Re-authoring is a waste of time (usually)

[WCanyon]

Here's what I've concluded today. Re-authoring is usually a waste of time.

Here's what I used to do: rip with SmartRipper to demuxed streams, alter streams with Cuttermaran, reauthor the dvd with DVDLabPro. Sometimes I'd have to shrink it down with DVDShrink.

About 50% of the time something was wrong with the final DVD. Typically it was a sound issue -- the sound track would lag the video a bit and by the end of the movie it was unwatchable. Also it was impossible to preserve subtitles doing this. Sure, there are guides out there and a million subtitle programs. But by the end of a couple of hours of messing around with it, still no subtitles. So I decided to let it go.

So today I thought, why not just use DVDShrink every time? No demuxing. No reauthoring. Granted, I'd lose the customized menus that I liked to make with DVDLab, but man I'm gonna save so much time. I've found that DVDShrink is reliable, simple and effective. So, no fancy menus, but a ton of time saved and reliable output every time.

Maybe it's DVDLab that's the issue? I dunno. Maestro looks good but I'm not sure if I'm emotionally prepared to invest more time in a new program

[yoda313]

Well normally I just do a full or movie only backup with shrink and leave it at that. I hardly bother with custom stuff myself (unless its stuff I captured then I might fool with it).

But I'm sure LOTS of people here will argue that customization is worth the time.

Oh well to each his/her own I guess.

[bits]

Well normally I just do a full or movie only backup with shrink and leave it at that. I hardly bother with custom stuff myself (unless its stuff I captured then I might fool with it).

But I'm sure LOTS of people here will argue that customization is worth the time.

Oh well to each his/her own I guess.

You will not get that argument from me! If I do any customization it is strictly for videos of my family.

I also think Shrink is a good way to go but for larger files requiring more file size reduction I use DVD Rebuilder Pro, takes longer but is worth it.