DVD Backup with Just Movie & Menu using DVD-RB

[rkr1958]

After numerous DVD backups I've found that I like the main movie, which chapter points, and a basic menu. I usually don't care for the extras. If I do I can always pull out the original DVD or in the rare case of a movie like, The Six Sense, I'll make a second disc containing the extras.

Bought my son the Incredibiles and used DVD-RB Pro w/CCE-Basic to backup the movie and menus. This was the first time I'd used the movie and menu only option so I loaded the finished DVD into DVD-Shrink to check to see if the extras really got blanked. They did ... but one thing I noticed was that the menu was around 680-MB. That's giving away a lot of space just to keep the menu.

So here's what I'm doing, and have done in the past on a number of backups. I load the movie into TMPGEnc DVDAuthor (TDA) with reading chapter points. In this case the number of chapter points was 32. I like to keep them to 12 so I re-did the chapter points in TDA. I then build a menu that's track only so that when the backup loads up the menu has one page with the 12-chapter points. I can play from a chapter point or hit the play all button to play the DVD from the start. I then reauthor the DVD, note that TDA will complain if the DVD is greater than 4.31-GB, and in the case of The Incredibiles it was.

If less than 4.31-GB I then burn and have my backup. If over, I then use DVD-RB w/CCE-basic to get it down to 4.31-GB and then I burn.

The only downside to this method that I see is that you need a lot of disc space. I first rip the DVD to my harddrive using DVD Decryptor (file mode) ==> 8+ GB for a DVD-9. The reauthor with TDA, which takes < 20-minutes ==> 5.5 to 6+ for the main movie with one audio stream (usually the ac3 6-channel). DVD-RB requires a temp folder for the encoded m2v files (4.3-GB) and then the final reauthor (4.3-GB).

I do have a lot of disc space so that's no a problem. I guess my question, assuming that I want to use DVD-RB to backup, is there a better or more efficient way to do what I doing to build a basic menu?

[rkr1958]

Update ... I just finished backing up The Incredibiles using the above method. Final menu size was 0.46 MB and movie size was 4409 MB versus menu size of 680 MB and movie size of 3730 MB before.

Keeping the original menu was just not worth 680 MB to me.

[jeanl]

Another, much less fun (!) option is to use MenuShrink. It's intended exactly for what you're trying to do. I shrinks the menus down by turning them into still menus with or without the audio, and getting rid of all the menu intros/outros etc. It's a "one-click" solution, but you can also pick which image to use for each menu... Typically, you can use it before, or after DVD-RB, up to you. Give it a shot. Download in my sig...
jeanl

[HatchetMan]

^^ Yep, I always do MenuShrink 2.0 b4 DVD-RB. Works great, very simple to use.