No, currently (although I wouldn't surprise to see this change eventually) you can only tell it to encode at different levels (Mode>Steal space from extras (50% for example)) and remove audio/subtitles you don't want.

You can use any other program to reconstruct the dvd as you wish, and then tell it to output without any compression, and then just point DVDrebuilder to this directory and encode.

That will give you the best of both worlds, but its slightly longer (but not too long, since there's no re-encoding, its just re-compiling the DVD) as you perform a step before encoding.

Well the third quote you use indicates I'm open to the possibility of RB being better (*IF* I used it and *IF* the results were indistinguishable), but if it wasn't I'd go for the application I've used before.

As for the other two, 'fine' and 'good' results are 'satisfactory' as far as I'm concerned. If I'd meant 'excellent' or 'no different to the original' I would've said that.

We'll settle on 'Low Standards' then, as very little I buy, burn or Shrink gets watched more than once so as long as the result is satisfactory (good, fine etc.) then I'm happy.

Whatever Spud, whatever.

hmm so i would get shrink to remove the extras i don't want and then stick it in a directory but DON'T let it shrink it,then show rebuilder that dir and let it transcode that lot,with either taking some quality from extras or encoding the lot?

The use of shrink you've got right yes. The second part depends on the quality you want the extras your keeping, if they aren't too large, or/and you intend to watch them often (or need them for archive), then don't steal any from the extras and encode everything at 100% (ie don't select any reduction option).

It all depends on case by case. If you want those extras your keeping, but you prefer all the info spent on the main movie, then steal whatever suits you best (its a preference thing here).

50% isn't so hot, but its watchable, 25% is reasonable.

I generally either remove all extras, or if they're good, keep them at 100% since I intend to watch them. I have stolen 25% a couple of times, and the quality was okay but noticably lesser.

You can put everything on 100% and do more passes to maintain more accurate quality. 3 is a decent amount, the more you do the more time it takes. Some people do 5, but I think that takes too long and you don't get that much noticable improvement in the number of passes after 3.

rebuilder rocks for me, used it lots and results are great, most of the transcoder progs ive used tend to give you glitches or little noticable jerks or blocks here and there so if your a fussy bugger like me id say rebuilder is defo worth the time and little effort to get working right, use shrink to cut out all the crap or seperate the extras to a seperate disc if you really want them, which mostly you wont. Doom9's guide is superb. I got the latest version of cce and followed the guide and there you go, just setup batch mode and go to work, come home and enjoy . Im no expert but with a 3 pass encode you really will get results to be happy with, i wont be using the others unless i have to now and if i use another one it would be clone dvd 2 which ive found good in the past.

in DVD shrink if i put no compression on the main movie file and remove the unwanted extras and the whole lot comes to under the required dvd size would that be ok to use for keeps and burn?....since i've not taken anything from the movie (besides DTS) shrink won't encode it right?....thus not messing it up,or am i missing it here?

yes if you remove everything and there's no encoding step taken by shrink, and you data is 4.43GB or less (whatever the DVD5 size is), then you can burn with no problems.

I've done that a few times, normally removing extras just means when you select them from the menu nothing happens, I've removed dubbed tracks, never taken off the primary one, but I assume it just then defaults to the next audio track.