The official DVD Shrink FAQ

[Chetwood]

This is a work in progress which is compiled from various sources albeit not explicitely credited. It's been hosted on the official DVD Shrink forums which have been overrun by spam bots so I'm glad to have found new hosting here on Doom 9. If you have questions that aren't answered in this FAQ or need more extensive info feel free to ask.


DVD Shrink download locations
DVD Shrink was, is and always will be freeware! Development has been discontinued in May 2005 resulting in the final versions listed below. All other versions (DVD Shrink 2010 etc.) are scams and we have no influence on ads of them being displayed on this forum. Since there's been legal issues in some countries with Shrink's ability to circumvent CSS, the files are not hosted here. Use Google to find your preferred version and the corresponding MD5 from the list below to verify authenticity. Please note that the .16 code base has no new features besides support for japanese unicode.

DVD Shrink 3.2.0.15 english
e6b0a6346fe640365f4ab9d5c7d9fb93 *dvdshrink32setup.zip
efc4643607d821ee5b1e306b5181917c *dvdshrink32setup.exe

DVD Shrink 3.2.0.16 deutsch
12dec525ce54a542d00e7f843c25225f *dvdshrink.3.2.de.setup.zip
0c85c6f071f5baf43215076b2f0b2fc0 *dvdshrink.3.2.de.setup.exe

DVD Shrink 3.2.0.16 deutsch DeCSS-frei
6e758180591816a0adffc1c0ea11437d *dvdshrink.3.2.de.(decss-frei).setup.zip
93f24a94587586f20e54997edd23d89f *dvdshrink.3.2.de.(decss-frei).setup.exe

DVD Shrink 3.2.0.16 japanese
048db5485ab872d931f88089c6c82a8a *dvdshrink32016_jp_setup.zip
4e061edaa896b5820b2438aecb15962c *dvdshrink32_jp_setup.exe

DVD Shrink with ImgBurn (hacked 3.2.0.15 english version that calls up ImgBurn)
976efb7746a623de151ac5d9d3de0091 *Shrink_w_ImgBurn.rar
1ef9af648e73a64d0bae615f77fa673d *DVD Shrink 3.2.exe


Guides on how to use DVD Shrink
To use DVD Shrink's full potential including re-authoring, still images, mixed compression and so on there are a lof of guides out there e.g. by ddlooping and mrbass.


Decryption problems/new copy protections
Since development of DVD Shrink has been stopped in 2005 it cannot circumvent current copy protections schemes which may manifest in these errors/error messages:

Movie playback starts in between or at the end and/or chapters do not playback in order
Invalid File Structure
Invalid Navigation Structure
Out of memory
Programming error - Exception occurred
Parameter Incorrect
Data Redundancy Check Error (CRC Error)
The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error

To remove such protections do a complete backup of such media to your HDD with (use Google):

DVDFab HD Decrypter (free trial)
AnyDVD (free trial)

and then use Shrink to encode it as usual.


Problems with Nero
First of all DVD Shrink is a transcoder to shrink movie DVDs, using the Nero engine for automatic burning is just a bonus. Having said that, DVD Shrink works under Vista but Nero only from version 7.x and higher. If you insist on using bloatware but can't get it to work, uninstall both Shrink and Nero and reinstall (not just copy over exes!) Nero before DVD Shrink. After that make sure that Edit > Preferences > File I/O > Enable burning with Nero is checked.

If that still doesn't work as well as nothing on this list use free Imgburn which is an advancement of the DVD Decrypter burning engine and uses the same command set. Therefore if want to keep automatic burning and have DVD Decrypter installed on your machine you can copy over 'ImgBurn.exe' and rename it to 'DVDDecrypter.exe' so Shrink uses it with 'ISO Image File and burn with DVD Decrypter' selected as your backup target. Alternatively use the hacked DVD Shrink with ImgBurn.

Of course you can also simply output to ISOs and manually add them to ImgBurn's queue. In case your HDD is still formatted with FAT32 instead of NTFS, DVD Shrink will bypass the 4 GB filesize limit automatically by outputting to multipart ISO (.i00, .i01, .i02, .mds) which mds can be burned with ImgBurn.


Batch encoding/autoplay/command line
Aparently DVD Shrink does not support command line parameters except for opening a DVD so if you wanna use it in your media center without a keyboard use autoplay, cmdDVDShrink or DVD Rip. In case you wanna encode several DVDs in a row unattended use MultiShrink.


Problems running DVD Shrink on Vista/Win 7
DVD Shrink apparently works on Vista/Win 7, however some people have reported problems such as:

- DVD Shrink won't start
- DVD Shrink will start but close unexpectedly somewhere during use

To counter these problems try to run it in compatibilty mode (try Windows98/ME or XP) and/or add it to the DEP exception list as explained here and here.


Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 causes dvdshrink to crash
Put DVD Shrink 3.2.exe in Win95/98/ME compatibility mode (Properties > Compatibility). Alternatively stop using beta software on a productive system or better yet, get a decent, standards compliant browser.