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Appeared on: Wednesday, March 3, 2004
DVD Shrink simple guide


1. Introduction

DVD Shrink Guide - Page 1

Introduction

After several requests of our readers we decided to make a simple guide of DVD Shrink software. DVD Shrink is a very useful utility for creating backups of DVD movies, providing additionally many tools in order to remake the movie according to our capacity/qualiity needs.

It is is possible that many of the settings appearing in the following guide to be unavailable in any previous version of DVD Shrink. The version we have installed is the v3.1.4.

In the following pages we describe how to backup a DVD movie title from its original disc or your Hard Disk. Off course, as you can easily understand, this procedure demands some different steps in order to accomplise your target. All the appropriate information are summarized in the following pages. The last one includes some general settings about the software.

We hope you will find all those information helpful.

2. Open files from DVD Drive

DVD Shrink Guide - Page 2

Open files from DVD drive

Below you can see the main screen of DVD Shrink software:

We select the "Open Disk" icon. As soon as we press it, we will see the following message:

Here we have to define the drive in which we have inserted the DVD Video disc. In our case the "Matrix" movie title is in the is the E drive of ourPC. With the defauls settings, we press "OK" and the movie analyzing process begins:

There is also a option for a video preview, by checking the box of "Enable video preview". Here you can watch the movie in fast mode. It is not recommended since it makes the analyzing process slower and of course, this would reveal you the end of the movie before actually watching it!

After the end of analyzing the following screen will be appeared:

Users of Nero Recode 2 will find this interface familiar:))

In the following page you can see how to open exciting files from your hard disk, where you have already use a software such as DVD Decrypter to remove all protections.


3. Open existing files from Hard Disk

DVD Shrink Guide - Page 3

Open files from Hard Disk

Another common way of importing video files, is this from our Hard Disk. It is very simple. We just press the "Open Files" icon.

As soon as we do this, the following window will appear.

Now the only thing we have to do, is to define the folder that contains the video files we want to process. Then we press OK. Bellow is presented the window that we will see:

Once again we can enable the video preview.

After DVD Shrink analyses our files, the process stops. The next screenshot is what we will see:

As you can see is the same one with this in the previous page. If you want to backup the movie, untouched, skip the next page and go straight to Backup page.


4. Re-author

DVD Shrink Guide - Page 4

Re-author

The following step is to choose what we want to keep and what we are not.

Once again we give you the same screenshot for reference reasons.

At this moment we must decide which menus, audio or subtitles we want to keep or not. If we just want to take whole of the movie without changing anything we must select the "Full Disk" option. Otherwise if we want to remove for example all the subtitles or the stereo audio and keep only one language and DTS5.1 audio, then we must choose the other option, called "Re-author".

After selecting the "Re-author" option, we will see the following screen:

Here we have to select which files we want to keep and which not. Those we want, we drag and drop them in the DVD structure area, as in the following example:

After we change from DVD Browser to Compression Setting tab:

Once again below is given what you will see:

At this moment we can burn our movie or makes its quality better, by removing all those things we don't want. Below there is an example:

Here we removed all languages and subtitles we don't want, and kept the rest. Notice the difference in quality.

Before

 

 

After

 

 


5. Backup

DVD Shrink Guide - Page 5

Backup

After finishing with compression settings, it is time to backup the movie. First we select the Backup icon , and the following window will appear:

Here we can select to save our movie either on Hard Disk or on a blank media. For our example we set to Hard Disk Folder, which is most common. From the "Browse..." button we can define the destination folder. In case of media the folder for temporary files. Also it is good to check the box for creating VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS subfolder, especially in case of straight recording (on a media). So we press OK. Below is presented the window that we will see.

We don't recommend to enable video preview. As soon as the procedure is done you will be noticed, with the appropriate message.

Below are gathered some information for the other options, given from DVD Shrink while backup. Above we described the "Target Device" option, let's take a look of what are the other three options :

Here we can set the region code. We always prefer the Region Free option, since our movie will be playable no matter what region supports our player.

You can check the first box for deep analysis and better quality. Notice that with this option enabled the analyzing process takes more time, approximately 25 minutes.

The second option give us the opportunity to set the priority mode for DVD Shrink, if we are running several programs at the same time, multitasking.

If we want our PC to shut down after the backup process is finished, just enable the third option by checking the box.

Last, if there is any sound that we want to hear after the backup process is finished, check the fourth and define the folder that this sound is from the "Browse..." button.

The burn setting are enable only in case that we have select in Target Device tab a recorder instead of Hard Disk. If you are about to burn a DVD+R/RW media, you can check the "Burn at least 30mm" box for higher compatibility. Also you can select to change book type from a DVD+R to DVD-ROM by checking the "Book type DVD-ROM" box.

In the following you can learn about some general setting of the software.


6. Program Preferences

DVD Shrink Guide - Page 6

Preferences

From the Edit tab you can find the software's preferences.

Here you can set the size of the outputted files. It is better to use the default option, which fits exactly onto a DVD blank media, of 4.7GB. If for any reason you would like to change it, choose the custom option and define the size manually.

The next option, which we believe must be disabled, makes invisible all the audio and subtitles of small size.

After, if you want automatically the VIDEO_TS subfolder to be open, just enable this option. Otherwise you have to open manually each subfolder.

The last option gives you the opportunity to run in low or high priority the analysis and backup processes in case we are running many tasks at the same time.

Here you can adjust a default audio configuration for the preview.

Also you can select the DirectX video renderer. The default renderer allows other video application, such as DVD player software, to access the video hardware at the same time, (which can be rather CPU intensive) while you are previewing a video in DVD Shrink.

From the "Remove Macrovision protection" button you can disable the Macrovision protection on the output.

The "Remove P-UOPs" option removes prohibited user operations. In a few words the P-UOPs force you to return to the main menu to change the language, instead of using the remote control's shortcut keys. Another example is that you are obliged to watch a trailer before the movie since the skip buttons have been disabled.

By checking the "Remove layer break" option you will remove the small pause in between layers that exists on a dual layer DVD.

It is recommended to enable the option "Split VOB files into 1 GB size" in order the output movie will be DVD compliant and playable on standalone players ( otherwise it is possible your devise to refuse to play the movie).

From the "Logical remapping of enabled streams" option you will be able to remap audio and subtitle stream numbers in the IFO file. For example, if you have disabled stream 4, stream 5 on the original disc now becomes stream 4..

From this tab we can adjust the default streams that will be appear, as default, when a DVD is opening.

Here, all the information about what each setting does, either is given next to it or it is easily understandable.



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