Should I consider other programs then DVD shrink for DVD9 to 5 authoring?

[geepondy]

Myself I use DVD fab decryper to copy to hard drive and then Nero Recode to author it but I'm trying to teach my friend using free software. Obviously DVD fab decrypter is free and I know DVD shrink is an old standby for copying/shrinking DVDs but should I consider any alternatives to DVD shrink for authoring/shrinking or is it still the best free ware for this task?

[jman98]

Well, in my opinion the best freeware for this task is the free version of DVD Rebuilder. Why? DVD Rebuilder uses high quality encoders, including the excellent free HC Encoder, to re-encode the DVD with a lower bit rate to shrink it. Transcoding, while quicker, doesn't provide as good results as re-encoding will. Whether you can tell the difference or not is a very good question, but technically speaking, re-encoding will give the best results.

If your friend is one of these people who flip out at anything that takes more than 5 minutes to do or requires "too much work" to learn, do NOT use DVD Rebuilder. DVD Rebuilder can easily take 4-5 hours, maybe less if your CPU is a lot faster than my old single core, to shrink an entire DVD to single layer size and it's not real easy for newbies to set up before using it the first time. DVDShrink is a lot easier to use and runs quicker. If your friend just wants to do it as quickly as possible, DVD Fab Decrypter and DVDShrink are the ways to go.

[ntscuser]

Few people learn how to use DVD Shrink properly before ditching it in favour of another program. Remove all unwanted crap with VobBlanker first. Always run a full analysis and set backup quality to "maximum smoothness".

DVD Shrink is still the best tool out there for stripping unwanted audio and subpicture streams and then reassigning the remaining menu buttons. If you use DVD Rebuilder to strip unwanted streams you will have to reassign the menu buttons manually. Also the free version of DVD Rebuilder does not have a "movie only" option.

[t0nee1]

ntscuser wrote" DVD Shrink is still the best tool out there for stripping unwanted audio and subpicture streams and then reassigning the remaining menu buttons."

[geepondy]

Wonder how the quality of Nero Recode 2 is compared to the two programs mentioned here? I use it because that is the first program I tried as I had it.

[ntscuser]

Wonder how the quality of Nero Recode 2 is compared to the two programs mentioned here? I use it because that is the first program I tried as I had it.

It was designed by the same person as DVD Shrink but does not have the same flexibility of use. For a "quickie" job it makes very little difference. In terms of absolute picture quality it is slightly inferior to DVD Shrink and not even in the same league as DVD Rebuilder.

[geepondy]

Thanks for the enlightenment. I'll explore DVD Rebuilder more. Generally speaking time is not an issue when I copy DVDs.

[olyteddy]

There is also ReJig https://www.videohelp.com/tools/ReJig but it looks like it hasn't been upgraded in a couple of years. I've used it for simple authoring, it works.

[guns1inger]

DVD Rebuilder can also use Rejig as one of it's options. Rejig is a transcoder like shrink, so it is much faster than re-encoding, at the expensive of quality if the reduction is too big.

[skaleton]

DVD Shrink is still the best tool out there for stripping unwanted audio and subpicture streams and then reassigning the remaining menu buttons.

Would you please explain how you re-assign the menu buttons with Dvd Shrink?[/b]

[ntscuser]

DVD Shrink is still the best tool out there for stripping unwanted audio and subpicture streams and then reassigning the remaining menu buttons.

Would you please explain how you re-assign the menu buttons with Dvd Shrink?

You tick the box for "Logical remapping of enabled streams" in preferences.

[skaleton]

Thanks a lot ntscuser