No matter what DVD-to-DVD-R compressor or transcoding software you use, MenuShrink will improve the quality of the backup. The scheme is simple - by replacing the animated menus with still picture some more free space is recovered. This free space is then used for the actual movie, resulting in higher average bit rate thus giving you better image quality.

What is surprising is the amount of space that can be saved. For example The Star Wars Trilogy (Episodes IV, V, VI) has menu structures of roughly 500 megabytes for each disc. At the MenuShrink homepage there are reported savings of over 2000 megabytes! Now as the net capacity of a single layer DVD recordable disc is about 4.3 gigabytes, the amount of space saved by shrinking the menu is substantial, and may result as an dramatic improvement to the overall quality.

Best of all - MenuShrink is free, and extremely easy to use.

1. Drag and Drop

First you must have the original DVD ripped to the hard drive, using the file mode. The result is a VIDEO_TS folder, that contains a number of files (.VOB, .IFO, .BUP). After starting the MenuShrink application, you simply drag and drop the VIDEO_TS folder on top of the MenuShrink main window using your mouse.

2. The Advanced options

The Frame Select slider represents the default frame still image to replace the video animation. Lower value uses a frame closer to the beginning of the animation and vice versa. Preview Select gives you to option to preview and manually select the frame that replaces the video animation. You should leave the Remove "stop" in sub pics enabled. Intro/outro lead in and lead out from the menu. You can shrink them to gain more bytes, but leaving them untouched gives you a smooth transition from menu to another.