Thursday, December 06, 2012

How to Shrink, Compress, Backup DVDs

This post shows a number of ways and tools to accomplish the following:
Goal: To backup a DVD which is originally more than 4GB onto one standard single DVD about 4GB. The end-product needs to be the single DVD playable on most DVD players, not just playable on PCs.

When: This can happen when your Wedding DVD, your Graduation DVD or some of your Personal DVD happen to be in a DVD with all the contents totalling, say 6GB.

Here are the different parts to convert and backup your Personal DVD into a single playable DVD. The actual process of conversion and backup is described further down.

A. Open DVD and Save to ISO
Use DVD Decrypter 3.5.4.0.
Load the DVD into the drive.
Open the Disc from DVD Decrypter.
Choose the Source as the Drive
Choose the Destination as a file.
Run the program.

B. Open DVD and Save to Compressed  ISO
Use DVD Shrink 3.2
Load the DVD into the drive
Select whatever VOB files and other Files.
Run Backup

C. Open 6GB ISO file and Save to Compressed  ISO
Use DVD Shrink 3.2
Load the ISO file in DVD Shrink
Select whatever VOB files and other Files.
Run Backup

D. Open 6GB ISO file as a Drive
Use MagicDisc from Magic ISO.
Choose the 6GB iso file and MOUNT using MagicDisc.
Now a virtual DVD drive appears with the contents of the 6GB file.

E. Burn Compressed ISO 4GB to single DVD
Use ImgBurn as the DVD burner.
Choose the Source as the 4GB compresses ISO image.
Choose the Destination as the real drive with blank DVD.
Burn ISO to DVD.

The actual process can include the following steps.
Option 1:
   A  ->  C  ->  E
Option 2:
   B  ->  E
Option 3:
   A  ->  D  ->  B  -> E

What I found is that there are many ways to do this. But it appears that option 2, may be the most efficient. Option 2 uses DVD Shrink to read your original 6GB DVD and compress to 4GB standard DVD ISO file. Then ImgBurn is used to burn the image.

Extras:
- There is no need to consider audio or DVD menu since they will be automatically included.
- ISOBuster 1.5 is another tool that allow you to examine the contents of the ISO file.
- VirtualBox - within the virtual machine, there is the capability to mount an ISO file as a virtual DVD drive.