Chetwood's MultiShrink 1.4

A small tool to enable DVD Shrink batch processing

Latest version can always be found on my homepage. Discussion and help at the forums over at dvdshrink.org.

Contents

1. Usage
2. Limitations
3. Burning
4. Settings
5. Version History
6. Legal stuff
7. Credits

Usage

Intall the self-extracting rar archive's contents to a directory of your choice. Start up as many instances of DVD Shrink as DVDs you want to encode in a row. Adjust backup settings you're going to use in each instance, e.g. preferred streams, start/end frame, compression, target device, quality settings, etc.

Select 'Backup DVD' and adjust those settings as well: target format, target directory, quality settings and so on. Once you've done this in all instances open up MultiShrink, adjust settings and select 'Run'.

MultiShrink will now start the backup process with the last instance of DVD Shrink that you had opened and background to the tray to check every 60 secs whether the 'Backup Complete' window exists. As soon as it does (which obviously means that Shrink has completed backing up a DVD), this instance of DVD Shrink will be closed and the next one will be starting another backup and so on until all backups are done. Once all backups are through MultiShrink will terminate itself after having executed those actions you checked in the settings.

Limitations

DVD Shrink does not enable us to call a file from it thus

• one has to start the tool manually.



• I have to poll for the 'backup complete' window. Doing this in real-time would eat up too many cpu cycles better spend on encoding so I set an intervall of 60 seconds. Thus on occasion you gotta wait 60 seconds after completion of an encoding process to see an instance close and the backup in another instance start.



• Global settings seem to override per-instance settings (yet to be confirmed by DVD Shrink)
  
  If you open up 2 instances of DVD Shrink with DVDs 1 and 2 and enable 'Remove P-UOPs' under Edit > Preferences > Output Files in DVD 1 but disable this setting in DVD 2, the setting is suddenly enabled in DVD 1 as well. At first I thought this was due to the fact that whenever you open this setting the value would be read anew from the registry so that not reopening the settings window in instance 1 would keep the setting previously selected. It seems however that before starting the encoding process DVD Shrink does read from the registry again and thus override the previously selected setting in instance 1 with the new setting set by instance 2.
  
  Curiously enough this effect does not seem to occur with settings that are referred to from the 'Backup DVD' window, i.e. if I select 'Enable burning with Nero' in instance 1 and disable it in instance 2, it is still enabled in the 'Backup DVD'-window of instance 1 (but not checked in the settings under File I/O). All the other settings however are affected.
  
  This even holds true for any number of instances and combination of settings you use: whatever settings are set in the instance opened last are used for all other instances as well even if you already are in the 'Backup DVD' window and all you gotta do is press 'OK' to start the encoding process.
  
  This could lead to trouble if one would depend on using different settings for different DVDs, e.g. one DVD with 'logical remapping of enabled streams' and another without this setting (however due to several problems you shouldn't enable this setting at all). I'm not calling this a bug since DVD Shrink obviously never was aimed at being used as an 'MDI' or at running several instances simultaneously. However, since there's almost no situation where someone would want to use different general settings in their rips this limitation shouldn't cause any problems.

Burning

Since the whole point of MultiShrink is encoding a bunch of DVDs in a row unattendedly, I haven't given too much attention to burning processes, also because I can't foresee other ppl's systems. I suggest you use MultiShrink as intended: shrink as many DVDs to ISO/harddisk folder as your HD can handle and burn them one by one in the background during the next day while working at your computer.

However, in case you still want to burn immediately here is what happens with different 'Select backup target' scenarios:

• ISO image file and burn with DVD Decrypter/CopyToDVD

When the first movie is finished shrinking, DVD Decrypter/CopyToDVD is started automatically and the ISO gets burned to DVD-R and that's it. As this instance of DVD Shrink automatically terminates itself when handing over to DVD Decrypter/CopyToDVD there will be no 'Backup Complete' message and thus no other instance of Shrink will be started by MultiShrink.


• Burn with Nero (one DVD writer installed)

DVD Shrink will use the Nero burning engine from it's own interface, thus you will get a 'Backup Complete' message and MultiShrink will initiate the encoding process with another instance of DVD Shrink. Since DVD Shrink automatically pops out the DVD after burning, the next DVD will be shrinked to ISO on your HD and DVD Shrink will wait for you to put in another DVD.

As long as you don't do that, MultiShrink will not get to see another 'Backup Complete' window and thus not initiate a new encoding process from another instance.


• Burn with Nero (several DVD writers installed)

From the DVD Shrink interface you can select which writer will be used by the Nero burning engine thus you can fill up your writers with DVD-R blanks and select a different writer in the 'Select backup target' dialogue of each instance of DVD Shrink. As soon as one instance has finished burning the next one will start encoding.

In case you selected 'shutdown computer when done' in MultiShrink you will end up with a computer turned off and several DVD writers with open trays allowing for dust to penetrate them.

NOTE: According to some users on the DVD Shrink Forums when using the Nero engine DVD Shrink would always burn at max speed. I couldn't verfiy this myself, still you may try on rewritables first.

Settings

Enable logging (default)
Creates a 'MultiShrink.log' in the same directory the exe is run from which is updated every time a backup has finished. If the file already exists new entries will be appended to the end of it.

Shutdown computer when done
The computer will be shut down once all instances are done encoding. A small window with a progress bar will pop up offering roughly 60 seconds to cancel the shutdown. No matter what other options are checked, the shutdown routine is the very last function to be executed before terminating the tool.

Delete source dir after encode (no re-authored DVDs!)
Deletes a source dir *every time* an instance has finished encoding. Comes in handy if you use the same HD as source and destination which can quickly eat up disk space when a lot of DVDs are done in a row.

Since the DVD Shrink GUI does offer no way to determine which source directories certain titles are used from, this feature is not available on re-authored DVDs. If your encoding session covers both re-authored and full-disc backups only the latter will be deleted.

CAUTION: Use this feature at your own risk!

Play sound when done
Use the browse button to select any sound you like to hear once all instances are done encoding.

Run program when done
Use the browse button to select any program you would like to run once all instances are done encoding.

Do a NET SEND when done (XP/2K/NT only!)
Uses the Windows Messenger service (not the MSN Messenger!) to send short messages to other users on your LAN which pop up as a small window on the recipient's desktop. Useful if you've got your second machine in the basement doing all the encoding which can notify you of completing it's task.

NOTE:

Due to Microsoft's ineptitude the service could be abused by spammers over the internet so in their typical way of dealing with problems they simply disabled it in XP SP2. To enable it check out the Microsoft Knowledgebase for more info.

Save settings (default)
Creates a 'MultiShrink.ini' in the same directory the exe is run from which is updated every time the 'Run' button is clicked.

Version History

1.4	released:	03/30/2005
	added:	In addition to the english version MultiShrink can now handle the german version of DVD Shrink.
1.3	released:	12/26/2004
	fixed:	In some not reproducible cases of 'delete source dir after encode' being checked one or more files would be not deleted and thus the source dir not removed. I assume it's similar to the effect one sometimes experiences when installing software. The program's just been installed but the 'setup.exe' cannot be deleted yet cause windows still has got it locked before cleaning it from memory or something. To circumvent this I added a short timed loop for MultiShrink to verify whether all files were deleted or else try again until they were.
	added:	additional info to the readme to clarify some issues raised on the boards
	changed:	from Freeware to Donationware to give people an incentive to donate or a bad conscience if they don't ;)
1.2	released:	11/01/2004
	added:	lots of options to make batch encoding more convenient
	changed:	name to a less bulky 'MultiShrink'
1.0	released:	09/19/2004

Legal Stuff

This software is provided 'as is'. I'm not to be held responsible for any damage done to your system or data whatsoever.

This software is Donationware, you can use and distribute it in any way as long as it is accompanied by this unmodified readme and provided you do not charge money for it. However you are encouraged to donate a small amount of money (say 1 $ or whatever suits you fine) to help make my time spent on coming up with guides and tools worthwile. Simply click on the Paypal button on my download page. Thanks!

Credits

This tool was compiled with a completely unmodified version of AutoIt3.

Many thanks to the cool and helpful members of the AutoIt Forums.

Thanks to dvdshrink for his amazing tool.

Thanks to r0lZ for doing PgcEdit.

Thanks to ddlooping for hosting my stuff at his domain.