Free Software to Shrink DVD 9 to DVD 5

[donkeyking]

I have a C2D laptop with Vista. I bought AnyDVD and have ImgBurn as well.
But I would like to get a free software for shrinking DVD 9 to DVD 5.
BTW, I don't need the highest quality recoder. I need relatively short time
in recoding and ease of use.
I used to have Nero 6 to recode but I don't have it anymore and I heard bad things about
Nero 8 and 9 & Roxio so I won't get that.

Which route below should I take?

1. Use DVDShrink along with AnyDvd. Would this cause later movies
not to rip properly?

2. Use standalone Nero Recode (version 2.2.6.7) along with AnyDVD and Imgurn?
Would the Nero Recode standalone work with Vista 32x?

Any other idea? Thanks.

[LJB]

I use DVDFab and DVDShrink to DVD9/DVD5.
Like most everyone else, I only use imgburn to burn my DVDs.

If I heard correctly, the author of DVDShrink is the same author of Nero recode.
I have also used Nero Recode 2, but I would not even think of going beyond that version.
And I would never use it to burn a DVD.

[donkeyking]

I use DVDFab and DVDShrink to DVD9/DVD5.
Like most everyone else, I only use imgburn to burn my DVDs.

If I heard correctly, the author of DVDShrink is the same author of Nero recode.
I have also used Nero Recode 2, but I would not even think of going beyond that version.
And I would never use it to burn a DVD.

So DVDShrink can be used in conjunction with AnyDVD to DVD9/DVD5?

[HemLok]

Yes, DVD Shrink can be used in conjunction with AnyDVD however for DVDs with structural protection it is recommended to first rip the disc to your HDD using the built in AnyDVD ripper. Right-click on the AnyDVD tray icon and select to "Rip Video DVD to Harddisk...". Then use that as the source for DVD Shrink. The reason for doing this is that some of the discs with structural protection will either throw an error when DVD Shrink is used or the process may appear to work fine with DVD Shrink but the resulting backup won't playback correctly.

Personally, I'd recommend removing the protections using AnyDVD, which you already own, and use DVD Rebuilder (freeware version) with the HC encoder (freeware) to re-encode from DVD-9 to DVD-5. The resulting quality will be vastly superior than either DVD Shrink or Nero Recode can offer. Use ImBurn to burn the resulting re-encoded DVD-5 backup.

Re-encoding is simply better than transcoding. DVD Rebuilder re-encodes. DVD Shrink, Nero Recode, and most other DVD-9 to DVD-5 software out there use transcoding to reduce the content size from DVD-9 to DVD-5.

[redwudz]

I would agree with HemLock on DVDRB for quality, but Shrink is faster and the quality is quite good if you just want the main movie and don't 'shrink' it too much. And I use AnyDVD also for decrypting.

[HemLok]

I would recommend DVD Shrink over Nero Recode due to one longstanding bug in Recode that I do not believe has been resolved or possibly ever will be. Importing a disc containing a large number of titles leads to Recode hanging. I don't know if anyone ever found the threshold number but ~50 or more titles made Recode simply hang during importation. The number may actually be lower but I dumped the use of any Nero software ages ago and never cared to see at which number of titles the issue began. DVDs with newer protections involving the use of a high number of titles simply couldn't be dealt with using Recode due to the hang issue. DVD Shrink suffers no such issue and DVD Shrink is free.

[donkeyking]

Thank all of you for the help. I will try the AnyDVD, DVD Shrink Combo, Imgburn first.