3 from former days, current versions is 3.1.5.
But they tested DVD Shrink 1.3.1.

See 1st page at http://66.250.55.203/articles8.php
(www.box.sk do not work).

Not only did they use an outdated version of DVD Shrink, they also don't mention whether they used Deep Analyze or not.

Too bad, otherwise it would have been a very interesting test...

Does anyone know how these compressed domain transcoders compare to a full re-encode with CCE?

CCE wins 100-0 when the movie is long.

It's a typo. Check this image from the page for the version number in the titlebar.

They used DVD Shrink 3.1.1. The 1.3.1 is a typo.

long movies shouldn't be transcoded with clonedvd or dvdshrink... better use an encoder like cce with multipasses or canopus (or even tmpgenc)
Quality will be much better

Take a look at the doom9 thread about this comparison also:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=70146

The test doesn't look too reliable according to that thread...

That's why I linked to cdfreaks ...

There are some claims that this test was ... erm ... a little biased towards Intervideo

Any rule of thumb for this? I use DVD2SVCD with the Roba plug-in if I cant get DvdShrink above 80%.

They both look great on my current set but I wonder what wil happen on a higher def TV.

Good advice. Well, I develop D2SRoBa, so I guess I should know. (and I have to admit, I sometimes use dvdshrink too...)
Thanks.

BTW DVD Shrink has really some problems:
- dark scenes
- fade to white, fade to black, fades between two scenes
- high compression rates
Quality collapses for some moments.

On the other side I have no experiences with other MPEG-2 recoders.

Additional remark: Some recoders recode only some parts of the MPEG-2
and copy other parts. When you inspect the non-recoded parts, quality is perfect,
but the other parts have more differences.

I tested "Lost Souls," which is a very dark movie with bright contrasts, and I have not come across any problem such as you describe. I used DVD Shrink v3.15, which shrunk the entire DVD to 57% of its original size, and the quality remained excellent. I'm quite pleased with DVD Shrink and its ease of handling. But I'm still a n00b at video encoding, transcoding, etc. and I have a great deal to learn.

Later.