As most commercially-released DVDs are dual layer (DVD-9 with 8.5GB), we often use DVD Shrink to compress the DVD by re-encoding and/or discarding extra content such as foreign-language soundtracks so as to fit on a single layer DVD (DVD-5 with 4.7 GB), since dual layer DVDs are expensive and even unavailable in some places. However, there is such problem as the following description when using DVD Shrink to shrink the DVD:

Problem

“I have a DVD folder with 4 episodes in 7.4GB size and I need to backup it to DVD 5, but when I run it through DVD Shrink, it could only be reduced to 4.8GB. I used the automatic compression and set my target as dvd-5 but it was to no avail. Even if I chose custom, I could not slide the compression bar back any further on any of the main movies. It didn’t allow me.”

Solution

How to solve such problem? Well, a direct solution is to run the already shrunk file through DVD Shrink again to reduce it enough to fit on a DVD-5, but the video quality may suffer and we should try to avoid compressing that much.

A better solution is to use DVD Rebuilder (free version), selecting HC encoder option. This way can preserve better quality than shrinking twice or only once but reducing size that much.

Another solution is to use MenuShrink which turns motion screen menus to still menus with or without audios. It can save up to 200MB if the menu audios are removed too.

There is also a compromising solution, that is, splitting the DVD-9 to fit on two DVD-5 (two DVD-5 is cheaper than one DVD-9). For this way, please refer to the article on splitting DVD using freeware, or directly check the “split” option in TouchUp DVD Ripper Platinum that offers you a wide range of splitting options including customized splitting by size or time (please refer to the tutorial for details).

DVD spliting in TouchUp DVD Ripper Platinum

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