I've seen articles on how to decrypt and rip a double sided dvd to one dvd using DVD Shrink. I was wondering how I can do this without shrinking it. I am trying to backup The Color Purple.
Your best bet is to buy to Double-Layer Verbatims if you have a double-layer drive. You should find out if your drive bitsets by looking it up in the "DVD Writer" database at videohelp.com. Then you won't compromise quality.
DLs are still rather expensive, although the prices have come down greatly this summer to $2 per disc, often less on sale. If you have the money, you can use Double-Layer Verbatims to back up anything that won't fit onto a regular, cheap, single-layer DVD-5. If not, then you will have to either cut out extras, split the DVD (espcially for episodes of shows, or put hte main movie on one disc and the extra on another), or use compression - and maybe a combination of those. Compression programs like DVDShrink and CloneDVD2 are good if you only have to compress a few percent, but if you have to compress a lot, consider checking out DVD-Rebuilder with Cinema Craft Encoder (DVD-RB w/ CCE is a common abbreviation around here.) Even then, even the best compression programs can produce lousy results, so keep the DLs in mind if keeping the original quality is important to you.
-Do you believe you own your computer and shouldn't be told what you can run and do? Then say *NO* to Microsoft Vista!
-Since half the questions here involve media problems, here ya go: Only use Verbatim or Taiyo-Yuden discs (get your TYs from Rima.com, not Supermediastore or meritline). Forget the rest, no matter what "brand" they sell under. Always burn at 4x speed regardless of the speed rating of this discs or your drive. If you have burn problems with these then you have to update your drive's firmware. For double-layer discs, only use Verbatim DVD+R DL and burn them at 2.4x speed.
I have been burning on dl verbatims for awhile now. I usually decrypt with DVD Decrypter and use pgcedit to set the layer break and then burn with imgburn. I just don't know how I would go about combining the two sides of the disc, arranging the two sides in the proper order, setting the layer break etc.
Older movies did what was called a flipper disc. You had to flip the disc to see the other half of the movie. If that's what you have, you might want to try this.