Is DVDShrink the right way to go?

mickbadal wrote on 6/7/2007, 10:12 AM

I have a VMS/DVDA project that involves about 1 hr, 30 minutes of video, obviously too large for a DVD natively. I was going to split it into two DVDs, and in fact I've already rendered the first ~ 50 minutes of video as MPEG and loaded it into DVDA.

I've noticed people have mentioned "DVDShrink", apparently a (freeware?) utility that will allow you to put much more video on a single DVD. But to me that smacks of video quality concerns.

For the experts out there: IYHO, is DVDShrink the right way to go (will the quality loss be minimal-to-none?), or should I stick with the 2-disc approach?

Thanks!

Comments

4eyes wrote on 6/7/2007, 8:22 PM

I have a VMS/DVDA project that involves about 1 hr, 30 minutes of video, obviously too large for a DVD natively.

That's not to long for a single sided DVD.
Just use DVD Architech and select the option "Fit To Disc".

I would only use a program like DVD Shrink as a last resort.

mickbadal wrote on 6/8/2007, 8:06 AM

That's not to long for a single sided DVD.
Just use DVD Architech and select the option "Fit To Disc".

I didn't think of that - thanks. But how much video quality should I expect to lose? Is it worth putting it on one, or will the video quality loss be enough that I should stick with two?

I guess what I'm wondering is, what is a good "cutoff" point for deciding not to do a fit to disc - 1 hr 10 minutes, 1 hr 30 minutes, 25 hours <joke on that last one>

Thanks

owlsroost wrote on 6/8/2007, 10:43 AM

It depends on the material really.

If there's a lot of movement, fast lighting changes/cross-fades or picture noise etc then 1 hr 30 minutes is a sensible limit.

Fairly static stuff (e.g. talking heads, conference prcoceedings etc) could probably be pushed to 2hrs 30 minutes per disc if you had to.

BTW, Nero Recode is better (faster, better quality) than DVDShrink if you need to use something like that to get out of a 'doesn't fit the disk' hole quickly.

Tony