This is perhaps one of the more worthless of 'look at what I did', but here goes (I hope this is the right forum to post this in...*my apologies* in advance if it's not)...

*** TECHNICAL NOTE ***

I used the amazing NORCENT DP-300 DVD player for playback (Only cost me $87 Cnd at Wal-Mart and it plays EVERYTHING!). I didn't actually author a CD as a DVD (Nero simply won't budge on that). However, my Norcent's 'Smart Nav' window came up and played the files back no prob.

So, chances are...unless your DVD player has a SMART-NAV function...you're SOL (and this article is completely useless!)

Here's what I did...

- I took the first 8 chapters (about 30min) of DAGON (Incredible film!), and ultra compressed it using DVDshrink down to 670megs (only kept the movie audio).

- Created a basic ISO9660 CD in Nero, created two folders (don't even think I have to do that...but did it anyway) AUDIO_TS & VIDEO_TS

- Threw all the DVDshrink'd files into the VIDEO_TS folder.

- Burnt the CD-R and slapped it into my Norcent. As expected, the SMART NAV window popped up, so I clicked over to the DVD_01 file and it worked!

What I noticed are the following:

- It'll just play and nothing more. Can't chapter advance, can't fast forward...nothing...it'll just play period.

- Aspect ratio. It's full-screen, even though the movie was 1:85.1, it'll make it full-frame. Then again, most supplementaries are full-screen anyhow.

- Level 8 compression looked like hell, but I was able to get 30+ min onto a CD. I also tried the DAGON trailer (It was about 50 Megs, 1min20sec). It again played full-screen, but looked fantastic (uncompressed DVD!). I calculated that uncompressed, you can put about 14min onto a CD-R.

Conclusion...SO WHAT THE F%^& IS THIS GOOD FOR?

My only guess is as follows:

- Small supplementaries that aren't worth keeping onto the actual DVD-R backup (because you might want to dedicate your DVD-r just to the movie), but you still want these sups...so a cheap CD-R is a viable option.

Then again, just throwing all the sups onto one DVD-R (using IFOedit) might be a bit easier than this (and more compatible).

A worthless bit of info...however, DVDshrink has dominated my life for these past few weeks!

- Kubrick