Hey there,

I buy a lot of season based DVD's. One is the TV series Angel. Now the packaging it comes in is utter crap. You scratch the discs just by taking them in and out of the slip cases lined with what looks like kitchen towels.

I tried backing them up using DVD Shrink, Clone DVD 2 etc. and the results were very very poor.

I then used Nero Recode to remove half the episodes and replace them with a "Please insert disc two" image, and the reverse for disc 2 to disc 1.

My problem is: It replaces it with an image that plays for about 40-45 mins (length of episode) and still takes up 300 MB which means I still need to go to about 85% compression! I was wondering if there is any way to repalce episodes with say, a 20 second clip saying change to disc two or whatever. This way it'd be about 1 mb or less, and the message is still displayed long enough to be seen and understood, and the DVD would not need any compression.

Please post any help, or similar software that can do what I want if it is available. Pay or freeware. I'm willing to pay as the seasons cost £40 each and they're getting destroyed.

Also, I'd like the DVD to still be readable in DVD Shrink etc. because my family are not what I'd call careful so it'd be quicker to back up the back up and destroy the badly fingerprinted/scratched one if it can be, and only use the original if the backup is beyond ripping. I was told by a friend a lot of programs can remove content but it makes the dvd files unreadable in Shrink and Clone etc... Thanks in advance everyone!

Regards,
KD.