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Preferences | Shrink | Burn

DVD to DVD


If you want to copy/burn a DVD movie to a DVD-R/W or DVD+R/W so it will play in your stand alone DVD player follow these simple steps. If you have Nero installed on your computer, you can use Nero to burn the DVD. Otherwise, you can use DVD Decrypter. But, first you will need to download DVD Shrink and install it. First, unzip the file you downloaded then double click on the .exe file to install it, then run DVD Shrink. Nothing tricky here.

Preferences

Select Edit > Preferences.

The only preferences that I change from the default settings are on the Preview screen and the Stream Selector screen. I had to change it to 5.1 surround sound to be able to hear the audio when I previewed the movie. You may need to leave it on stereo depending on you sound card setup.

I select English and I disable all subpictures to save space on the disk.

Shrink

Next, click on Re-author so you can select only the main movie to keep compression to a minimum and retain the quality.

Next, select the DVD drive where your DVD is mounted. If you have previously done a full copy backup or created an ISO image using Robot4rip, you can select the folder where the full copy is located or you can mount the ISO image with Daemon Tools and choose that drive.

Next, double click on the movie. In the right window, it will show you the title of the main movie. Double click on it or drag it to the left window.

In doing so, it will begin to analyze the movie which will only take a minute or two. You can preview the highlighted movie by pressing the play button. Sometimes there is more than one main move title, so be sure you select the correct one. To be able to preview the movie, you will need to have DirectX installed. If you are not sure if it is installed, try to preview the movie. If you can't view it, try changing the Directx video renderer to VMR-7. If that still doesn't work, then download Directx and install it.

Next, click on the Compression Settings tab. Here you will see the compression retained percentage. The bigger, the better. Try not to go below 65%. I try to never go below 70%.

As you can see below, there are three sound tracks selected.

By deselecting two of them, the compression retained increases.

This movie will fit on one DVD with almost no compression which means almost no loss in quality. Larger movies may need to be compressed more. One way to decrease compression is to remove the credits from the end of the movie. To do this, select the Set Start/End Frames button . Move the End Frame slider to the left and fine tune with the arrow buttons. Press OK when finished.

As you can see, the compression retained increased to 100%. Of course, for this movie, we did not need to remove the credits since 98.4 % was already above our minimum goal of 70%.

Burn

Now we are ready to burn it to a DVD. Press the button.

With Nero

If you have Nero installed, the Select target device should default to your DVD RW drive. If not, select it. Select the folder for the new .VOB, .IFO, and .BUP files that DVD Shrink creates to write to the DVD. Once the DVD has been created, these files can be deleted.

If you select 'Perform deep analysis ... it will take longer but the quality may be better. Checking this significantly improved one DVD I had made. The first time I created the DVD with it unchecked, it had many one second pauses throughout the movie. I tried it again on the same DVD- RW disc with it checked and there were no pauses. Coincidence? Maybe, but if I'm going through the trouble of making a backup, a few more minutes is worth the possibility of a better quality DVD. So, I recommend checking it.

If you are going to use your computer when you are doing the backup select 'Run backup in low priority mode.'

If you want to go to bed or leave your house, you can select 'Shutdown computer ...' and you may want to deselect 'Play Sound...'

Here you can enter a new volume label if you want then press OK.

The encoding will start. When the files have been created you will be prompted to insert a blank DVD. That's it.

Without Nero

If you do not have Nero installed, the Select target device should default to ISO Disc Image. If not, select it.

Select the folder for your ISO image. You may be required to have a NTSF partition if your ISO image file exceeds the 4GB file limit.

Select 'Launch DVD Decrypter to burn the output image.'

If you select 'Perform deep analysis ... it will take longer but the quality may be better. Checking this significantly improved one DVD I had made. The first time I created the DVD with it unchecked, it had many one second pauses throughout the movie. I tried it again on the same DVD- RW disc with it checked and there were no pauses. Coincidence? Maybe, but if I'm going through the trouble of making a backup, a few more minutes is worth the possibility of a better quality DVD. So, I recommend checking it.

If you are going to use your computer when you are doing the backup select 'Run backup in low priority mode.'

Here you can enter a new volume label if you want then press OK.

It will start analyzing the movie.

When the analyzing is completed, DVD Decrypter will be started automatically. Put a writable DVD in your drive and press the burn DVD button.

When you see 'Operation Successfully Completed,' press Ok and you're done.

This guide just touches on some of the basic features of DVD Shrink to allow you to make a good quality movie fit on one DVD. If you want to retain menus and other parts of the DVD there are some excellent guides written that I have links for on my Support page.


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