DVDShrink didn't shrink enough?

[JudgeGarth]

I ripped two tv episodes from two different disks with DVDDecryptor, each ep about 51 minutes long. I then sent them through DVDShrink so they would fit on one DVD5. (I've done this before). I used 'Deep Analysis' as I usually do, but when I tried to write the file from Shrink with Nero, it said it was too big for a DVD5.

I gave up on Nero and tried ImgBurn for the first time. I'm not a newbie here, but this is the first time I tried to use ImgBurn. I used Cornholio's guide from the 'Guides' section' ('Burning DVD files directly to single layer media with ImgBurn'). I was able to burn a disk with both episodes on it (no menu), but the playback freezes right at the end, so I guess it really was too big for a DVD5 (just barely).

So...two questions:
1. Why didn't DVDShrink shrink it enough so I could burn it on a DVD5?
2. If I take the file from DVDShrink and input it directly into ImgBurn, I won't have a menu. How can I make a menu? That's one thing I can at least do with Nero, no matter how crude the menu is.

[guns1inger]

First thing to clarify : if the files are too big to fit on a disc, they will not be burned. Burning applications know in advance how much space they have to play with, and how big the files are. They don't just burn until it's full then stop short. If you are getting playback issues at the end of the disc it is classic bad media problems. You solve this by buying better media or shrinking smaller so you don't burn right to the outer edge.

There are two possibilities with Nero

1. The files you have created only just fit on a single layer disc, and adding menus in Nero makes the total structure too big. Simple fix - make them smaller in Shrink so you have space for the menus.

2. Nero is re-encoding the output from Shrink. This can be turned off somewhere in the preferences. If Nero insists on re-encoding then you need to use something else to add your menus.

[JudgeGarth]

There are two possibilities with Nero

1. The files you have created only just fit on a single layer disc, and adding menus in Nero makes the total structure too big. Simple fix - make them smaller in Shrink so you have space for the menus.

2. Nero is re-encoding the output from Shrink. This can be turned off somewhere in the preferences. If Nero insists on re-encoding then you need to use something else to add your menus.

I guess it could be that the menu pushes it over the cliff. How do I tell Shrink to make it even smaller than what 'Deep Analysis' wants to do?

[ixyk]

The Deep Analysis mode seems to help a little bit in ensuring that the final image is as close as possible to the size predicted by DVD Shrink, but mostly this mode is for quality improvement purposes and not to ensure that the resulting image fits on a DVD5. The size estimate given by Shrink is just an estimate and often varies at least a small amount depending on how close the actual transcoding process was able to match the predicted results.

What you want to do to ensure you have an image that is small enough to fit on a DVD5 -- in-and-of-itself as well as being able to still fit after having had a menu added to it by Nero -- is to select "Main Movie" (or "Extras", etc.) in the "DVD Structure" pane and then in the "Compression Settings" pane click the button that by default will say "Automatic". Then select "Custom Ratio" instead and adjust the slider to your desired percentage/size. If you are doing this on a disc with only one title (yours may or may not be depending on how you chose to author it) then it should only take a small adjustment to see your overall size shrink down an acceptable amount. If your disc has multiple titles and/or sections you may need to manually adjust each section, as each other section will by default automatically expand as you shrink the section you've selected, and it will at first appear to be doing nothing for your overall size.

I generally select "Custom Ratio" for all the extras and menus of discs that I want to keep those on, and shrink them as far down as they will go, letting the "Main Movie" expand to its maximum available size. Often times this will result in highly compressed (but watchable) extras, and a perfect quality movie. This will be especially true if you also deselect unnecessary language tracks, such as that French 5.1 DTS track from [insert American film title here] that you're soo likely to need... 8)

[guns1inger]

Before you worry about the compression settings, click on Edit -> Preferences, then choose Custom from the Target DVD Size. Change the default size from 4464 to something lower - 4300, say - and click OK. Now all of Shrink's calculations will be based on hitting this target.

[JudgeGarth]

Thank you all for the help. I changed the compression sizes and that worked fine. That was before I read guns1inger's post about changing the target size. I'll try that next time.

[ntscuser]

There's a simpler way. Author the uncompressed DVD with menu first and then compress with DVD Shrink. Personally I wouldn't use Nero to author as there are too many playback issues with various players.