Why Shrink?

A DVD Video that you buy from the shops uses a DVD disk that can hold a large amount of data (9.4Gb, to be exact).  A DVD-R/RW disk that you buy to burn in your PC can't hold as much.  In fact, it can hold exactly half as much data (4.7Gb).  Therefore, you cannot simply take a DVD-Video disk from your collection and copy it, because there is not enough room on the target disk.

Of course, this is actually no longer true, with the release of dual-layer DVD writers, which can write 9.4Gb of data to a new type of disk: DVD-R9 (aka DVD-R DL).

Using DVD Shrink

This guide assumes you've just purchased a DVD and would like to create a Backup.

Place the DVD disk in the drive and cancel any software that tries to play it.  Load DVD Shrink and you are presented with the screen below:



Hit the Open Disc button and select the drive that has that disk loaded.  DVD Shrink will then examine the contents of the disk and analyse the film, as below.



Once analysis is complete, you are presented with the window below, which is the contents of the original disk, including the various menus, films, subtitles, "Making Of..." movies, etc. that make up the DVD.



In order to reduce the size of the disk, we need to remove all those extras.  In fact, what we do is start a fresh disk and add just the bits we want.

To do this, hit the Re-author button which changes the view to that shown below:



In the list on the right side, find the Main Movie section.  Here, you will normally find just one entry, however, sometimes there will be two or more.  If this is the case, you need to determine which is the film.  Other entries might be a "Making Of..." movie, for example.  To view individual movies, select them in the right list and use the preview window to watch them -- press the Play button to preview a movie.

Drag the film from the right list and drop it below the DVD Structure entry on the left, as shown below:



We now have a new DVD with just one entry: the main movie.

The movie that we have added can consist of a number of things... obviously, there's the pictures that we'll watch, but also the soundtrack that accompanies it.  There may be many different soundtracks that accompany the film -- usually, you will find the disk has alternate languages (e.g. Portugese).  Some disks have different versions of the English soundtrack in addition to the usual Dolby Digital 5.1 format; they often have a DTS version too.  As well as multiple soundtracks, there are usually Subpicture entries.  Subpictures are subtitles or captions that you can turn on while watching a film.  Again, there may be many Subpicture entries for different languages.

To further reduce the size of our new compilation, we can remove unwanted Soundtrack and Subpicture entries.  To do this, select the Compression Settings tab on the right side of the window, as shown below:



The list on the right will now show what Audio and Subpicture streams exist for the movie we added to our project.

However, first you need to be aware of the green bar that has appeared across the top of the window, beneath the toolbar.  This bar shows the total size of our new, re-authored film.  Specifically, at the right end is shown the exact size, which must be less than roughly 4,400 MB.  If the compilation is larger than this, the end of the bar will be red to indicate that the project is too large, and by how much.

If the bar is fully green, we are ready to go.  If it isn't, we will need to turn off some of the Audio and Subpicture entries listed below.  Audio entries are generally far larger than Subpictures, so they are the best place to start.

The first entry under Audio is generally the main soundtrack that we'll keep.  It will generally be labelled AC3 5.1-ch English.  Below that, you may find a similar DTS entry, which can be disabled, and will usually yield the biggest drop in size.  If there are Audio entries for other languages disable these too.

In the screen below, for example, this disk has multiple English soundtracks.  This is a music DVD, and has a Stereo (2-ch) mix, two 5.1 mixes (one used the full 5.1 for the band, while the second places you "in the front row", by moving the ambient crowd sounds to the rear speakers).  The final 5.1 soundtrack on this disk is the "Directors Commentary" that's quite common on DVDs.



Once you have hacked 'n slashed the project down to size, it's time to write the new compilation out.  DVD Shrink allows you to burn the new compilation directly back to a DVD-R disk, or you can save the project to the Hard Disk of your PC to be burned later.  Hit the Backup! button and you are presented with the Backup DVD dialog, as shown below:



In the Target Device tab, you chose which DVD writer to use, or whether you want to write to Hark Disk Folder.

Once you have selected the appropriate option, hit Ok to write the compilation out.  If you select Hard Disk Folder, you will end up with a folder called VIDEO_TS which is ready to burn to a DVD-Video compilation using your burning software (e.g. Nero).  If you don't have any burning software, use DVD Shrink to write the DVD.