Why use DVD Decrypter and Shrink together?

[geneticweapon]

I have seen numerous people on these forums claim that they use both tools to backup their DVD's.
Can anyone explain to me the advantage of using DVD Decrypter before Shrink?

It seem's like Shrink does the job nicely, but if I can get a better backup out of my originals, by using both tools in conjunction, then that would be cool:)

Thanx

[killingspree]

no, it's perfectly fine to do the whole job with dvdshrink... it's just that some people, including myself, tend to like making a full iso copy to the hard drive first, before applying dvdshrink...

also i think that dvddec should be better at reading disks that are difficult to read, so it might be that dvdshrink fails to read a disk whereas dvddecrypter still is able to read it.

but, as long as dvdshrink does rip without any problems there should not be any difference in quality!

hth
steVe

[geneticweapon]

Alright!

Thank you for the reply!

[pelmen]

i use both myself but not for 100% of the time. Anything that is a new disc, low budget title generally won't have the harder copy protections and so I am happy to let DVD Shrink do the whole job. But mostly I dump to hard drive first with DVD Decryptor. Shrink doesn't seem to handle all the copy protection schemes but so far I haven't found a title Decryptor couldn't handle.

The error correction is MUCH better in Decryptor and this is my main reason for using both titles. In Shrink if there is a scratched disc it may or may not be able to read sectors but it doesn't report anything about errors and so the first you know about them is when you play the copy back and get random block errors in places.

At least with Decryptor the log output shows you the errors it had and if you have a Plextor drive it can make use of some of the better hardware features to make a cleaner copy. If I spot errors while transferring to the hard drive it gives me a chance to try the process again from a different DVD drive to see if it reads the errors better and I have the chance to try to clean the scratched disc and try again all before commiting a blank dvdr. Once the files are copied as best as possible to the hard drive they are now clean of protection and Shrink can now be used to run a deep analysis (when needed) and complete the backup process.

Sure using both can take a bit longer but just remember once you've done it the copy is about as good a quality as possible (with the tools available today) and you'll be able to enjoy it for years to come. In the future if you want to make a copy of the copy it'll only be a simple disc to disc copy that you need to do. For me I'm more than happy to take the extra time needed to give me a good quality copy at the end of it. While its all processing if you have a scanner its a good chance to go ahead and copy the cover artwork as well :)

[geneticweapon]

Pelmen, thank you for the well-put reply. You answered my question nicely:)

[wingnut1]

I was interested in this subject as well. In some of the answers I've seen it said that it was preference and not necessary because Shrink could do it all. I've found, however, that anytime I try to use Shrink on a disk that has any copy protection I get an encryption error message and Shrink can't do the job. Am I doing something wrong? Do I need a different version of Shrink? Is there an plug-in or add-on that I need? Any help would be greatly appreciated.:confused:

[jeanl]

My experience is that it's much faster to use just shrink, because shrink can crunch the data (do the recoding) while your DVD drive does the extraction, so you do two things in one shot. If you first rip then shrink, you do the 2 operations sequentially and (in my setup) it's usually slower (ripping takes about 10-15mn, then recoding takes about 5-10mn), insteand of 10-15mn if you do everything in shrink.
On the other hand, lately I've been ripping first, in FILE mode, then used titlesetblanker, vobblanker or pgcedit to get rid of all the annoying stuff (FBI warnings, previews, possibly extras etc). If you're lucky, you can then burn straight to DVD (Because you've removed enough that the DVD now fits) using for example Nero (or ImageTool and DVDDecrypter). If not, Shrink will do a much better job (having to compress less).
For that reason, I usually rip first then blank, then shrink...
My 2 cents...
Jeanl