hello there. I am completely new to the concept of backing up my dvd's. I have been informed to 'rip' my dvds using a program called dvd decrypter, but this will only work for dvds of 4.3Gb or less. What should I do for DVD's of a greater size? Thanks for your help Liam
Use a program called DVD Shrink to both rip and compress the movies to 4.3GB. Here is the program and the User Guide: http://www.chrismccann.co.uk/user_guides.htm Click on DVD Shrink and you can us one of the other user guides to burn it to DVD R Chris
Won't using DVD Shrink degrade the video quality? Why wouldn't one strip out unwanted stuff (other languages, trailers, subtitles, etc) to see if the result would fit the disk first? I don't know if this is practical because I am in "research" mode on what type of burner to get. I know, off track, but Sony or Pioneer? :>)
Myself, I use DVD2one instead of DVD Shrink. These two programs are the Coke and Pepsi of DVD compression. Try them both and use the one that works best for you. And yes, David. Compression does comprimise quality. Most times if you do it correctly the compression is not noticable to the human eye.
You can use dvd shrink to strip out unwanted parts of the dvd first, then you can see if the movie itself will be under 4.38gb. I always strip out everything but the movie itself. This usually makes the movie fit on a dvd+-r, but there are some occasions where it is still to big. You can crop the credits off if it is just over by a little. In cases where you still need to compress, usually you won't be able to tell the difference unless you go way down to level 5 or lower. I've never had to compress this much...usually just level one or two, which looks nearly the same as the original.
