DVD Shrink

[Festering]

I'm relatively knew to using DVD Shrink. I recently backed up 5-6 movies with the program, but I've encoutered a few problems of late with the movie 'Pitch Black.'

Instead of ripping only the files I needed, I decided to rip the entire DVD. Once I opened the file with Shrink I would re-author just the main movie which clocked in at 6.7 Gigs.

I would edit the movie slightly using the start/end frame just to cut a bit off the ending. The compression settings were set to 'automatic' just like the rest of my movies. I made sure to check the 'play' button and eveything seemed fine with the movie.

Once the backup was completed and written onto a DVD. I noticed the commentary is on, the movie plays fine, but I tried another 2-3 times with a RW and I can't get the commentary off?

Anyone know why? I assume it has something to do with the 'audio' options in the compression tab. I tried selecting a few different ones, but I can never get the director's commentary off.

[Kal-El]

Did you remove any aduio when you was reauthoring?

Dont bother with reauthoring there really isnt any noticeable quality change except for movies like LOTR and Ive done a couple hundred or so. Only time you need to remove anything is if the final dvd is still to big.

This is just my opinion tho. Some other people might notice a difference in quality if you do the whole movie. I honestly think unless you sit down and analyze it on a hight quality tv and take hours to review your are not going notice a difference from original.

[vinniev2222]

movies with high-contrast and color that have fast moving scenes are really the only ones that would be affected by being compressed too much as far as I have found. Done about 90 so far. The commentary issue definitely sounds like something happened in the audio selection area of the compression tab. Sometimes the streams are not labled as to what they are, just "AC3-2ch" AC3-5.1ch"....etc. Unless you know for sure what the streams are you're taking out or mesing with, I wouldnt even bother unless the stream is over like 500megs.

[M0KUJINKEN]

wbaf is the different in lotr?
how big was lotr?
most dvds are on dvd-9
like i did for the movie dodgeball, it's 7.86gb i think i t was.
the movie was over 4gb (plus enlish audio+2director's comments)
i shrink it to fit on my dvd5.
cuz i remove the extras videos, french, n spanish audio.

the first time i tested on van helsing (dvd9) by shrinking the whole dvd
and the result in video quailty was bad.

so now i have only been ripping and shrinking, i doint like the quality loss :|

[poppa-smurf]

Personally I like the Re-authoring option because I wanna keep the quality as high as possible - even picking "Still Images" for the Menus and whatnot, you're looking at a big 50-75 meg play button for the Menus and worthless slideshow for the extras - pointless.

[Bon Scott_1]

what is the the most recently version of DVD Shrink? I got version 3.1.
Is there other good programs like DVD Shrink that are worthy to get?

[Kal-El]

For the newest version of dvd shrink I think its at dvdshrink.org and its 3.2.0.15. As far as other programs. Ive done a couple with clonedvd2. I only use this tho if dvdshrink isnt working. And Ive only run across a couple movies that wont do anything in dvd shrink ripped or from cd (Friday Night Lights). Its just as good IMO but costs. Also theres a program I think called Magic Ripper 3. Cost about 30 bucks if I remember right. Theres some good and some bad about this program tho. The bad is that it will only work if you have the cd it wont do anything from the hdd. But the good this is if say you want to convert for say video editing or if you feel like making a vcd instead it will do this. Im sure theres other programs out there but I suggest you stick with the shrink and get the clone only for backup.

[h8sh8]

I'm relatively knew to using DVD Shrink. I recently backed up 5-6 movies with the program, but I've encoutered a few problems of late with the movie 'Pitch Black.'

Instead of ripping only the files I needed, I decided to rip the entire DVD. Once I opened the file with Shrink I would re-author just the main movie which clocked in at 6.7 Gigs.

I would edit the movie slightly using the start/end frame just to cut a bit off the ending. The compression settings were set to 'automatic' just like the rest of my movies. I made sure to check the 'play' button and eveything seemed fine with the movie.

Once the backup was completed and written onto a DVD. I noticed the commentary is on, the movie plays fine, but I tried another 2-3 times with a RW and I can't get the commentary off?

Anyone know why? I assume it has something to do with the 'audio' options in the compression tab. I tried selecting a few different ones, but I can never get the director's commentary off.

If you haven't done this already, this might help - right click on the movie/title (after you've dragged over to the left window section) and go to 'Set Default Streams' (or something like that) - you can select which audio is played by default there.
If you've not used that option before, you'll need to use it for subtitles too when re-authoring for some movies - sometimes the movie might have subs only for a few lines - for example like the elvish words in Lord of the Rings - to find out if they do have these subtitles, I usually play the original dvd in the dvd player and see if any subs are turned on by default. If they are then I set the same subtitle number to default in dvdshrink (and make sure I don't remove them too) - they're always the smallest English subs in filesize.

To find out which audio stream is which I usually just play the movie in powerdvd and press the go to next audio button and memorize the order. The order will be the same in dvdshrink - I usually play the dvdshrunk version in powerdvd before burning to double check I got the right ones removed or kept.

[Bon Scott_1]

For the newest version of dvd shrink I think its at dvdshrink.org and its 3.2.0.15. As far as other programs. Ive done a couple with clonedvd2. I only use this tho if dvdshrink isnt working. And Ive only run across a couple movies that wont do anything in dvd shrink ripped or from cd (Friday Night Lights). Its just as good IMO but costs. Also theres a program I think called Magic Ripper 3. Cost about 30 bucks if I remember right. Theres some good and some bad about this program tho. The bad is that it will only work if you have the cd it wont do anything from the hdd. But the good this is if say you want to convert for say video editing or if you feel like making a vcd instead it will do this. Im sure theres other programs out there but I suggest you stick with the shrink and get the clone only for backup.

Thanx Kal-El for your answer, I'll look arround to find the apps you mentioned.

[h8sh8]

For the newest version of dvd shrink I think its at dvdshrink.org and its 3.2.0.15. As far as other programs. Ive done a couple with clonedvd2. I only use this tho if dvdshrink isnt working. And Ive only run across a couple movies that wont do anything in dvd shrink ripped or from cd (Friday Night Lights). Its just as good IMO but costs. Also theres a program I think called Magic Ripper 3. Cost about 30 bucks if I remember right. Theres some good and some bad about this program tho. The bad is that it will only work if you have the cd it wont do anything from the hdd. But the good this is if say you want to convert for say video editing or if you feel like making a vcd instead it will do this. Im sure theres other programs out there but I suggest you stick with the shrink and get the clone only for backup.

I use clone dvd too, but only for ripping and burning. Using clonedvd there's an easy way to remove individual extras (while keeping the menus) better than what dvdshrink does...
Set the dvd size to custom (click on dvd-5) and set the size to 8 or 9Gb, then rip the dvd to the harddrive at 100%. This way you can totally remove any extras and keep the menus intact. You just uncheck whichever extras you want removed. Then shrink it off the HD using dvdshrink (dvdshrink has much better shrinking quality that clonedvd IMO). I wish dvdshrink would let you do the same, but even with the new single image option, if you do that to a 30min extra it'll play the single image for 30mins - clonedvd replaces it with 1 black frame, so when you play the removed extra it goes straight back to the menu. Saves a bit more space for shrinking too. This method also great for removing trailers or pirate warnings that play before a menu - the copied dvd will just play 1 frame of black for each trailer - though I've noticed recently some dvds are hiding the pirate warnings in the menus - which is a pain in the ass - clonedvd doesn't let you edit menus - but you can still replace these in dvdshrink anyway.
You can do the same thing with dvdremake which also lets you remove menu functions and would probably work for removing pirate warnings in the menus, but it's a bit harder to figure out than clonedvd & dvdshrink - it also crashes a fair bit for me - newer versions might be better though, haven't tried it for a while.

CloneDVD is the best I've used for burning too - I get heaps of errors with Nero.

If anyone tries out CloneDVD, I'd recommend getting AnyDVD too, as CloneDVD wont read commercial dvds without it. It's the CloneDVD by Elaborate Bytes too (there's another program also called CloneDVD).