MenuShrink version 2.4 - utility for shrinking DVD motion menus to still frames

[chris83]

jeanl,

Thanks for the welcome. It's pretty intimidating making that first post.

One more question; again, being very new to the whole DVD ripping/burning field, I apologize if my "Duh" factor comes out here.

If I use "Re-Author" mode in DVD Shrink, I use the loss of my menus...is that correct? Should I therefore use MenuShrink and then do "Full-Disc" mode in DVD Shrink?

Thank you for your help...and patience.

[jeanl]

No problem man, we all had our first post, at some point!!!
Yes, reauthor mode in DVD Shrink only keeps the movie, no menus. This is best if you really want to best preserve the quality of the movie (assuming the DVD is a DVD-9, otherwise there's no point).
If you want to preserve the menus, the extras and so on, then you need to use the Full-Disc mode.

What I (and a lot of people) do is:
- Rip to file mode with Decrypter
- Remove FBI warnings, any unwanted extras etc with Vobblanker or PgcEdit. (I tend to remove everything but the movie - and the menus of course).
- Run MenuShrink if your menus are large (a few hundred MB is not uncommon, it will make a difference in Shrink) and you don't mind turning them into still menus (no motion).
- Then go into DVD Shrink in Full disc mode.

I use MenuShrink as my base app from which I run the other apps (I've defined the tool buttons to launch PgcEdit, Vobblanker, DVD-Shrink and PowerDVD). In many cases, after the "pre-processing" steps, DVD Shrink only has to shrink by 80-90% which means the output quality is very good.


jeanl

[jm1647]

Chris83, you were just advised by jeanl, the author and #1 saver of over 1.8GB of space using Menu Shrink. It's fast and so easy to use even I can use it. Drag, drop and process, that's it. A must have in the backing up of your original DVD scene.

As I stated in an earlier post of mine " Who needs a singing and dancing dwarf in a menu"

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it's off to MenuShrink I go. I'm still looking to crack the top ten

[chris83]

jeanl and jm1647,

Thank you for the great info. I'll download MenuShrink and install it on my PC as soon as I get home.

Between Vobblanker and PgcEdit, which would be easier for a newbie (that would be yours truly ) to use? It would be nice to get rid of the FBI warnings and such, but the main thing at this point for me is simplicity. Three weeks ago I'd never even heard of Shrink, Decrypter or MenuShrink...now I'm actually using them. Yikes!!!

[Mig$y]

Originally posted by jm1647
I'm still looking to crack the top ten

The force is strong in you, young Padawan

[jeanl]

Both PgcEdit and Vobblanker have a learning curve, because both are very very powerful tools (they can do much more than just blanking titles).
But the real learning curve is in understanding what a titleset, a PGC, and a Cell are. I'm not sure where to point you for that. You can start at the glossary section at doom9, here. Also check out the "the basics" section here.


There's a good guide on blanking with vobblanker here but it assumes you know what a VTS, a PGC and a Cell are...

jeanl

[jm1647]

@Chris83, I am far from a rocket scientist in the dvd back up world having really only just gotten into the extra programs above and beyond DVD devrypter and DVD Shrink in the last month or so. I just usta DVD Shrinkem down. Then I got into reauthor because they were to big to go onta a regular DVD5. Then I got introduced to the great programs like Menu Shrink and Pgcedit and vobblanker to name a few. Menu Shrink a snap Thanks to jeanl ! Pgc edit scared me a little. I tried Vobblanker and for me it works. I don't get fancy with it, I leave the video_ts.vob and the main movie vob alone, and usually just blank everything else out. It has a preview section to check what your cuttin'.

@Mig$y

Hi Ho!

[chris83]

jeanl and jm1647,

Thanks for all the great info and advice. With everything being new for me, I'll probably stick with DVD Shrink, DVD Decrypter and MenuShrink for now; that should keep me out of trouble for awhile.

I'll try dabbling a bit with PgcEdit and Vobblanker as well, to at least see them in action, if nothing else.

One last thing, with regard to Shrink and Decrypter as well as MenuShrink. I'll be backing up several of my "Episodic" collections ("Star Trek", "The Simpsons", etc.); any potential pitfalls to look out for in doing episodes as opposed to movies?

Thanks again.

[jm1647]

I did my HBO Series The Corner and had a little problem only on my standalone recorder/player, the other players I have worked fine, but it was because of the original authoring that had a littlle vob in it that my standalone did not like in the original menu. I had only used DVD Shrink on it at the time. Unless in a rare combination of bad authoring and a conflict with your player/s I see no problems.

Just check the forum below this one that lists problematic DVD's

Good Luck

[jeanl]

I haven't done many episodic DVDs but I don't think there should be any problem with that. The only difference is that sometimes, you have each episode in its own titleset (i.e. one episode per VTS_xx_n.VOB with n>0) but that does not change anything to what you do.

One note: You will find that often time, MenuShrink gets rid of the FBI warnings. This is the case when the warnings are in the "menu domain" (i.e. either in VIDEO_TS.VOB or VTS_xx_0.VOB). That's not always the case, but it's often the case.

jeanl

[nwg]

Originally posted by chris83

One last thing, with regard to Shrink and Decrypter as well as MenuShrink. I'll be backing up several of my "Episodic" collections ("Star Trek", "The Simpsons", etc.); any potential pitfalls to look out for in doing episodes as opposed to movies?

Thanks again.

I have done many test with discs such as Star Trek TNG, DS9 and also CSI. I didn't encounter any problems. I also used menushrinks kill command to get rid of non English menus on the Star Trek Menus. I can down from a few hundred MB to a few MB.

[jeanl]

chris83, the "kill" command is a nearly undocumented feature of MenuShrink.
When processing in "preview" mode (where you can select the image for the menus), you can type CTRL-K to try to squash the cell in question entirely. Normally you would never do that, but sometimes, menushrink fails to realize that a cell is a "transition" cell (no real buttons) and treats it as a menu. Killing it saves space and makes for better playback.
Another situation is the one described by nwg where you want to remove any menu that's not in your favorite language (but then, better not try the DVD in a player whose default language setup is one of the ones you killed!).
jeanl

[jeanl]

MenuShrink Version 2.2 is here!

Version 2.2 has the following main new features:

• You can keep some of the menus animated if you want to. The preview
  panel has one more button to do that and tells you what the size of the original
  menu cell is so you can decide whether to shrink it or not.
• The progress bar has a much finer grain and no longer looks stuck when
  loading very large cells.

along with a couple bug fixes.
Get the new version at the usual place:

http://www.videohelp.com/~menushrink/

Make sure to refresh the download page to get version 2.2!

Here's the change log.

UI:

• The progress bar has a much finer grain (no longer looks stuck when reading
  large cells)
• There is a new "Keep" button in the preview panel, to keep a menu animated.
• The preview panel now displays the size of the menu cell to help decide
  whether to keep it or not.

Engine:

• The engine now supports preserving animated menus.
• MenuShrink now fixes the VTSM_VOBU_ADMAP table when it's not correct to begin with.

Bug Fixes:

• Restore backup was behaving poorly when the backup directory hadn't been
  created yet.
• The number of included SPUs (subpic units) has been increased from 1 to 4 per
  cell. This should fix problems previously encountered in some (rare) DVDs
  (incredibles R4 for example).

Enjoy!
jeanl

[nwg]

Thanks.

I only just realised that the MS icon is a parrot. I only saw what is was when it was displayed big on my projector.

[jm1647]

Got it jeanl

I ain't got the best peepers without my specs so I'm at 800x600 when surfing and burning... be nice to have a projector though ...

ain't da bird nice