I am trying to split The Thin Red Line into two DVDs since the compression setting is too low (56%) while re-authoring just the movie. Is there a way to do this using any free programs? I currently use DVD43, Shrink, DVDdecrypter and DVD fab to copy movies. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I split all of my backups, if the original disc is on a DVD9 (dual layered commercial disc).
This is very easy and fast to do, if you do not mind getting rid of the all working menus. You can use DVDShrink, in re-author mode, and essentially do two passes. One, for disc one, breaking the "Main Movie" at a chapter break. A second pass, for the remainder of the "Main Movie," and you can then add any extras so they play at the tail end of the "Main Movie."
If you are not familiar with "Reauthor Mode" or the option which lets you set a starting point and an ending point in DVDShrink, do a search in the Guides. There are many guides for DVDShrink which describe this process.
Here is one which will give you enough information on how to use the
starting point / ending point stuff, so you should be able to figure out how to do the "split."
IF you decide you must have the menus available, though, this can get a bit trickier. This is the method I employ...
1.) Use DVDDecrypter or DVDShrink to rip the entire thing to hard drive, in file mode, with no compression. Ignore any warnings that it is too big. Total time (for me) is usually 15 - 25 minutes.
2.) Open up a program called VOBBlanker. There are guides for this. Use this program to split the Main Movie of the DVD at a chapter break (pretty much as is described above). Do a second pass of VOBBlanker for the second title, and leave all extras on that second pass. Total time involved here is usually 10 to 20 minutes.
3.) To really end up with a terrific result, you can clean up a minor error which causes the second disc to pause for 10 second or so at the beginning of Disc 2. The program PGCEdit does this very easily, and this process takes (perhaps) less than 60 seconds.
4.) Burn the two results to two blank DVDs. Total time (for me) takes about 15 - 23 minutes.
Here is a link to the guide I use, which lets me keep menus on both discs:
Thanks for the help. I think I've got the idea now. Just one more thing though, how do you know where the layer break is? Is this where you would usually split the movie? Thanks
If you are splitting a commercial DVD9 disc onto two DVD single layer blanks, you do not need to concern yourself at all with the "layer break." It becomes completely irrelevent.
The only times you need concern yourself with this issue is when you are trying to burn material onto a dual layer blank disc.
When I split onto two disks (usually anything over say 6200) I back up the start of disk two into the last chapter of disk one. This is a little smoother for me for the movie transition flow from disc 1 to disc 2. You can do this by clicking on the back arrow in the split mode screen of Shrink into the frames of the previous chapter.
