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Guides and articles
Guides and articles
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DVD Shrink Compression Settings
With DVD Shrink you can remove audio streams, subtitles and even turn an item you don't want on your DVD into a still picture. It is best to approach these options by parts of your DVD. The first part of this DVD i want to check the settings for is the Main Movie.
Main Movie Compression Settings - Video Compression
 Look at the picture I have added to this text. On the left in the DVD Structure box I have selected the Main Movie "folder" (there is no Main Movie folder on the DVD though, don't get confused, this is just here to help). Click the little + beside the folder and you will see the Titles under Main Movie. In some cases there can be more than one title. I will show you in a moment how to determine which is your actual movie.
First though. Take a look into the Compression Settings on the right. Video is set to Automatic. This means that Shrink will automatically change the video compression setting when items are removed from the DVD (or when compression settings for other items are changed). Currently, the compression ratio is at 58.7% from the original state, this is quite low. The best way to boost it is to remove audio tracks and subtitles you do not need.
Main Movie Compression Settings - Audio Tracks
 On most DVDs there is foreign audio and a lot of subtitles. Also there is directors commentary and often 2 tracks, one with 5.1 audio and one with 2.0 audio. Obviously, we don't need all of these tracks. Look at the picture I have with this text. There are three audio tracks; a AC3 5.1 channel English Track, an AC3 2 channel English directors commentary track and an AC3 2 channel English track.
I only need the AC3 5.1 channel track so I unselected the other two. However, to be on the safe side, click your Main Movie and then go down to the Preview Window. Right click and select the track you going to keep. Drag the slider into the middle of the movie and then press play (Do NOT seek through the video when it is playing). This will make sure you don't accidentally keep a directors commentary track or likewise instead of the proper track.
I recommend removing any DTS audio also because it takes up much more room than AC3. Of course, that depends on your own preferences when you watch movies. Also, take note that I have removed all Subtitles from the DVD, because I do not need them. The result of these cut backs is my video compression ratio is now 64.5%, a significant rise in output quality. Now let's see if there's any extra's we can get rid of.
Removing Extras
 OK, so you want your extras but there might be some you are better off removing. Click the + beside Extras to see just how many you are dealing with. Look at my picture. I have checked mine with a preview already and it is 2 parts of my extras about making the movie. I want those.
Title 4-11 are all my deleted scenes and I want all of them. If I wanted to get rid of one, this is possible and I will show in the next step how to. Title 12 and 13 however, I don't need those. Both are just anti-piracy / copyright notices. I'd prefer not to have to sit and wait through them so I select them and change the Video Compression on the right to Still Image.
A still image will now be placed here instead of the video. You cannot remove the video with DVD Shrink however, this will mess up the DVD Structure. As you can see, you can click Browse and choose a picture from your HDD to put there instead of the video also. There is also another option under video compression you can use, Still Pictures. This converts the video into single frames at 0.5sec intervals. It's not very useful unless for some reason you want to keep the audio. Now lets see if we can remove more extras.
Remove More Extras
 As you saw in the last paragraph, I had deleted scenes from Title's 4 through 11. These were grouped together by DVD Shrink because of the DVD Structure. However, this grouping can be turned off and I can decide not to keep certain titles after all.
Click View and unselect Combine Shared Titles. Now click the + beside Extras again and this time you see all the Titles individually and as I have done in the picture, you can decide to select any and replace with a Still Image. This is also good because it allows you to give less compression to individual items (see later).
Now the Menu Compression is next.
Menu Compression
 I used MenuShrink on my Menu's so I can't really expect more compression options as a result. However, if you didn't compress you menu's you can navigate through them by VTS on your DVD. If you look at the picture you will see this. You can select any menu, preview it or even replace it with a still image. This is good if you don't want to keep foreign motion menu's.
Edit the menu's just like you edited the extra's. Now we will take a look at one last thing that can make a difference; Custom Ratio Compression.
Use Custom Ratio Compression to improve Main Movie quality
 With DVD Shrink, you can set custom compression ratios on all titles on your DVD. Using this properly you can choose what parts of the DVD will be prioritised. For example, I want the highest quality on the Main Movie, but the quality of the "Making Of" parts is not important to me.
Look at the picture. I have selected Title 2 and changed the Video Compression settings to Custom Ratio. I lowered it from 64% to 53.9%. In turn, because my Main Movie is set to Automatic, the extra space that is now available because of the drop in extra's quality pushes up the ratio for the Main Movie (and anything set to Automatic). I highly recommend reducing the quality of Motion Menus and Extra's so that your DVD will have a high quality movie.
Have fun playing with Custom Ratio compression. You don't need to incredibly reduce all of your extras however. Get the main movie compression ratio as high as you can.
Unreferenced Material
I just wanted to add that you often will find an Unreferenced Material folder using DVD Shrink. These can sometimes be menus, copyright noticed, anti-piracy messages etc. It is up to you what to do with these because they vary on all DVDs.
OK, with all your compression settings now selected, it's time to move on to the process.
Backup DVD!
OK With all compression settings set, click the Backup! button and we can set the Output settings (don't worry, this will only take a few moments of your time).
Please go to the Next Page
On the next page, we will make some final settings for our DVD backup that will determine how long the process will take. The overall process begins on page 5, so you are nearly there!
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Created: 10 July 2006 Last updated: 22 March 2008
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