I have my brothers Family Guy DVDs ripped on my PC which are taking about 100 gigs of space. Most the the Family DVDs are on DVD9 and I want to put them on DVD5. So my question is are they any better programs out there better than DVD Shrink cause that was the only one that came to my mind or are they all the same? Thanks.
DVD Shrink is still very good and converts excellent quality as long as the source material is preserved to around 70% and no less - maybe 69% is the max I'll go. Anything over that calls for DVD-RB via HCencoder.
very true,anything less than 70% causes noticeable loss of quality.i prefer to use nero recode for my backups.
Nero recode is dvdshrink in updated form,the guy that made shrink works for nero,there's a topic or article round here some where mentioning it
If you're not worried about making exact copies of the discs - menus and all - you could use DVDshrink, in Reauthor mode, to select just the amount of episodes that'll fit on a DVD5 and build a new DVD image from them. This would be the quickest way, as there'd be no re-encoding (thus, no hit to the quality) but DVDshrink won't allow you to add any kind of a menu (as far as I know). I know that TMPGenc DVD Author will take those VOBs and let you create a new DVD, with custom menus, without re-encoding, but it's not free (although it is worth every penny). A freeware option that I've read a lot about, here and elsewhere, is DVD Flick. From what I've read, it'll combine the episodes and add a menu, too, without having to re-encode. Check into it - it may be just what you need.
Dvd flick will work with most files.....just not dvd files. Dvd flick is used to join/convert files to make them dvd compliant.
The OP may have to do a few steps to prepare the episodes before feeding them to Flick. Perhaps VOB2MPG will make *.MPGs that are compliant with Flick?
To shrink dvd9 files to dvd5 size there is dvd shrink, dvdfab platinum/gold, dvd rebuilder, shrinkto5basic...... I'm trying to give the OP the shortest route. You suggested vob2mpg; if he goes that route, he can use autogk also. But, I don't see the reason why he would compress them down to mpg/avi format, then back to dvd format.
Dvd Shrink and Nero Recode 2 are handy for light compresssion. For larger files, using Dvd Rebuilder with HCenc (as stated) is the best method.