digitalFAQ.com Forum - DVD Shrink to remove the non-english languages -- recompresses?

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technical question for you regarding dvd shrink.
say i ripped a comercial dvd to my hard drive.
say it was just a tad larger than a +5 dvd.
so, i use dvd shrink to remove the non-english languages such that the
resulting output will fit a +5 dvd.

Okay. Noted.

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does this mean dvd shrink "copies" over the main movie without changing it in any way?

Yes.

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or does the dvd shrink engine re-encode the main movie as part of the rebuilding of the dvd?

No.

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in the event it does re-build the dvd, is any quality lost?

If it did, it would. But it doesn't, so it won't. :p

You could also argue about "lost quality" too -- the excess bitrate often used in retail DVDs, combined with high quality clean sources, gives you more wiggle room to reduce bitrate (even by the more-lossy non-decompressed transcoding used by DVD Shrink!) with visual reduction or artifact additions.

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curious as to how this and similar apps tackle re-engineering a dvd.

Other apps have been known to alter the video, even at "100%" -- so I only speak to DVD Shrink here. Most other DVD-transcode software is crap anyway, not much reason to use anything other than DVD Shrink.