I have a bunch of DVDs that my kids watch that are only 30 minutes long each. I'd like to combine them onto one disc, preferably with a menu that will let me choose which one to watch from a main menu screen. I've used DVD Shrink in the past, but that doesn't do menus when reauthoring. What do I need to rip the movies, what format should I rip them in, and how do I reauthor the new compilation disc? Thanks.
Sorry, I absolutely hate Nero. It completely farked up my computer when I installed it awhile ago, and I had to do a complete re-install of my OS to get it back to normal, so I'll never use it again.
From what I understand, DVDshrink and Nero's Recode function are, basically, the same code - though I may be wrong about that - so, if you prefer DVDshrink, stick with that. I searched long and hard to find a DVD Authoring program that will combine multiple VOB SETs (a VIDEO_TS folder with *.IFOs, *.BUPs and *.VOBs in it)into a single DVD image AND let you add new menus. Most DVD Authors require that you let their app. do the encoding - this is not what I wanted. I prefer ConvertXtoDVD for creating the VOB SETs and, with a little pre-planning, I make each title the size it needs to be to fit onto the disc. What I, finally, found was TMPGenc DVD Author with DivX Author. It's fairly simple to figure out and offers a great deal of options for creating menus, from background images (or a video clip) to buttons (image stills or video clips from the video or any other image you desire) to sub-menus, etc.. If you know how to use a graphic editing app., like Photoshop, you can easily create your own backgrounds and buttons. The best part is that you can choose "None" as your output file-size and it will NOT re-encode the video, in the process. On my crappy, old computer, it takes about 30-45 minutes to create the new DVD image (since it has to copy the original VOB SETs into the new folder) and every DVD I've made, so far, has worked without any problems, at all. There may be others that do the same thing, but this was the first (out of many that I've tried) that I found that actually does what I wanted.
