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  1. My dvd player's been messing up some discs, so I'd like to back them up before I have to repurchase them. Some of them are dual-layer. Is there any freeware that will compress them to single-layer? I tried DVD Shrink, but it won't run on Vista. I could install XP on my other computer for dual booting, but I really don't want to go through the hassle.
    Sorry if this is a pretty basic question, but it's been a while since I've done it & searching this site & Google-ing only turned up payware.
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    DVDShrink does work on Vista, and Win 7 for that matter. I have it on my Win 7 machines right now. Don't know what is going on with your system.

    There are other programs for this...Rejig is a free transcoder, though I haven't even looked at it in years.

    The best quality results will come from DVD Rebuilder. There is a free version available. DVD Rebuilder uses the HC encoder (and can use a few other encoders), and thus won't be quite as fast as DVD Shrink.
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  3. I have no problem with Shrink on 64 bit Vista and Windows Seven 32 bit. If it was before the HD price gouging I'd say use MakeMKV to back up your discs to .mkv titles. It still may be a good idea. I see one online vendor has dropped WD Caviar Black 1 TB Sata III below $130 for the first time in a long time. MakeMKV does not compress the video, but it's pretty fast. You can play .mkv files on several set top boxes. Also once you have the .mkv you can compress them down to .mp4 and still have high video quality. Depends if you have HDTV.

    Otherwise, if Shrink reports compression of 85% or higher then it should look fine compressed with Shrink. In my experience Rejig seems to have a sweet spot somewhere around 70% to 75% compression. Stuff that only needs to be compressed at 80% actually looks worse in Rejig than in Shrink. At least that's my non-exhaustive experience.

    Another way to save space that plays on just about everything is use AutoGK to save to standard def .avi file. But it takes awhile to encode. Still, I find if the source looks good, AutoGK one pass at 80% quality usually looks pretty good. If you set the output to Anamorphic many upconverting DVD players and set top boxes will play the .avi files "postage stamped" on HDTV upconverting the resolution.
    http://milesaheadsoftware.org/
    Fully enabled freeware for Windows PCs.
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  4. Member classfour's Avatar
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    DVDShrink - If the rip is not protected.

    Rebuilder - have been using since the beginning - awesome quality, takes time - thanks jdobbs!
    ;/ l ,[____], Its a Jeep thing,
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  5. Since it worked for others, I paid more attention when Vista said DVD Shrink stopped working. It was Vista's Data Execution Prevention that was messing with it. Don't know why it's only that program.
    Thanks for the suggestions. I've been thinking of building an HTPC, so the mkv's sound pretty good.
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  6. Go with Rebuilder. I use multi-pass encoding in Procoder at one of the highest quality settings on my quad-core I7 and it normally doesn't take more than 25 minutes when it utilizes all the cores and runs multiple instances of Procoder.
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  7. dvd shrink is a damn quessing games some dvd's work some don't and have no idea what this paremter is but everyone thinks I am a dictionary
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    Originally Posted by Who Care View Post
    dvd shrink is a damn quessing games some dvd's work some don't and have no idea what this paremter is but everyone thinks I am a dictionary
    If you are using DVDShrink to decrypt and compress, you should realize that development of the program stopped back in 2005 and there are a fair number of different DVD protections that have been added in that time that Shrink cannot handle. Use a different decryption program first, before trying to compress with Shrink.

    AnyDVD and DVDFab have free trials, and there is a free section within DVDFab called DVDFab HD Decrypter that should still function even after the trial ends.

    Edit: Also, you'll get superior results using the free version of DVDRebuilder. It has no decryption capability at all however, so you'll definitely need a separate program for that.
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  9. Member
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    rip to the hard drive
    then compress with shrink using the hard drive folder as the source
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  10. Member
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    no your not
    the rest of us are ?
    we should not have responded
    i usually don't
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  11. Member
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    New members often dig up old posts on a subject that they are interested in. If you want to tell them to start a new thread, go ahead, but if you ignore them, they just leave, thinking the members of the site aren't going to help.

    Which would you prefer? New members who get replies to their questions, or new members who leave quickly?
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