Combine DVDs

[NRaygun]

I've been looking around for a solution to this issue and havent found one. I even asked a couple guys in the Apple store recently.

I am a new Mac user but I cant seem to do something with DVDs that I'm able to do on my PC. On my PC, with Nero's NeroVision express, I can take a few DVDs and combine them into one. The quality is reduced, but the kids dont mind.

I rip the DVDs and then import them into NeroVision Express. I can then make menus, buttons, etc.

I cant seem to find a way to do this same thing on my iMac. I've seen apps that can shrink a 9GB DVD to 4.7GB and even an app that can take 2 DVDs to one. But I cant find an app for the Mac that does what NeroVision does.

I also cant seem to find a way to change the resultant DVD type for the output in iDVD. Maybe I could convert to AVI and then import into iDVD. I think the mode I'm looking for is "Half D1".

Anybody have any ideas? I'd hate to keep using my PC for this task.

[terryj]

Easiest:

Mac The Ripper to Rip Main Title,
FFMPEGX to process to .Mov,
rinse repeat rinse repeat
Open Toast, drag and drop .mov in toast
Burn in Toast.

Harder:

Mac The Ripper to Rip Main Title,
FFMPEG to process to .DV,
rinse repeat rinse repeat.
Bounce into Compressor, set Bitrate to make
all movies fit to standard DVD-5.
Author in DVDSP 3, save[build] project.
Open Toast, Burn in Toast.

[frankiec]

What I do to combine DVDs:
1. MacTheRipper
2. Roxio Toast 7

[thoughton]

I think the mode I'm looking for is "Half D1".

Converting DVDs to half D1 will take a few hours per DVD, depending how fast your mac is. You'll be able to fit around 5 or 6 hours onto a DVD-R. Unfortunately I don't believe there is any one-stop-solution to take your video_ts folders and output a single video_ts folder containing a bunch of seperate half-D1 videos. You can encode them to half D1 individually with ffmpegX (unselect 'author as dvd', you wont need it), but then you'll have to use the mpg files in Sizzle/DVDSP/Toast to make a menu.