more episodes on a disc

[noah1]

Hello everybody, I have a couple of questions regarding the backup of a DVD. I have been backing up my collection for some time so I am not a newbie however, I would like to try something new. First, I would like to fit more TV episodes onto a disc that would be playable on a stand alone DVD player. should I use dvdshrink and just make the episodes smaller then burn to a disc? Or is there something else you would recommend ( I have been using dvdshrink for years so I am familiar with it ). From what I have read h.264 is not playable on stand alone dvd players, so that rules out a program like handbrake unless I am missing something. The next question is, how can I create a menu for the new DVD that I create? Thank you all in advance.

[laserfan]

You can shrink the heck out of your TV episodes to fit more onto a DVD, but they'll look like crap and you would indeed have to use some DVD authoring program to create new menus.

There is certainly the option to put boatloads of them onto BD-25 or BD-50 discs but these won't work with your DVD player(s).

[TheSkiller]

If you want to keep the quality at an acceptable level with more episodes on one disc then there's only one option: use DVD9s. They have two layers and a capacity of 8152 MB. Only drawback is they are much more expensive compared to the single layer discs that you are probably used to.

By the way, in case of DVD-R you can raise the size of the Disc in DVD Shrink to 4488 MB, as DVD Shrink always suggests to use a smaller size (I think it's 4464 MB) although there is more space available on a DVD. For DVD+R the maximum is 4482 MB.

[mike20021969]

By the way, in case of DVD-R you can raise the size of the Disc in DVD Shrink to 4488 MB, as DVD Shrink always suggests to use a smaller size (I think it's 4464 MB)I'm sure that extra 24MB will come in very handy :rolleyes:

[TheSkiller]

Are you being sarcastic? Sure it's not that much but why waste space, especially if lots of stuff is supposed to be put on a DVD.
I always fill up my DVDs up to the last 2 MB.

[laserfan]

He was. That 0.5% won't be noticeable anywhere at all.

[Ghitulescu]

Are you being sarcastic? Sure it's not that much but why waste space, especially if lots of stuff is supposed to be put on a DVD.
I always fill up my DVDs up to the last 2 MB.

And I assume you take extra precautions to assure the burning quality of the last MBs ...?!

[TheSkiller]

No, I don't. I'm not doing any "Overburning" if I put 4480 MB on a DVD+R, so why should I? This is exactly the size a regular DVD is advertised at:
4.7 decimal GBs = 4482.26 binary MBs.
Same thing for the 4489.25 MBs a DVD-R is advertised at (well, it says "4.7 GB" for both but DVD-R is by definition a bit more).

I've never had any problems with that using Verbatim DVD-Rs, neither with standalone players.

[Ghitulescu]

Well, as you can find out if you'll have a look either on your DVD or reading some info, the error rate grows exponentially at the margins. Not to mention that these are the parts that are also written the fastest (in either mode, be it PCAV, ZCLV, ZCAV etc.) and thus the worst. They also vibrate the most ....

[setarip_old]

@noah1

Hi!

Regarding your menu-creating question:

You can use (freeware) DVDFlick...

[manolito]

@noah1

Hello,
have you made any progress so far?

As I see it you have several options depending on the quality loss you are willing to accept and on the time you want to invest:

If your standalone DVD player accepts DivX then you can use this feature. Typically you can shrink each episode to one third of its original size without a noticeable quality loss. As a menu you will only have your player menu which lets you select the different files. No chapters.

Maybe your standalone even supports DivX Ultra. This will give you menues and chapters, but only if you use DivXAuthor or TmpgEnc Authoring Works as your authoring application.


If DivX is not an option for you, you can of course use DVDShrink. Only you can decide how much reduction is acceptable for you. It's hard to give a fixed percentage, it depends very much on the characteristics of the source. I would not go beyond a 30% reduction.

The procedure is straightforward: Add as many episodes as you like in reauthoring mode and save the result to a HDD folder. To add a menu I have a small tutorial available which you can download here:
http://scifi.pages.at/manolito/AddMenu/Add a menu to already authored title sets.pdf
(This originates from an older thread started by Ghitulescu)


And last but not least you can use DVD Rebuilder (Free version is all you need). This will give you better quality at higher reduction rates. The procedure is very similar to the previous one:

In DVDShrink assemble your episodes, but make sure to set the compression to 100% (=no compression) for every episode. Make your menu, merge the menu with the titles using PGCEdit. Use the resulting VIDEO_TS folder as the source folder for DVD Rebuilder.


Hope this will help...

Cheers
manolito