New to the scene, have some questions. Appreicate any help:)

[in7ruder]

Hello all,

As the proud owner of a new Pioneer AO5 dvd-4 4x burner curtesy of newegg for $175 I was looking on the web for a forum area where I could be around my peers and in general, hobbiest that shared a passion for what they were doing. After a brief peek around these forums, I think I've found a home.

Over the past few months, I've slowly starting collecting different dvd apps. After getting my A05 installed into a Firewire external enclosure, I installed DVD x Copy 1.4 and made my first backup. Everything went smooth and the time it took seemed to be on par with everyone else.

I've made a few backups and things work fine. I don't have a problem with the speed of ripping the dvd's or burning the dvds. Most movies I've backed up or looked at seem to be dvd-9, dual layer or 7.9 to 8+ gig.

Since dvd's blanks are not exactly cheap yet, I am more interested in JUST the movie, no menu's, extra's or anything like that.

What I just noticed with dvd shrink v2.3, is that I could uncheck all the audio off the menu's and extra's as well as change all the video off of extra's and the menu to just stills. This took "tears of the sun" with bruce willis from 8 gig to 4.3 gig. I'm excited to see this to say the least as now I can stick the movie on one disc.

Even now, the movie is still being encoding by dvd shrink 2.3. This is the first time I've used this app, and I don't even know if there is a burn feature included in the app or if there ins't how I go about burning it. I am also worried it will look like ass, with all the stills and no music.

My question is, is there a better way? I've been carefull to RTFM before coming on here and asking a ton of questions I could answer myself, but there is only so much I can read and understand on my own.

I would love to just rip the movie, no extras, or menu's, just the movie onto one cd and have the movie start right away. How can this be done in the easest of terms explained to me.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[AarontheRipper]

Is there a better way? Well, that really depends on what you mean by better. If you would like to get better quality, you could step up to an encoder like CCE, or TMPGEnc. The quality you will get trying to get a movie on to one disk will be better, but you will sacrifice a lot in time and in ease of operation. These encoders are a little more complicated to use, and the reencoding process can take anywhere from 8-36 hours depending on the quality setting you use. I only have a 27" TV, and so the faster programs like DVDShrink, IC7, and DVD2One do just fine for me. I can't notice a difference on my TV. The general consensus is that for the smaller movies (5-6gb) the faster encoders work just fine. However, when you step up to 7-8gb movies, you may notice a drop in the quality from the original to the backup. TMPGEnc has a 30 day free trial, so if you'd like to try that out to see if you can notice a difference, I'd give that a shot. I almost always use DVD2One just because of the speed of the reencoding, but on larger movies (LOTR) I like to use TMPGEnc.

[AarontheRipper]

As far as ease of operations, DVD2One, DVDShrink, and IC7 are the easiest programs you will find. Especially DVDShrink because it also does the ripping of the DVD to your hard drive. I believe that all of them can do movie only, now.

[Laddydaddy]

Hello in7truder and welcome to "the scene." My suggestion would be to go to https://www.videohelp.com/dvdripping and check out the guides there. You should get familiar with DVD Decryptor, DVD2ONE, and DVD Shrink. DVD Decryptor will tell you if the dvd you are backing up is single layer (DVD5) or dual layer (DVD9). If it is single layer you can back up the entire disc, menus and all with DVD Decryptor. If it is dual layer and you only want to backup the movie you can use DVD shrink or DVD2ONE. DVD Decryptor and DVD Shrink are freeware. DVD2ONE costs 39.99EURO. I think the exchange rate is about 1 to 1 so that would be 39.99 in Yankee dollars. All are available in the tools section of this web page. Good luck!