I recently backed up a movie that was originally of japanese format, but is now an american movie. I backed it up using DVD Shrink, which I have done with other movies prior to this one. This time though, the movie came out strange. It skips at random times, and the last half of the movie is all screwed up. Will barely play, and even just stops sometimes. I dont understand, all I did on Shrink was compress the menu and extras as much as possible, remove the spanish subtitles, and leave the main movie on auto compression, then burned. What could be wrong?(this was tested on brand new Apex dvd player)
My experience has been that Japanese movies are sometimes more difficult to handle. If you're having trouble with DVD Shrink, have you tried other combinations (e.g. Nero + DVD43)?
I use the DVD43+Nero combination mostly myself, and it has never once failed me. The good thing about DVD43 is that once installed, it works completely in the background, so there is nothing to set, and nothing to worry about. All you do is to insert a DVD as usual, and the media player programs (e.g. PowerDVD) as well as burning programs (e.g. Nero) would regard the DVD to be region free and without CSS protection. Some said that DVD43 does not work all the time, though. You may check out more details from here, but be sure to try out the free version (DVD43 version 1.4) rather than the pay version first: http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/126690 Also, use the search function of this forum (type DVD43). There have been quite a few discussions about how it works.
If you use the free version (1.4) of DVD43, you must install patin couffin driver in order for it to work. DVD43, Version 2.0, costs but doesn't require patin couffin. Sometimes patin couffin has been known to cause problems with some people's systems. I prefer AnyDvd, which has a free 21 day trial and then costs 39.00. It also has a new setting that deals with hard copy read errors and is more consistant than DVD43 or DVD region free. All 3 work in the background and cost the same(except DVD43 version 1.4) BTW, your symptoms sound like it could be a media problem, what media are you using?