Step 1: Rip Your DVD

The first thing you'll have to do after starting up DVD Shrink is select a source. Press Open Disk to get a list of available DVD drives:

A list of all available DVD drives on your computer will be shown. Select the one containing the movie.

Alternatively you could first rip the DVD to an ISO file using DVD Decrypter and create a virtual DVD drive which you will use as source. 

If you have already ripped the DVD in file mode (thus you have a collection of .IFO, .BUP and .VOB files on your hard drive) press the Open Files button:

Then press browse and select the folder where your VIDEO_TS directory resides.

Once you've selected the source disc, or IFO file, DVD Shrink will perform a quick analysis of the video items. Just let it do its job, it won't take very long.

Step 2: Understanding the DVD Shrink window

Once analysis has completed it's time to get to know the different parts of DVD Shrink, starting with the size bar.

This bar indicates the size of your project. If it contains a red part, your project is too large and won't fit onto a standard single layer DVD±R disc. By default, DVD Shrink automatically selects a compression ratio to make your movie fit onto the allocated space (you can control this size in the preferences).

In the upper left side of the window, the general structure of the DVD will be shown. As you can see there are 3 top categories, Menus, Main Movie and Extras. The folders react just as in Windows Explorer so you can click on those having a + sign and they'll open, displaying their contents.

To the right of the structure you have the individual streams contained in the item selected on the left side. Below you'll see the main movie content. It has a large video stream, 6 audio streams and two subtitle streams. The DVD Structure and the Streams section of the window are where you configure your project. You select the item you want to configure on the left, then you configure it on the right (for example, set a compression ratio, deselect audio and subtitle streams that you don't need).

Note that if you click on the DVD folder on the left, and the percentage shown on the right is 100%, your movie is small enough to fit onto a DVD±R disc without additional compression..

Finally, on the lower left we have the preview window. It allows you to preview any title you click on. Simply click on a title, then press the play button. The preview window remembers its state, so if it is playing and you select another title, the title you have just selected will be played. If you stop playback, selecting another title will not start playing until you press play again.

If you right click within the preview window, you can change the audio channel, pause, stop and even switch to fullscreen for a better preview.

Step 3: Backing up your entire DVD

Now you have two options: You can either keep the entire DVD intact, or you can choose to only keep certain parts of the original DVD (for instance only the main movie, dropping extras and menus). Obviously, keeping the entire DVD, the video has to be compressed more to fit on a single DVD±R disc, but it allows you to keep all the fancy menus. If you want to keep everything, press the Backup! button.

The following window should appear:

We recommend using the ISO Image File option for your backup target.  You will only be using this option if you are burning a backup copy of your entire DVD. Before writing your ISO file you probably will also want to set the burned DVD's Region to One or Region-Free (see the second tab).  Once you have created the ISO file you will want to use your DVD burning software to burn the ISO file to a DVD (most people will have Nero for this purpose).

Step 4: Re-Authoring your DVD

If you prefer to keep some parts of the disc and to discard other parts, select Re-author (technically, when re-authoring you create a new disc from scratch and add whatever you like from the original disc to it). Re-author allows you to create your own DVD by putting only content that you really want on a DVD. It does not allow you to keep the menus though. 

Click the "Re-author" button as shown below:


 

The "Re-author" screen as shown below will come up:


You should see a scroll bar to view the contents of the original DVD. The first category is "Menus", then "Main Movie", then "Extras".

The files in these categories will be the files you choose from to create your "Re-authored" DVD.

Under the "Main Movie" category, you will see one or more  files (You guessed it, these are main movie).  There are two on our sample - why?  Most DVD's are encoded with both "Widescreen" and "Full Screen". This movie has a alternate ending, that is the reason for the two files.

Pick the title you want, click it and drag it over to the "DVD Compilation" section of the DVD Shrink screen.

After dragging the Title file to the Compilation Section, your DVD Shrink screen should look like what you see below:


As you can see, there is still some free space left on the DVD to add more files. Simply preview the file you think you might want to add, and drag it over to the "Compilation Section" like you did with Title 1. Be sure to keep an eye on the green bar at the top, so that you don't go over the space allowed. If you do go over the space, DVD Shrink will start to automatically add compression to make it fit on a single layer DVD-R/+R. (To see the compression that will be used, simply click the "Compression Settings" tab next to the "DVD Browser" tab.

 

Step 5: Re-Authoring your DVD - Part 2
Using the "Set Start/End Frames" feature to select clips

Using the "Start/End Frames" feature is only allowed in Re-author mode of DVD Shrink. Assuming you have clicked the "Re-author" button, and have already dragged the titles over to the "Re-authored DVD/Compilation" section.


Click the "Start/End Frames" button.



After clicking the "Start/End Frames" button, the "Set Start/End Frames" window will pop up.



Now on the "Start Frame" slider, drag to the point where you want the clip to start. On the "End Frame" slider, drag to the point where you want the clip to end. Click "OK" at the bottom after you have placed both of these sliders.



After clicking the "OK" button, it should return you to the main DVD Shrink screen.

Repeat for each Title you added to the "Re-authored DVD" section of DVD Shrink. It is possible to add one Title multiple times if you want to have more than one clip from the same Title file.
 

Step 6: Writing out your re-Authored clips

Once you have finished your clips you are ready to create your new DVD.  You have two options here you can write your edited clips directly to DVD without a menu - in this case your clips will play in the order they appear in your compilation - they will begin playing as soon as the DVD is placed into the DVD Player. To burn your DVD without a menu follow the instructions in Step 3 above. 

Your second option is to write your clips to a folder and then use the application DVDStyler to create a menu for your clips.  To write your clips to a folder click the backup button:

The following window should appear:

As shown above, select your backup target as Hard Disk Folder.  You can also designate the target folder for your DVD files. Click OK when everything is ready.  Once your files have been written you are ready to move to the application DVDStyler to create your new menus.