Hi, I'm new to this group so anything seeming foolish comes from my natural foolishness and lack of experience.

I noticed than when I use the suggested 4200MB as the required disk space needed, all is fine. But when I use 4472MB or 4464MB which is the amount I can get from DVDShrink I find that the synchronization between the scene menu and what is visually displayed gets all messed up. For example choosing the "credits" screen does not result in the "credits" being displayed, but rather the terminal or "last" screen. This is only one example of what goes wrong, choosing 4464MB causes other scenes to have been deleted totally.

Why is this so, and is there anyway around this fact? It just doesn't make sense since I am allowing the full DVD5 or 4.35 GB to work with.

Thanks
Harold

DVDs write from the inside track toward the outer track. The closer to the outer edge the less stable a DVD becomes. Reason are many, but the speed of DVD increases and a disc with a slight warp that may not be noticeable to the naked eye becomes greater on the outside of the disc. That is reason for the recommended 4200 size.

Mack

Mack,

Thank you for your answer, but I was also wondering:
1) If reducing the size, (i.e. increasing the required compression) has a negative effect on the resultant sharpness. Or does DVDFab Express have improved processing over DVDShrink.

2) Why does increasing the allowed DVD5 space mess up the resultant images as well the synchronization between menu and displayed images?

Thanks again,
Harold

Mack is exactly right...as usual. Just to add...the "target size" for express is not absolute, nor precise when compared to shrink...and I suspect the same failing is true for shrink as well, but not certain of this. Also, many of the newer copy protected discs (esp. sony ARccOS), cause looping and thus, expansion of various sectors ...Mack has written about this on quite a few threads...if interested you can do a search.

I seriously doubt a downside re: quality, to leaving the target size at 4200 MB for express (this is the default setting); if you're concerned, you would do better to delete various subtitles and audio streams.

Either Feng Tao is on vacation or he is working on the problems posted. He has said in previous posts that this new version is close to release but I have not read anyposts in a week or more from him. I think either a new beta or the release with these problems fixed is close ( just guessing). I am looking forward to it.