DVD authoring software

[Hammerhead786]

Hello Folks,

Quick question. I have some episodic DVDs I'd like to backup to single layer disks. I'd like to retain the menu structure and I want to keep the data uncompressed. I'm a newbie to the authoring game, so if anyone can recommend any easy to use software for acheiving this, I'd be most grateful. I've tried Googling for an answer, but I can't find anything definitive.

Cheers,
Hamid

[elootos]

(06-26-2010 04:23 PM)Hammerhead786 Wrote:  Hello Folks,

Quick question. I have some episodic DVDs I'd like to backup to single layer disks. I'd like to retain the menu structure and I want to keep the data uncompressed. I'm a newbie to the authoring game, so if anyone can recommend any easy to use software for acheiving this, I'd be most grateful. I've tried Googling for an answer, but I can't find anything definitive.

Cheers,
Hamid

Hi, I think Imgburn is the best free all-in-one burning software and use it quite often. Other than that, grab an OEM version of Nero for a few quid. Or you can try DVDFab and the paid version of that to reencode your films.

[tonyc]

(06-26-2010 10:45 PM)elootos Wrote:  [quote='Hammerhead786' pid='1605' dateline='1277565820']
Hello Folks,

Quick question. I have some episodic DVDs I'd like to backup to single layer disks. I'd like to retain the menu structure and I want to keep the data uncompressed. I'm a newbie to the authoring game, so if anyone can recommend any easy to use software for acheiving this, I'd be most grateful. I've tried Googling for an answer, but I can't find anything definitive.

Cheers,
Hamid

You mention you don't want to lose data, however if they are bought discs then chances are they will be dual layer and could be considerably higher that 4.7GBs that a single disc can handle. With something like DVD Shrink you can either lower the bitrate to fit them onto a single disc or split the files. I have done this before, and to be fair unless they are 7GBs and more, I haven't really spotted much of drop in quality. Nothing worse than anything that ITV1 shows on digital tv. (that maybe an extreme as their bitrates on satellite are piss poor due to the amount of channels crammed onto one transponder - that's debate for another topic though)

So you will need to find out how big the files are on the original discs and split. For example, if you have a DVD with 6 episodes on there, you may get 3 episodes on a single layer disc. It's possible also to keep the menus, but of course the menus will stay the same as though they were one full disc. So if you were to do that and then clicked on episode 4, nothing would happen.

As Elootos mentioned, IMGBURN is a good start, or DVDFab. Never used Nero so can't comment on that.

[Hammerhead786]

Thanks elootos and tonyc. Might give Fabdvd a try. I just have some dvds that I want to split episodes from.

Hamid