Open up CloneDVD 2 and take a look at the very nice and simple user interface. There is only one preference even available to change and that is the sounds that play when the process is done or fails. Honestly, the sounds are pretty funny so I would say leave them :)
For our guide we will only be using the CloneDVD option (the middle option) so please select it and you will be greeted with a new page.
Now, you should see the second screen of CloneDVD 2 appear. It looks rather empty at first, as we haven't selected any video files yet. Hit the drop down arrow (as in the picture at right), and then select browse. Alternatively, hit the orange arrows button right next to the arrow button and browse that way.
Select the ripped video files
Clicking that button will open a new file selection box. With this box, you should locate the directory where your VIDEO_TS folder is, and highlight it and hit OK.
DVD Information
CloneDVD will now quickly analyze the files and show you the structure of the ripped DVD in this window. I have highlighted a few key options to take a look at and I will go over them now.
In the top right there is Preserve Menus check box. If you would like to keep you menus, then check it. I would recommend it especially if you want to keep extras later in the guide. Menus however do take up a decent amount of space (especially if they are fully animated) so the case can be made to remove them to keep better quality for the main feature.
The other option I highlighted was the drop down menu for DVD-5 or DVD-9. Since we are transcoding to a DVD-5 (single layer DVD), make sure to select DVD-5 from the options. Next to that option there is a quality bar. As you can tell, my movie I'm using is at a very low 45% quality for now. As a rule of thumb, 65% is the minimum you should ever have if possible as anything under that will see noticeable quality loss. Now is your chance to pick up that quality by removing unwanted extras. Hit the Preview tab and look through each of the extras on the right by clicking on them. The movie is the top option, and will have the longest play time. In my example, the play time for the main movie is 1:32:14 while the largest extra is 22:42. Once you are done simply click Next .
Audio and Subtitle Settings
Now that I have removed all the extras, the percentage is pretty high (somewhere above 90 percent), but lets try to get it to 100 by removing some unwanted audio tracks.
As a rule of thumb, if there's an audio available in the language you prefer, in format that states AC-3/6 , that's the one you should leave selected and unselect the other ones. If there's no such audio, the one you should opt to use instead is AC-3/2 . These are the very basic audio formats that DVDs use (AC-3/6 is the DD5.1 surround audio and AC-3/2 is the DD2.0 stereo audio) and that all DVD players need to support. Opting to preserve only DTS audio tracks and to remove all the other tracks might prove to be rather unwise selection, since you normally need to have a separate DTS-capable decoder or amplifier to play DTS audio at all. DTS is of course however, the best audio available for standard DVDs.
Also, remember that very often the main movie (the longest playback time) has the most audio selections. It doesn't matter if you select AC-3/6 for this title and AC-3/2 for the others (in very many cases, the "others" that are normally extras found on DVDs, don't even have 5.1 audio available) , the disc will work anyway.
After you've tweaked (or left untouched) the selections on this page, click Next and we'll get to the next window.
