Things you will need before you start:
DVD Decryptor -latest version is usually the best place to start
DVDShrink -same thing, latest version is your best bet
DVD-R/+R drive (duhh) and blank 4.7G media (actually 4.38G for video...long story)
Before you start, make sure that your source DVD is clean, I know that this seems stupid, but even a little blotch or a greasy fingerprint can make the disc either unreadable, create lousy video or at a minimum slow down the ripping process. It takes 2 seconds and can save a lot of time. DVD Decryptor will attempt numerous retries to read the disc, if it is unable to read, select Abort, and tell it to delete the offending **.VOB file. Close the program, eject your disc, clean it and start over. It will ask if you want to overwrite any files already ripped, select "no" (why do the same thing twice??) and it should pick up where it left off. Nothing sucks more than getting to 97% complete and getting a read error that won't go away.
Open DVD Decryptor, select the source drive and destination directory, usually a HD with at least 10G of working space and select File Mode.
Select Main Movie Files. The largest VTS_0x_0.IFO and VTS_0x_0.VOB are usually the main movie
Press the little green play button at the bottom and you should see this dialog
After DVD Decryptor rips your main movie to the HD, start up DVDShrink and select Files, then browse to your ripped folder
OK, this is where it can get complicated, if the movie is under the 4.38G file size limit then you can move onto this step. If it is too big or you want to edit the chapters or trim the credits/beginning off or strip sub les or audio streams then select Re-author. Press Next.
This is where you add the assets (actually the movie itself) for your DVD, press Add.
This window pops up, if you have just the main movie stripped (like you should if you are using this guide), there is only one PGC to select. You can shuttle through the scenes at this point, though this is not going to effect any of your movie. If you have multiple PGC's then you could verify the stream and then edit the in/out points. This is not covered in this guide, though after your first few movies you should understand how to do this. Verify it is the correct stream and hit OK.
If you do wish to trim the in and out points, then select crop in the menu and you can set your in and out points here. This is especially useful if you are close to the 4.38G filesize limit and want maximum quality
If you want to strip any sub les or audio or have decided to trim the clip or need to compress it to a smaller size, you have to go the Re-encode route. Hit next.
Here you can see what each level of recompression will do for you. You can also edit your streams (strip the extra audio and sub les here) under Customize Streams.
Here is the dialog for Customize Streams. Select what you want to cutout and the levels of compression for the video.
No recompression is the best, it is a straight copy of the original DVD video. No loss.
Level 1 recompresses B frames only. This is fast and only recompresses the B difference frames, very little loss.
Level 2 recompresses the B frames at a higher level. This is where quality starts to diminish. Not the end of the world yet.
Level 3 is the beginning of the end. Compresses the P and B frames, you will notice a greater signal loss and a lot longer re-encode time.
Level 4 is a complete re-encode of all I, P and B frames. This is not the SW to use if you need to go this route. There are much better methods to do this though they are much more involved and time consuming. Avoid this one like the plague.
While the transcoding engine in DVDShrink is quite fast, it is not designed to be a replacement for high end MPEG2 encoders. It is very specific in what it does and it does it well, once you start pushing the limits you will see the effects...and they are not good. Level 4 is the definition o pushing the limits here. The author of DVDShrink even stated to avoid it.
Now this is more like it. If the entire filesize is already under 4.38G already, you can just copy it to a folder. Very fast and highest quality. You need to do this step so that DVDShrink can recreate your chapters and IFO files correctly. It also re-parses the entire stream and makes sure that your FF/RW functions will work correctly and chapters. Trust me on this, copy it regardless of filesize.
Almost there, select an output directory and choose DVD Files. This method is easier to test out with a SW DVD player and to burn with the DVD SW of your choice. Creating an image may seem nice, but unless you have a Virtual DVD Rom like Alcohol 120% or Daemon tools installed it is impossible to verify correct playback. Burning a bad DVD after all of this work (OK it is not a lot of work, but DVD-R's aren't that cheap yet!) can put you in a bad mood.
I personally prefer to use Nero to burn my DVD. It is a very good burning SW, can do many formats, will verify your files and best of all, it came bundled with my DVD burner!. Seriously, Nero is a good option, it will automatically create the correct leset and directory structure in your DVD-R and will read from any location on your PC. Some apps only read from the root directory of a drive.
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I'm trying a third one now, hopefully this one works...
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