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.
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.
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%.
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.