DVD backup newbie needs help

[pirata]

Well. This one is for everybody doing DVD backups.

I am planning on buying a DVD burner because it's time to backup my increasing DVD collection. My will is not only to backup each movie title in a set of 2 4.7GB DVDs, but also use the eventual empty room on the second DVD to add other audio streams, conveniently encoded as AC3, DTS or AAC (don't know what is the best), or even more subtitles or extras.

My questions:

1-is there any tool and procedure to take a commercial DVD and edit it in such a way that its original contents (audio and video streams, menu, chapters, subtitles, extras, branchings...) are kept (so that things like branching and menuing don't have to be rebuilt from scratch), and new audio, featurettes and subtitle streams can be added? By the way, can the copyright notification and studio flying logo be removed?

2-what is the best compression algorithm to use for audio in DVDs if new audio streams have to be reencoded for its addition to the DVD?


Many thanks to everybody.

[aklendathu]

Beginning with your second question, the most compact audio encoding is probably MPEG Layer-II 48kHz 224 kbps - it's about the same size as an equivalent Dolby Digital 2.0 audio track.

As to your first question, there are programs that allow you to split one DVD-9 into two DVD-5 - I never tried them, but I suppose they preserve the DVD-9 structure. If you want to add extra streams, though, then you'll most probably need to re-author the whole thing.

May I suggest you try something simpler first ? You can find a lot of information in the IFOEdit guides, and (simpler still) you can try DVDShrink, a very handy tool that allows you to shrink just the main movie in a DVD-9 into a DVD-5 by re-compressing the MPEG-2 video while at the same time allowing you to remove unwanted streams. Or, you can use it to re-author the DVD by splitting the main movie into 2 DVD-5 without re-encoding...

Hope this helps,

Pedro.