hi

i want to back up my original dvd: 'the goonies'. i have a number of apps such as dvd shrink and dvd decyptor, as well as alcohol and clone dvd. can some1 please suggest what the best apps are to maintain a very high quality 1:1 copy?

many ppl say just use dvd shrink to put onto hdd, then nero or clonedvd to write to dvd, is this the best method, or doesnt it really matter how u do it?

also, which would be the best media to use dvd+r or dvd-r?

thank you guys

Hi,

1:1 Copy - Only DVD Decrypter. DVD Shrink for reauthoring i.e. compressing movie >4.7 GB to a single SL DVD-R (most DVD's are dual layer and Shrink reduces the size to fit on a Single layer DVD-r by compression,not 1:1 copy, could also use to 1:1 copy by Backup selection in Shrink) but Decrypter is prefered for this.

Hope this helps.

PS: Check the guides for the software in detail.

DVDshrink is good for spliting the main movie into two parts, without compression, so that you can do a 1:1 backup using two DVDR disks

Hey dude. Here is my sugestion for a good 1:1 copy of a movie without the nonsense of using 2 disks....
1) transfer the content of the DVD to your hardrive using DVDdecrypter.
2) load these files into VOBblanker(freeware)
3) use VOBblanker to "blank" any and everything you don't want..trailers, deleted scenes, etc.
4) output the new "smaller" file from VOBblanker back to your hardrive.
5) open these files using DVD shrink, then remove any unwated audio, subtitles, etc.
6) by this point, the movie should now be small enough to fit onto 1 disk without having to compress the "main movie" video whatsoever.

email me if you have any question.... danieljoseph316@yahoo.com

good luck, bud.

Just to pick your brain

With experience with VOBBlanker and DVDShrink, have you tried, and do you know what is IFO Mode in DVD Decrypter?
At first look it has all of the DVD-Video objects, with checkbox you can uncheck. I did not find any good guides about this in the past

hmmmmmmmm... not sure. I know that when I use DVDencrypter, I make sure the mode is set to "file". This is the mode that allows me to go back to DVDshrink and "open files"

haven't tried much with the other modes yet.

I have yet to find a use for the IFO mode. File mode and ISO mode are the only two that I have been able to get to work properly. Anyways Jarky001, unless you are using D/L media, it will be impossible to get a 1:1 copy. DVD Shrink and Clone DVD will allow you to compress the movie in order to get it to fit on a regular DVDR disc but you will loose a little bit of quality no matter what method you use. Most of the time it really isn't noticeable unless you zoom in or something like that. My recommendation would be to start out with the DVD Shrink/DVD Decrypter combo since it is freeware. Alcohol 120% IMHO is worthless for movie backups, it doesn't decrypt or compress which makes it worthless for this application. With DVD Shrink you can do things to make the quality reduction less noticeable (ie Deep Analysis, Sharp or Smooth enhancement). This makes a big difference in movies with higher compression. Some people don't seem to be too fond of the Sharp enhancement but I personally love it. I have yet to notice serious problems with it. The place where the Sharp enhancement comes in really handy is on movies that are really dark (ie Van Helsing), it makes those really dark sequences easier to watch. Clone DVD is a good program but it will run you $46 on it's own. It delivers great results in a very short time but it doesn't Decrypt, and there seems to be a small glitch with the audio (faint crackles every now and then).

I played a little with DVDDecrypter in IFO mode. It seems it is only beginning of development, if even there will be further development who knows.

All I saw is that you can rip only one title, optionally excluding selected chapters, audio, and such. But for this I already use DVDShrink in re-author mode.
Default is the longet tilte, normally just the movie, but you can chose what tilte to rip. You cannot select and combine more than one title.
The output is one IFO file and one VOB file.

After extensive usage of different programs, I have come to a comfort zone using DVDdecrypter, VOBblanker, and DVDshrink all together. I have yet to find a movie that I couldn't copy with full menu and 100% (0 compression) quality. I have gotten used to using these three, and have just stuck with that method b/c that's what I'm comfortable with. It may take an extra step, but for totally uncompressed movies, I can flip on my patience switch.

@Dan,
What do you do when the main movie, even after removing audio and subtitles, is still > ~4.4GB, after of course removing 1-2GB of extras?
Right now I rip 5.1GB movie only.
Many of the movies I see are similar in size.

wow... that's a big movie! are you sure you are getting rid of all of the audio files, even the ones in the "extras"? Usually, after getting rid of everything, my "main movies" are somewhere in the 3-4G range. 5.1G seems pretty large for just the movie. Can you tell me how long the movie is?

Boogie Nights
Uncompressed main movie only is 6.12GB
Excluding all subpictures and leaving only main English audio,
the uncompressed size is 5.44GB

How's this:
Pulp Fiction
Main movie only 7.7GB
with only English audio 7.47

Many main movies, only one English audio track, nothing else, are too big to fit on one DVDR. That's why there's DVD2SCVD and other such programs.

I'd guess at least half of the movies I back up require compression.

@dan_252, how about any of the Lord of the Rings movies?? They are big. I'd say greater than 50-60% of all the 'movie only' movies I've done to date would be still greater than DVD-5 size.

Guess we have to make the transcoders earn their keep!

thank you all.

i did my first dvd rip and burn using dvd shrink and dvd encryptor. i played around with all the settings, read tutorials etc etc, and then cut out the stuff i didnt want and adjusted the compression.

i decided i wanted to keep all extras so i just cut out audio and subtitles.

being my first burn i wanted see how much of a difference compression would make. the actual movie itself was burnt at 62.5% compression. i guess thats not too bad bcos when i tested it against the original i couldnt tell the difference. however, the only time i saw poorer quality was at the main menu, the video and fluidity appeared a bit boxy at times, but only shortly.

i might burn it again to see if i can improve the results - just for fun...haha

one thing tho - once deep analysis is done in dvd shrink does it then store that dvd's info somewhere, bcos now whenever i insert the original dvd, dvd shrink will know and display its details...?

thanks guys for your help

Instead of burning your disc each time to test out the quality why not mount the image of the produced ISO file with daemon tools. It's also free and saves a load of money on experimental work.

Regards

TZ

In DVDShrink you an control the level of compression for individual objects. If you feel the menu is poorly compressed, then change this one to no compression, also, if some extra you do not care for, like preview, replace it with still image, or as suggested before use program VOBBlanker to completely remove and sane even those 1-5MB.

When I need to make a backup of dual layer, I load it in DVDShrink, highlight the root entry of the video and set "no compression". This will make all object to no compression, now I look and see "what is the damage" and decide what to be removed, compressed or replaced with still image. I wish there was continued development of this product so we get complete "blanking" of an object as another option here.

To save time of subsequent loads, DVDShrink keeps history in
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\DVD Shrink

hmmmmm...

I guess I have to take your word for it, but after backing up several movies, I've never come across a movie that is still 6-7G for just the "main" movie. That seems relly big to me. I know that longer movies like LOTR is gonna be a huge file size. I gotta say, though, that I'm not satisfied until I can burn my movies on one disk with less than 90% compression. I havn'e found this to be difficult yet. Just blank everything but the audio you want and the main menu. That simple. I wish you all luck. Happy back-ups!