I would like to transfer some VHS tapes to DVD but
some are too long to fit on a single DVD.

It seems that DVD Shrink can only process data from
a DVD disk.

Is there any way that DVD Shrink can compress from a
VOB file?

DVD Shrink will open DVD files from your hard drive, but that really isn't the best solution for what you're talking about. If your DVD files are from captured video, you should be looking at how you capture & encode for DVD in the first place. A high quality capture and good encode will give you much better quality than a compression tool like DVD Shrink. Also, remember that the length is only 1 factor in whether it will fit on a DVD. The resolution, amount of detail and motion, and (particularly in the case of captured video) the quality of the source material. On top of that, the MPEG-2 encoder and what settings you use will make a big difference. Do you currently have DVD files from VHS captures that won't fit on a DVD or are you just basing this on the length of the tapes?

I have a S VHS tape of a dance recital of my daughter.
This tape is almost 3 hours long. I captured it using Studio 8, but it will not fit on a single DVD-R.

I was hoping that I could reduce it to fit like
DVD XCopy does when making a backup of a dual layer movie.

Is there a program like DVD XCopy that would do the same thing with captured video from a VHS tape?

As I said before, as long as you have your DVD authored (DVD files on the hard drive) you can compress it with DVD Shrink. You just need to use the Open Files button instead of the Open Disk button. If your files aren't already authored for DVD you won't be able to use any of the 'One Click' compression software because they're specifically designed to work on DVD files.

Quote:

---

Is there a program like DVD XCopy that would do the same thing with captured video from a VHS tape?

---

That depends on what format the files are saved in from Studio 8. I'm not particularly familiar with the program, but I believe you can save your files in AVI format, which would allow you to encode it afterwards with a good MPEG-2 encoder like TMPGEnc or CCE. Then you would need to author the DVD with a program like TMPGEnc DVD Author or DVD-Lab. If you are making simple DVDs (i.e. pretty much just a simple menu and the video) your best bet would probably be TMPGEnc DVD Author bundled with TMPGEnc Plus MPEG encoder. That would allow you to get good quality DVD files that will fit on a single DVD and the results will be better than using a program that compresses a DVD that's already been authored. Go to http://www.pegasys-inc.com/en/download/index.html and you can dowload 30 day trials for both programs.

Another way to fit more on a DVD is to use good audio compression. There are 3 audio formats you could be using - PCM (Uncompressed WAV), MPA (MPEG Audio), or AC3 (Dolby Digital). Of the 3, AC3 will provide by far the smallest audio file, meaning you can fit more or higher quality video on the disk. In my experience (I make DVDs from TV captures regularly) PCM Audio is anywhere from 7-10 times the size of AC3 and MPA is about 2x the size of AC3. You can buy an AC3 plugin for DVD Author for $29, but there isn't a trial version. The entire cost for all 3 components would only be $128. If you don't want to get the AC3 encoder it would be $99.

Thank you for your help.

I will try your advice.

Good luck. And if you run into problems you should post your questions in the Video Capture From Analog Sources forum. You'll probably get more responses there to these types of questions.