Update- So what programs do you use? (attn newbies too)

[Super Warrior]

Wow its been a while since i first joined the forum and first started messing with programs regarding DVD burning/processing. I've used so many over the years, like good ol'smartripper(anyone remember it?), and total crap like that one DVD resize program that took a whopping 5-6 hours just to do a single resize with only marginally better quality than stuff like DVD2ONE or DVDShrink. I think it was called pinnacle DVD creator.

Anyway over time time i eventually settled on what i consider the minimal set of programs, for best results.

#1- Ripping: For a long time i used smartripper, but now only use DVDFabHD Decryptor. Its a solid free program that stays reasonably updated and just works Good.

#2- Editing: DVDRemake Pro! Not a free program but totally worth it. With it can remove or edit out any and EVERY aspect of a DVD i don't want. From useless "extras" that take up valuable disc compression space like excess trailers, foreign language tracks, etc, to crappy scenes in a movie i'd rather not sit through again(Xion scene in Matrix Reloaded anyone?). Especially valuable in getting rid of needless repeated intros/outros for Tv series discs! You have no idea how much space a set of these on a Tv series disc can hog, dragging quality down significantly.

**newbies- for best possible quality you must remove the excess crap from your backup. The more junk you leave on like irrelevant trailers and such, the LOWER the quality will be*

And i've yet to mention the best feature Remake Pro has: Being able to combine multiple DVDs with menus to each intact, onto a single DVD! For those with various anime collections, you know damn well how useful this feature is. So many anime DVD sets out there are filled with individual DVDs that don't even use up the whole single-layer disc, and after removing the excess junk it then becomes even smaller! Very useful to save space by combining more than one of these to a single DVD.

#3- Resize to DVD-5: DVDShrink! Old discontinued program but free, and delivers plenty nice enough quality when resizing a DVD-9 to fit on a DVD-5. Although i personally use DVD2One because it delivers slightly better quality and i already paid for it years back, however if i hadn't i'd certainly use DVDShrink instead. As a bonus it can also burn the DVD after for you!

#4- Good media! Never, EVER go cheap on media. Unless you want a giant pile of coasters later on when the discs themselves degrade. Last i checked Taiyo Yuden is the best quality DVD-Rs out there and prety cheap these days too! Only buy Taiyo Yuden if you care about your stuff.

^^ This is pretty much all you'll ever need for making Good quality backups of your collection. Anything else is excess.

[fritzi93]

Super[/url] Warrior] I think it was called pinnacle DVD creator.

Don't think I ever heard of that. (You don't mean InstantCopy, do you?) Anyway, the only thing from Pinnacle that I thought was decent was InstantCopy.

IC differs from DVDShrink and most transcoders in that requantizing is spread over I,P,and B frames, then calculating the resulting error for each picture. (DVDShrink is biased towards "B" frames.) IC is NOT, however, a fixed rate transcoding algorithm, it has difference coding/recoding compensation. Errors are not allowed to accumulate, the cause of what's called "pumping". As a result, each frame is decoded twice, encoded once, which accounts for the extra time required. At any rate, it was nice to have if you got it free, bundled with a burner, as I did.

For movies without recent protection schemes (and that's most of them, even now), DVDShrink will happily decrypt your DVD. I normally only resort to DVDFabHDDecrypter if Shrink throws an error, or if I suspect beforehand that it has ARccOS, et. al. As with Sony, Columbia, etc. But it's very useful to grab the main movie and deselect unwanted audio tracks and subs, then save with no compression. Then, if the result is still too big for a DVD5, I use DVDRebuilder.

If for some reason the menus should be preserved, as for instance with an episode disc, VobBlanker is my choice to edit out any junk.

For burning, ImgBurn, of course, and Verbatims, burnt at 8x.

Lots of ways to do this though. :P

[Super Warrior]

Yes, yes i think it was instantcopy! Wow that program was such a pile of worthless crap too.

Waiting 5-6 hours for a single resize that would take DVDshrink only about 22 minutes, and with quality maybe slightly better? Not worth it.

Also the version i used back then was so stupid that it did not even use up the full DVD! I remember telling it to do full, and then 5 hours later ending up with a conversion result of about 3GBs.

Just sad.

[stiltman]

DVD 1:1
AnyDVD or DVDFab and ImgBurn

DVD 9 to 5
AnyDVD or DVDFab
FixVTS
DVDShrink
IMGBurn

DVD to 2 DVDs
AnyDVD or DVDFab
FixVTS
DVDRemake
ImgBurn

Now if I want to play around with a DVD (aka Leatherheads)
FixVTS
VideoBlanker
IfoEdit

[fritzi93]

Super[/url] Warrior]
Waiting 5-6 hours for a single resize that would take DVDshrink only about 22 minutes, and with quality maybe slightly better? Not worth it.

That's probably about right, and mind you I got it free. IIRC, though, if the movie was big enough, it was worth using InstantCopy over DVDShrink. But I haven't used it at all since DVDRebuilder came out, which BTW initially took some doing to set up correctly.

And as Stiltman has shown, some of us think FixVTS still has a place. DVDFabHDDecrypter has in the past produced non-compliant output, especially on newer ARccOS and RipGuard discs. [shrugs]

[TJK1911]

DVDShrink
Nero
DVDFabHDDecrypter
ImgBurn

The vast majority of the time, DVDShrink does the job for me. Unless a movie is recent, I can usually use Shrink to decrypt, compress and automatically use Nero to burn to a blank DVD. I just put the original in one DVD drive and a Verbatim hub-printable blank in the other. I change the settings in Shrink to maximum compression on everything but the main movie, and get rid of extra foreign language tracks and subtitles. Plenty good enough for my backups.

If Shrink won't do the decryption (which is becoming more common on newer releases) I go to DVDFabHDDecrypter for that task. Then I just run Shrink on the resultant files.

If it's just a case of straight duplication that doesn't require decryption or compression, then I use ImgBurn.

I use an Epson (R200, I think?) to print labels directly to disc. I find the label art here: http://www.cdcovers.cc/covers.

[archaeo]

In my opinion it's always preferable to 'encode' vs transcode.

Ripping:
Ripit4me (free)

Encoding:
DVDRebuilder, using HC encoder (free)

Burning:
ImgBurn (free)

Always excellent quality.