14 DAY TRIAL // The DVD burning market is no longer cornered by two or three applications and the user has a variety of choices to pick from. The same happened with DVD backup programs that are more and more reliable and the technology used can be said to be pretty trivial.
From DVD-Cloner to Clone DVD, all DVD burning and backup softwares give you more or less the same options. All the softwares I have worked with by now included the burning option. But the problems appear when you want to make a backup of a DVD 9 disc to a normal 4.7G DVD. If you need such an option, then your software search narrows down.
Amazon Multimedia has created Amazon DVD Shrinker, a pretty powerful application capable of fulfilling your DVD backup needs. Some users prefer to keep only the essential of the movie, and remove all the useless audio files, subtitles, or languages. To save as much space as possible some users would rather keep only the movie file and remove the extras and the menu.
Amazon DVD Shrinker has a nice interface that allows you a fast DVD shrinking process. The seven days trial period gives you the opportunity to properly test the application and all its features, as time is the only limitation you will get. The price of the full featured, unlimited version of the application is $34.95 which is a whole lot cheaper than the top shrinkers on the market.
The interface cannot be resized in any way which is not so good, as the application window is not so large and you do not have a comprehensive view of the files in VIDEO_TS folder. But that is not a tragedy and you can work very easily with the software as the content of the video folder is displayed on the left and all the cloning options are available on the right part.
After selecting the source, the user can select the copy mode. Full DVD Copy will perform a DVD backup of the entire disc, with everything it has included (all the audios, subtitles, special features etc.) and the result will be an exact replica of the source. The Customize option lets you set the maximum size of the output result and it allows you to shrink a DVD 9 (8.5 GB) to a DVD 5 (4.7GB) or a lower size.
A third step for backing up your DVD-video file is to select the target path. The user can choose to save the file in a folder on the computer for future burning or to directly write the file on a disc. To enable the burning option check the Burn shrunk DVD files option at the bottom of the application window. After the shrinking is finished the software will automatically begin the burning process.
The built in burner can be used as a stand alone application and you do not have to save the files on the hard drive in order to write them on discs. I thought the burner will write any kind of data on the DVD. I know it was a long shot, but I just had to try it. Of course, the software will burn only DVD content. For the files to be successfully written on the disc you must define a temporary folder and the application should be given some space if you do not want any trouble.
The burning window contains the Safe Mode option which will delay the process with 15 seconds if enabled. The purpose of this option is to protect your DVD disc during the writing. In the information window (which can be hidden) the user will be displayed with the number of bytes written on the disc, as well as the buffer level. The Settings area allows you to enable ejecting the tray after the operation is completed, finalize the disc as well as enabling the Joliet File System.
The developer seems to have thought the application to a certain level of detail, as the burning function is equipped with and erasing option. So if you have a rewritable optical disc you do not have to use a stand alone software to delete the data as Amazon DVD Shrinker is perfectly capable of doing this for you and the options for this function are to the standards of every other burning tool. The erase can be performed either fast or complete (the equivalents of quick erase and full erase).
The Good
Amazon DVD Shrinker is a light, easy to use DVD backup tool. During the shrinking or copying activity it will display information about the total amount of time it requires to complete the copying/shrinking process, as well as the elapsed and remaining time. The speed of the process and the compression ratio are also displayed.
The Bad
During the burning there is no hint on the amount of time necessary to complete the job. All there is displayed is the completion percentage of the task.
My computer was sort of crippled when I shrunk a DVD video. Taking a look in Task Manager I saw that almost all my CPU power was used by Amazon DVD Shrinker and the memory usage reached 140MB.
The Truth
Price is good, the application works fine, the trial period has no restrictions other then the seven days use, so try it, see if it suits your needs.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
