Transcode/compress DVDs whilst keeping menu structure?

strumpusplunket

strumpusplunket

strumpusplunket

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As per the title... I want to share some DVDs for work with partners in different countries.

(These are DVDs we have the license to use, so I'm not asking anything about breaking copy protection.)

The DVDs we use have a fairly complex menu struture that it is important to preserve (they're almost useless without this, really). I've used Img Burn to make ISO files of them, and these work fine, but they're the same size as the original, which makes it more difficult to share with international colleagues.

What would be great would if I weare able to compress the video, but keep the menu system working as it does on the original disc.

I've Googled this, of course, but almost all the results are about copy protection or just making full-sized copies. I've not found anything yet that indicates what I want is possible - so, is it?
 
MonkeyBasher said:
I'm pretty sure something like CloneDVD will do this. Infact I'm 99.9% sure thats what it was developed for. You will have to spend some time configuring it as to what menu options you want to maintain and what stuff you want to strip out. It will then look at the destination file size and transcode to the best quality it can.

https://www.elby.ch/en/products/clonedvd.html
Click to expand...

Thanks. It looks like it has a free 21 day trial period too, so I'll give that a go.

Cheers! :)
 
MonkeyMan said:
DVD Shrink used to do this, not sure if it's still around now
Click to expand...

Yes, this does work, thanks. This was handy as it turns out I already DVD Shrink on my system. I recall it didn't work when trying to read the originals for some reason, but I just tried it again on the ISO file I created in Img Burn and it worked pretty well. 1.82GB seems to be the smallest it can go, though. This is a lot better than the original 3.9GB, but it would be great if something could re-encode the video to x265 or something that would be even smaller.
 
The other way would be to build a site page for the menu structure which links to smaller compressed videos either hosted by yourselves or another platform.

Depends how complex and time consuming that would be vs a large download.
 
MonkeyMan said:
The other way would be to build a site page for the menu structure which links to smaller compressed videos either hosted by yourselves or another platform.

Depends how complex and time consuming that would be vs a large download.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that would be an idea, but the videos would be used in countries with unreliable internet coverage so colleagues would need local copies on their devices.

bremen1874 said:
Wouldn't re-encoding the video seriously limit the number of players that'd be able to play it back?
Click to expand...

It would I guess, but VLC plays pretty much everything, and I know the people we're working with use VLC on their machines, so I'm hoping that wouldn't be a big deal.
 
Problem with x265 is that you need a fairly decent PC to even play it and I can't think of a way to add a menu.

TBH if they have rubbish internet just post them a few dvds :p
 
MonkeyMan said:
Problem with x265 is that you need a fairly decent PC to even play it and I can't think of a way to add a menu.

TBH if they have rubbish internet just post them a few dvds :p
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's a point about x265. I think I'd taken for granted that all my devices can play this format without problems.

I like the old-skool solution there, though! :) That would work, except I'm not certain how many people will end up needing to take copies with them. I guess DVD Shrink cutting the size in half is not bad. Perhaps I should just be happy with that.
 
What's wrong with just ripping the DVD to an ISO, compressing the ISO using 7-Zip, then upload it to OneDrive or somewhere and send links to people who need to burn copies?

The time you've spent trying to shrink the DVD, surely it could have been uploaded by now?
 
darael said:
What's wrong with just ripping the DVD to an ISO, compressing the ISO using 7-Zip, then upload it to OneDrive or somewhere and send links to people who need to burn copies?

The time you've spent trying to shrink the DVD, surely it could have been uploaded by now?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I see what you're saying.

My thinking was based on two points: 1. I never seem to be able to compress files by that much using 7-Zip - certainly not on the magnitude of turning a 4GB DVD into a 700MB file as you can using a number of the common codecs; and 2. Whenever I have a problem transfering archives of files to colleagues I can pretty much guarantee it's somehow down to their inability to unzip them, so I wanted to avoid that.

Of course, I could zip the smaller files I've generated using DVD Shrink, BUT... they'll eventually have to be unzipped onto colleagues' equipment for use in the field, and these are not usually machines with a lot of storage. The last colleague I was working on this with was using an Asus Transformer of some sort, which had not much free storage space, and with six of these DVDs needed for our current project that will get eaten up fast. It was actually my inability to get all of the full-sized ISOs onto his machine to take back to his country that precipitated my search for answers here. I don't think them burning their own copies is going to be easy either, and I know a number of them don't even have optical drives in their machines.

I guess the other option would be to encode each chapter/video separately as a smaller mp4 and rely on file titles to direct people to what they need to use at which time. It's not as elegant as having it all working through a DVD menu, but it's starting to look like it's not going to be feasible to transcode to the size I want whilst keeping menus intact.
 
darael said:
What's wrong with just ripping the DVD to an ISO, compressing the ISO using 7-Zip, then upload it to OneDrive or somewhere and send links to people who need to burn copies?

The time you've spent trying to shrink the DVD, surely it could have been uploaded by now?
Click to expand...

That would not achieve much compression at all, DVD is already highly compressed Mpeg2 in .Vob containers, you'd be very lucky to glean ~2%, on a 4.5GB DVD that's just 90MB.

OP, you could try re-authoring the DVD in something like VideoredoTVSuite, it's not free though
https://www.videoredo.com/en/Products_TVSuite_V5.html
 
strumpusplunket said:
Yes, this does work, thanks. This was handy as it turns out I already DVD Shrink on my system. I recall it didn't work when trying to read the originals for some reason, but I just tried it again on the ISO file I created in Img Burn and it worked pretty well. 1.82GB seems to be the smallest it can go, though. This is a lot better than the original 3.9GB, but it would be great if something could re-encode the video to x265 or something that would be even smaller.
Click to expand...
The reason for this is quality. With both clonedvd and I assume dvd shrink its intention is to produce a final product that can be enjoyed on a bog standard dvd player. If you compress that video to stupid levels you just loose content so it wont let you go that far. A single layer blank DVD is 4.7GB. So thats a lot of space to work with when copying movies.

Based on what you have said in this thread about not wanting to rely on colleagues unziping stuff or burning there own DVDs then the sensible solution would be for you to compress the videos to an acceptable standard and host it somewhere. You could even knock up a simple website to make navigation easier and to show your menu structure like someone suggested above.
 
strumpusplunket said:
Yeah, I see what you're saying.

My thinking was based on two points: 1. I never seem to be able to compress files by that much using 7-Zip - certainly not on the magnitude of turning a 4GB DVD into a 700MB file as you can using a number of the common codecs; and 2. Whenever I have a problem transfering archives of files to colleagues I can pretty much guarantee it's somehow down to their inability to unzip them, so I wanted to avoid that.

Of course, I could zip the smaller files I've generated using DVD Shrink, BUT... they'll eventually have to be unzipped onto colleagues' equipment for use in the field, and these are not usually machines with a lot of storage. The last colleague I was working on this with was using an Asus Transformer of some sort, which had not much free storage space, and with six of these DVDs needed for our current project that will get eaten up fast. It was actually my inability to get all of the full-sized ISOs onto his machine to take back to his country that precipitated my search for answers here. I don't think them burning their own copies is going to be easy either, and I know a number of them don't even have optical drives in their machines.

I guess the other option would be to encode each chapter/video separately as a smaller mp4 and rely on file titles to direct people to what they need to use at which time. It's not as elegant as having it all working through a DVD menu, but it's starting to look like it's not going to be feasible to transcode to the size I want whilst keeping menus intact.
Click to expand...
I would probably then just work on producing a DVD to the size you want and saving it as an ISO file which you host somewhere for others to download from.

Windows 10 can mount ISO images without additional software. Then you can use whatever software you want to play the mounted ISO image as a DVD, complete with it's menus. I think this would be your better option, as it is simplest.
 
Thanks for the replies, all.

I do want to avoid relying on a website to replicate menu structure, as the end-use point of these DVDs will be various places in Sub-Saharan Africa, so not somewhere you want to be relying on a net connection for fieldwork.

The couple of mentions of "re-authoring" the DVDs, though - I'm not at all well-versed in this, but does this mean transcoding the videos myself and then using software to build the individual videos back into a DVD, constructing a new menu system myself and saving the result as an ISO file? That does sound a good option (unless I've got that all wrong...).

So could I do this with, say, x264 video to author a DVD of around 700-800MB with my own menu structure? And is there a free application that can do this (I know groovestation linked to a paid app above, but I'd like to avoid having to scrape out any more budget for this work if possible).
 
how complex is the menu structure ?
if it is direct access to several chapters , then w/ dvd shrink or other , is, creating multiple , approriately named media files , plus a text crib sheet, so bad ?
 
jpaul said:
how complex is the menu structure ?
if it is direct access to several chapters , then w/ dvd shrink or other , is, creating multiple , approriately named media files , plus a text crib sheet, so bad ?
Click to expand...

It's got three sub-nested levels each branching from five or six initial options, so reasonably complex and a bit more in-depth than just direct links to chapters from a single start menu.
 
d_brennen said:
I'd just burn a bunch of copies and post them to where ever they're needed tbh
Click to expand...

Nah, as I said above, I can't rely on people having access to DVD drives in the field, nor can I rely on them being able to rip the DVDs themselves. I need to get them onto their machines.

From what I'm picking up in this thread, it seems my best bet is to transcode to a compressed format chapter-by-chapter and then either just rely on file titles to direct people to where they need to go, or (more ideally) re-author these videos into a new ISO file with my own recreated menu structure. The latter is what I don't know how to do, but from what people have said it seems like it should be possible?
 
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