The “Start/End” tool is useful for stripping out excessively long movie introductions and credits. Lord of the Rings - Two Towers has over 8 minutes of intro/end-credits which can be stripped out to achieve better quality compression. I suspect that some movies may also have other irrelevant material embedded in the start/finish of the main movie, I’m just guessing, but it’s possible. You may have noticed that the “Start/End” tool button is greyed-out unless you’re in Re-author Mode (greyed/grayed – whatever, I’m an Aussie and still subject to a British Monarch). By this method you can even select half or a part of the original movie at a convenient chapter boundary, you could make another disc with the other half, but more on that later.

After setting up your new, “Re-author” DVD, click the “Start/End” button and the tool will open.



This shot above shows how I’ve discovered the end of the movie, at Chapter 52 (out of 54), just where the credits roll. Hopefully, you can just see the first credit where the arrow points.

Clicking the single > button advances the movie by 15 frames (about 25fps)



Clicking the double >> button advances the movie by 6 seconds or about 150 frames.



By creeping forward from the start, I can save about 33 seconds before the movie-actual. By closing off near the end of Chapter 51 (start of 52) at 02h 44m 39s 21 frames, I can save just under 8 minutes.



Has compression improved? Yep. After clicking OK, and saving more than 8 minutes overall, I now get 64% which is as good as it probably gets.



Click the “Backup!” icon on the Tool Bar and you’re invited to choose a path – I always add in the VIDEO_TS folder – and you can change the Provider ID, which is unnecessary at this point.



Click OK and if there’re any existing files DVD Shrink will let you know.



Then you’re away. I did this DVD with the rig described in my sig – XP Pro, XP 2600+ & 512MB RAM



Sometimes, DVD Shrink does not like a ‘non-browsed’ path (when you just type it in); if you get this error then just browse and create the folders as you browse, or go into Explorer and create them there.



Good luck. Got problems? Then post here