i found this program about 2 months ago after trying
xilisoft
avex
anydvd
handbrake
#1 dvd

and its by far my fav, especially main movie which i use all the time

my question is i know the program can split a dvd 9 to 2 dvd 5s
with dvds with four 45min episodes whats thed best way to put 2 each onto 2 dvd5s?

i was wondering how you would select each episode without the menu at the start like the original dvd

Use the display button and scroll up or down.
1/2
2/2

i dont quite understand what you mean by display button

no problem - I do this e.g. with xfiles series. there a 4 long titles & lots of little ones ( that you don't need)

So use customise mode & select only titles 1 & 2 + preserve menus
then repeat using only titles 3 & 4 + preserve menus for the 2nd copy.

you get the normal menu when you load each disc - offereing a choice of 4 episodes - but only 2 will actually work. the menu is in the IFO files not in the titles, so that gets copied anyway. JUst label your copies so you know what is actually on each !

If you untick preserve menus then I guess the 2 episodes would run back to back but I've not tried that.

for single episodes with no menus at all just use main movie option.

pathfinder will tidy things up further if you select remove warnings & jump to 1st menu or title, but pathfinder has trouble with some episodic discs & needs to be disabled to rip them.

Checking "No Menus" will play the episodes back to back and seamlessly on most players, but often in the wrong order. I do epsodic discs just as described above and it works great--much better than Split mode. (I did not do Lost this way because the menus are so large). Advanced Title Settings will let you correct the ordering if you don't want the menus.

thanks very much, thats what i hoped you could do

ill keep the menus on both discs,

hey - you learn something every day - I did not realise that you could force titles to go in a certain order. So if you have 2 TV episodes which are best watched back to back e.g. because one ended with a "to be continued", you could effectively merge them into one double length feature on a "no menus " disc - cool.

whil we are on TV shows. every X files eposode has the intro titles as chapter 2.

so is there an easy way to rip all chapters of a title excluding chapter 2 to remove the need to keep skipping that chapter in every show ?

You can do this in Merge mode. Load the Source once and use Advanced Title Settings to select only chapter 1, then load it again by clicking on folder icon and select chapters 3 through the end. You wind up with title one of your output containing chapter 1 and title 2 containing all the rest.Some players have a slight pause between titles but it is not a problem on most. About like a layer break. Also, the chapter numbers will be off, i.e. chapter 3 of the original will be chapter 1 of title 2. It will run faster if you rip the whole thing to a folder first.

thanks _I'd thought of that but I also recalled reading somewhere that you could not merge two bits of the same title - that you would have to rip it twice to two different locations first.

Seems that was wrong though & you can do it as you've described after all, I've just set up the merge Ok & will see how it plays back.

Reloading the same Source using the Folder button is an undocumented feature, discovered by accident. I don't remember ever trying it more than 6 times for one Merge. There may be limits. It is useful for reworking episodic DVDs, concerts, cartoon collections etc.