Help Needed: DVD to one DVD-R using ffmpegX without re-encoding

[DDieggo1000]

Hi,

I've been looking around the site on how to use ffmpegX to compress a non-encrypted DVD and compress it to one 4 GB DVD without re-encoding it in order to burn it to a blank DVD-R media and have it play in a regular dvd player. I had no luck on finding the appriopriate topic. I read in the features for ffmpegX (via Softonic Website--ffmpegX product ) that you can compress a non-encrypted DVD folder (with Audio_TS folder and Video_TS folder) to fit to a 4 GB DVD media without re-encoding it. What preset should I use and other customizations that is needed in ffmpegX to get the best quality?

Sincerely,
DDieggo1000

[tomlee59]

Maybe we have a semantics problem, but you cannot compress without peforming the equivalent of re-encoding (I include requantizing in that statement). The registered version of ffmpegx has a requantizer that will be minimally invasive to your vid in the act of compressing it, but you will lose quality -- no getting around it. Ffmpegx is not an authoring tool, so you will only be able to take a single mpeg2 stream and squeeze it down in size. If you want subtitles, extra language tracks, menus, etc., ffmpegx alone will be insufficient.

[smitbret]

I'm not sure that I understand the question. Anytime you "shrink" a file there is going to be some kind of compression. You may have read something that failed to distingush the difference between encoding and transcoding. Programs like DVD Shrink will do a nice job of "shrinking" an unencrypted DVD to fit on a DVD-5, but they do so by transcoding, which doesn't compress things as efficiently as a total re-encoding.

[smitbret]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you would like to take an unencrypted DVD, and be able to "shrink" it down to fit on a burnable DVD-5 and still maintain the normal DVD structure (VIDEO_TS,AUDIO_TS)?

[Case]

ffmpegX does not shrink-to-fit complete VIDEO_TS folders like some other programs do. It is a bit more basic than that: it can requantize a single large VOB file (e.g. from MTR) to fit within 4 GB, while retaining one or two audio streams, and author that as DVD (VIDEO_TS). This feature of ffmpegX does not work through one of the presets, but the dvd4 tool is located in a sub-tab in the Tools section. (Read the link for details.) This feature is one of the few that actually requires registration of the program.