How can I get three episodes of a dvd consisting 4 episodes on one dvd?

[Softwiezul]

Hello to you all!

I am pretty new in the area of copying dvd's. So far I have successfully copied dvd's by using the following tools:

- dvddecrypter (to rip dvd's)
- dvd2one or Pinnacle Instantcopy (to re-encode and to make things fit to one dvd+r)
- nero burning rom to burn dvd's.

In general this works fine. When copying longer films, Instantcopy delivers better image quality, but there is still a significant loss in quality in case of 3 hour films.

I have done some experiments in ripping and encoding and burning a dvd containing 4 episodes of a well known science fiction tv series. These episodes are about 43 minutes each. The total length is about 172 minutes. The menus on the original dvd can't be missed, because they are needed to make a choice between the available epesodes to be watched.

I got the best results with Instantcopy, leaving only English audio track and only one subtitle (Dutch in my case) on the copy. Yet, there is a significant loss in image quality compared to the original dvd.

I think quality would improve very much, in case I would be able to have only three of the four episodes on one dvd. I don't know how to do that however! I could rip each episode separately with dvddecryptor, but that way each episode would become a separate film to be burned on a dvd.

I would like to know whether it's possible to get three episodes on one dvd, together with a simple own made menu system, to make a choice between the available episodes when starting to watch.

The television series I'm talking about, is produced in 5 seizons, each consisting out of 6 dvd's. Copying three episodes to one dvd instead of 4 would only cost me a few extra blanco dvd's.

Can anyone advice me what to do please? Thank you very much beforehand!

If a similar question has been asked before, and in case the answer to that question can be found overhere, I am of course sorry for asking again. Of course you can refer to that then. I have searched for information, but so far I didn't find it.

Best wishes and kind regards,

Softwiezul.

[oddyseus]

Welcome to the board softwiezoul. What u r aksing for has two ways to implement. An easy and a hard one.

I see that u r following the dvd2one route so I am going to lead some trucks there for u.

The program u need is dvdshrink. In its latest version that u can get from here (http://www.doom9.org/Soft21/Vobtools/dvdshrink23.zip) u can reauthor very easily the dvd excluding pgcs that u don't want in the final version. Its homepage is located here (http://www.dvdshrink.org/).

Ofcourse u can decrypt each episode on its own and use an authoring tool such as Tmpeg DVD Author or DVDlab to combine them together using a simple menu that u have to create.

If u however want to try the hard way and keep all 4 eps in a single dvd-r with superior quality, comparable to the original with the menus intact u have to investigate further down the road of CCE (http://forum.doom9.org/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=37), ifoedit (http://forum.doom9.org/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=50), ifoupdate road. Once u feel confident u can try the reauthorist (http://forum.doom9.org/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=66) approach, that automates the procedure of demuxing building up a Scenarist project for you.