i've been using dvdshrink to back up my dvds for a little while now. after reading the guide here i've learned a few tricks to get better quality, but i have a couple of questions.
the guide says if the menus are really big to use menu shrink to replace them with fully-functional still image menus. wouldn't selecting the menus and going over to the compression settings and changing it to still image do the same thing?
and can someone explain the adaptive error compensation/Maximum Smoothness, Smooth, Sharp and Maximum Sharpness settings to me? i don't really understand that part. what's the effect on picture quality on each of the settings?
as for the first part, not sure i understand, but if you mean to use re-author mode, i believe you will not be able to do anything at all with the menus, but i could be wrong. i assume that is why people recommend using menushrink prior to processing with shrink if you want to save the functional menus, but compress them by making them still images. that topic is also covered in the second link, the faq for dummies.
good luck!
[edit] p.s. just discovered that if you go to the shrink help menu -> help topics -> quality settings, there is a brief discussion of the sharp/smooth question, which basically amounts to: try them out and see what works best for the particular backup you are doing and your personal taste re image appearance. i've read other threads where some people prefer one or the other, as if it is nothing objective per se, but simply personal preference.
here is a slightly more detailed, but fairly brief discussion, including one person's experiment and rating of various combinations of the variable functions, of the sharp/smooth question:
but for the first question, i'm not talking about re-authoring the dvd. according to the quide here, when doing a full-disc back-up you can't remove any unwanted things (deleted scenes, previews) because it would mess up the dvd structure. but you can click on the unwanted item, then change the compression setting from "automatic" to "still image" to greatly reduce the size. wouldn't doing the same thing work for the menus too thus negating the need for menushrink? or would the menus not work by doing that?
