DvdReMake Pro Review

August 8, 2005

Review: DvdReMake Pro

Version: 3.1
Reviewer: Dee-27
Provided
by: DimadSoft
Review
Date: August
2005

Introduction:

There are many applications available for the Windows platform
for editing, shrinking, ripping and copying DVD movies. Some applications try to
be an all-in-one solution, offering copy, shrink, and burn.

DimadSoft's DvdReMake Pro specializes in a specific task
(presenting your DVD movie in just the way you want it.)

This is quite a bold claim. In the following review we will be
putting DvdReMake Pro through its paces and seeing if it lives up to its
creator's claims.

Thanks to
DimadSoft who was kind enough to provide us with DvdReMake Pro Version 3.1 for
this review.

Program Features:

A run down of the features of this
application immediately tells us this application has some very sophisticated
editing options:

Put multiple DVDs together
preserving original menus
Replace menu background with
still
Move and insert new chapters on
an existing DVD
Edit VM commands (all commands
and valid combinations are supported)
Edit and create new Title Sets,
Titles, Chapters, Program Chains, Programs
Delete Title Sets, Titles,
Chapters, Program Chains, Programs
Move Title Sets, Program Chains,
commands within the disk or between different DVDs
Find DVD navigation
errors
Reorder menu buttons
Easily follow DVD navigation
using "Goto Destination" and History pane
Change properties of the video,
audio and sub picture tracks
Modify buttons and color schemes
in either still or motion menus
Easily change highlights colors

In DimadSoft's
Own Words:

DvdReMake
Pro is a powerful,
yet intuitive DVD editor that will let you change content, appearance and
navigation of a DVD disk without the need for complete disk
re-authoring.

Using
unique editing features of the DvdReMake Pro you can completely
customize your DVD backups, fix authoring errors, merge DVDs or even compile a
new DVD from bits and pieces of other DVD disks.

DvdReMake
Pro will even fix
incorrectly authored/edited disks. If mismatch between information in ifo and
vob files is found the program will try to fix the problem.

It is
our firm belief that the user of DvdReMake Pro should not pay for yet another
ripper, burner or transcoder option when good software already exists that the
user may already own.

Designing this
program we did not want to make it "universal". In a sense that if there are
tools available which are easy to use and they are either free or not expensive
- then we will try not to overlap with their functionality (approach is more
from Unix part of the world). For example DvdReMake Pro does not offer direct
import from the DVD, but there is DvdDecrypter; it does not write, but there are
plenty of programs that do it; it does not transcode - but there is a DVDShrink,
and others.

Let us now
move onto the next page where we look at the test PC, software requirements and
how to install this application.

Test Machine:

Motherboard: ASUSTeK A8N-SLI DELUXE
(nForce 4 SLI chipset)
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 3500+ (Venice)
800 MHz FSB.
RAM: 1 GB Corsair TWINX 2CL DDR
GFX: Leadtek Winfast 6600 TD (PCI
Express nVidia)
Sound: SoundBlaster Audigy 2
Hard disk: 1X 200GB Seagate Barracuda
(SATA): 1X 120GB Maxtor (SATA).
DVD-Burners: NEC ND-3540A (ripping drive) - NEC ND-3500AG (burning
drive)
Windows XP Pro with service pack 2

Third Party Software Used:

In order to fully test this application, some
third party software was used for rip, shrink, protection removal, and
burning.

Software Installation:

DvdReMake Pro is a very small application, weighing in at just
1.33 Megabytes, and the manual a further 1.68 Megabytes. With a combined size of
just 3 Megabytes, this shouldn't take long to download, even for 56K modem
users.

The files are zipped, so it's just a simple matter of
unzipping the files to your preferred directory on your hard drive. There is no
installation program. All that is required is to run the .EXE file. You can of
course create a shortcut so the program can be launched with ease.

On the next page
we will run through the programs features…

Program Run Through:

The Main Work Area:

Now let's take a look at the main work screen of DvdReMake Pro

Once DvdReMake Pro has been launched you are greeted with the start screen, similar to the screenshot below.

The first task was to set the program options; this is done by selecting the Tools menu.

The first options are for setting the application defaults, as shown in the screenshot below. Here you can set the 'default paths" among other things.

In the second option tab you can set the default format and target size as seen in the screen capture below.

Main Menu Items:

Now let's take a look at the main menu item functions.

File Menu:

Import DVD:
This opens a dialog and allows you to select a disc mounted in an optical drive, or a ripped file set on your hard drive (hard drive is preferred.)
New Project:
As the title suggests, this clears all data and allows you to start afresh.
Open Project:
As we would expect, this function allows you to load a previously saved project.

View Menu:

Toolbar:
Allows the toolbar to be hidden or made visible
Status Bar:
Shows or hides the Status Bar
History:
Opens the history window
Log:
Opens the log file
UI Theme:
Allows selection of the user interface theme
Docking Type:
Allows selection of various docking styles
Menus Animation:
Allows various animation effects to be selected for the menus

Tools:

Merge DVD's:
Opens a dialog to allow selection of several DVD's to be merged
Options:
Open the main options dialog

Help Menu:

Download User Manual:
Downloads a help file
Download Latest Version:
Checks for the latest version of the application
Support Forum:
Takes you to DvdReMake Pro's online support forum
About:
Displays information about DvdReMake Pro

Now it is time to see what this application can do. So let's head over to the next page……

Import DVD:

DVD Shrink was used to rip the DVD to the hard drive, although
DvdReMake Pro can rip the file from an optical drive, it is recommended to use a
3^rd party ripper and store the files on the hard drive, as this will
speed up the import process and put less stress on the optical drive once you
start editing the movie.

DvdReMake Pro cannot import a CSS protected DVD-Movie disc, as
DVdReMake Pro does not support the copying of protected movies. A
3^rd party program is required for this task. We used DVD Shrink and
AnyDVD to handle the protection removal.

DVD Shrink was setup with the target size being DVD9, this was
to ensure no compression was used. DVD Shrink was also setup to remove
encryption from the input movie as DvdReMake Pro cannot perform this task. We
also choose to backup the full disc with all the menus, extra's, and all
available sub channel and language tracks available.

As we can see
from the screenshot below DVD Shrink finished the task in 8 minutes 21 seconds
and stored our complete movie on the hard drive ready for editing with DvdReMake
Pro.

Now we were
ready to import the stored file set into DvdReMake Pro. To do this it's a simple
case of finding the required folder and clicking on 'select" (see screenshot
below)

Providing the
files have already been stored on the hard drive. The import process only takes
a few seconds to complete. In this case the full movie was imported into
DvdReMake Pro in 29 seconds. While the files are being imported a progress meter
is displayed, as seen in the screenshot below.

Once the import has completed, a window will open with an
overview of the imported disc. This display is also the main DvdReMake Pro work
screen. This window can be resized as necessary.

As we can see from the screenshot below, all the movie streams
are shown and we can see the main movie file of 3883.45 Megabytes will
comfortably fit on a Single Layer blank DVD media.

Now let's move
to the next page where we will find out about this applications editing
abilities.

Editing Functions:

The editing options are enormous,
with a huge selection of options to choose from. For this test we decided to
keep the main
movie, main sound track, and the menus

From the picture on the above screenshot, we can see the full
structure of our file set. Including the main movie, disc menu system, sound
tracks, sub channel tracks, and all the extra's.

We can also quite clearly see what we will have to disable to
reach our objective of only having the main movie, main sound track, and disc
menu.

This is a simple task of selecting the track you want to
disable or hide and right clicking on it. Once this is done a popup menu will
appear with the available options.

Remove Copyright
Information:

We will start by
removing the copyright information (see the screenshot below.)

Selecting each
block you wish to remove and then selecting 'hide block" removes this block from
the movie. If you wish all the blocks to be removed you can select 'Hide blocks
after this" and DvdReMake Pro will remove all the blocks in the current
structure. Once this has been done the edited blocks will be displayed (see
screen shot below.)

Removing The Disc
Extra's:

Now its time to
remove the disc extra's. On this particular DVD movie the extras are located in
'Video title set 3".
We will remove all the extras from the disc.

Once the extra's
had been removed we can see from the screenshot below, the full project will now
sit comfortably on a Single Layer blank DVD media.

We could have
exported the file set at this point, but we wanted to also remove the unwanted
language tracks and sub channel information. So let us head on and also do this
task.

Removing Sound
Tracks:

We have chosen
to only keep the 'AC3 6 channel" sound track for this movie, so we will remove
the 'AC3 2 channel" sound tracks. To achieve this task, we first selected
'Video title set 1" where our unwanted sound tracks were located. We then
selected the sound tracks we wished to remove by 'right clicking" on the track
and then selecting 'Disable track in all PGC" (see screen shot
below.)

And in the
screenshot below we can see our unwanted 'AC3 2 channel" sound tracks have been
disabled.

Removing Sub Channel
Tracks:

Now it was time
to remove the last of the data from the project. This task was to remove the
'sub channel data" (subtitles)
As we can see from the screenshot below, there
was 2 sub channel tracks on this disc.

Each sub channel
track was removed in turn, and we can see the tracks are now disabled in the
screenshot below.

Overall
Thoughts:

Removing the unwanted data from
this disc with DvdReMake Pro was a very simple task indeed. What's more, it took
no more than a minute to find and remove the unwanted data. This is very
impressive indeed.

Our editing on
this movie was now complete. On the nest page we will see how DvdReMake Pro
performs in the task of exporting a
movie…

Export A Movie And Burn To Disc:

Export
Movie:

Selecting the
'export" function will open a file selector dialog. In this dialog you get to
chose where to store your edited movie files (see screenshot below.)

Pressing the
select button starts off the 'export" function. Once again DvdReMake Pro
performed very well and exported the file set in 2 minutes 51
seconds.

Once exporting
the file set had completed. Opening the destination folder confirmed the file
set had exported without problems, and also confirmed the file set would burn
onto a Single Layer blank DVD media (see screenshot below.)

The file set produced for this disc of course will fit on a
Single Layer blank DVD media. This of course meant no file compression was
necessary, so no Video quality was lost. But what happens if the resulting file
set will not fit on a Single Layer blank DVD media?

If this happens you have 3 options.

Remove more
data from the project and see if you can make the project fit on a Single
Layer blank DVD media.
Use a
3^rd party compression application like DVD Shrink, as DvdReMake Pro
does not support file compression.
Instead of
using a Single Layer blank DVD media, use a Double Layer blank DVD
media.

Burning The File Set To
disc:

DvdReMake Pro cannot burn a file set to disc. For this task a
3^rd party burning application must be used. We could of course have
used DVD Shrink to burn the disc. But for this test we choose to use Nero
Burning Rom.

Once Nero was started we selected to burn a DVD-Video from the
'new project" wizard in Nero. Our file set was then dragged and dropped into
Nero's compilation window.
For this test we used a DataWrite Titanium 8x
blank DVD media. And the project was burned at 12x (thanks to E-Net Distribution
UK for supplying this media)

As we can see from the screenshot below, the task completed
successfully in 6 minutes 17 seconds.

The resulting
disc was then checked on our test PC and my set top DVD player. The disc played
flawlessly on both the test PC and the set top player, and all menu functions
were checked. Very cleverly DvdReMake Pro had disabled the now removed extra's
menu item, and all the language selection options.

Overall
Thoughts:

The playback quality of the resulting disc was awesome. Of
course, no compression had been used. We also ended up with a movie backup with
none of those annoying copyright messages, or the use once and forget
extra's.

It would be nice for some sort of disc burning function to be
available from within DvdReMake Pro. But it was no real hardship to burn the
resulting file set from a 3^rd party burn application.

Now let us
carry out some more advanced tests with DVdReMake Pro on the nest
page…

Advanced Tests:

Merging DVD Discs:

We used our test 'imported" DVD file set and a second 'imported" DVD file set for our merge test.

Once both file sets had been imported it was noted that the combined file size was over 11 Gigabyte (see screenshot below.)

For this test we chose to fit both movies onto a Double Layer blank DVD media, and we decided to remove everything except the two main movie streams. In other words, we would remove all the extras, additional sound tracks, menus, and sub channel information.

Having removed everything that could be removed from the two file sets, our project was still too big at 9.85 Gigabyte to fit on a Double Layer blank DVD Media. Some compression would be needed after the file set was exported (see screenshot below.)

At this point some manual entering of values will be required if you wish your two merged DVD movies to play consecutively. This is simple to perform and the help file will guide you through the task (see screenshot below.) CD Freaks also has a support forum for DvdReMake Pro and can be located here

Now it was time to export our merged movie. And although the resulting file set was large. DvdReMake Pro once again performed admirably, and completed the export in 10 minutes 16 seconds.

Once the export had completed we once again checked the file set in Windows Explorer. As we can see from the screenshot below the file set is large at 9.61 Gigabyte.

Now it was time to compress our file set. As we can see from our screenshot below, our file set was loaded into DVD Shrink.

Some 20 minutes 13 seconds later the file set was compressed and ready to burn (see screenshot below.)

The file set was loaded into Nero and burned to a DataWrite Double Layer blank DVD media. (Thanks to E-Net Distribution UK for supplying this media)

The burned disc was then tested on our test PC and my set top DVD player. The disc played well on both the PC and my set top player, with no perceived drop in quality after compressing the file set to fit on a Double Layer Media.

Below is a screenshot of the menu made by DvdReMake Pro. As we can see the application has created a menu item for each of the movies.

Below is a screenshot of one of those movies playing on our test PC.

Advanced Editing:

We thought we would try some advanced editing with DvdReMake Pro

Our goal was to move some blocks around and change the sequence in which they would play.
We have imported our test movie once more (see screenshot below.)

We made a small edit to show what can be done with this feature. What we did was move block 2 left one block. In other words, we swapped the blocks around. Block one is now replaced by block two, and our initial start block has now become block two (see screenshot below.)

Moving the blocks is not enough in itself, moving the blocks will only change the blocks position on the edited DVD. In order to change the playback sequence, we must also edit some PGC values in order to change the sequence in which the edited movie will play. For this we must use the built in editor (see screenshot below.)

We also took this opportunity to remove some blocks from the movie completely, and then exported the file set to the hard drive.

This time we decided to burn the file set with DVD Shrink (See screenshot below.)

For this task we chose the NEC ND-3500 DVD drive, and this time we choose a Verbatim 16x DVD media (Thanks to Verbatim GmbH - Germany for providing this media.)

As we can see from the screenshot above, the disc was burned successfully.

There are many more editing features this application has to offer. You may wish to view some of the 'how to" guides on DimadSofts website which guide you through the applications features. The guides can be located here.

This concludes our review of DvdReMake Pro. Let's head
over to the next page where we will summarise the good and the not so good parts
of this application.

Positives and Negatives

While using this program a number of points both positive and negative came up. These are listed below for easy reference.

Positives:

Easy to use
Very powerful editing functions
Lossless editing (Video quality is maintained)
Fast and stable application
At $49.95 it is relatively cheap to purchase

Negatives:

Requires 3^rd party software to rip and remove copy protection
Requires 3^rd party software if shrinking the movie is needed
Requires a 3^rd party burn application to burn a disc

Conclusion:

DimadSoft have come up with a very powerful application with DvdReMake Pro. It does not claim to be an all-in-one solution to ripping, copy protection removal, shrinking, and burning.

What DimadSoft have done with DvdReMake Pro, is make a powerful DVD Movie editing tool. When we look back at DimadSofts claims for this application, we can see the claims they made are true. You really can have a movie just the way you want it.

It's true to say the application could have also had functions to rip, remove protection, shrink, and burn a disc. But by providing this tool, and keeping in mind the recent efforts by certain companies to stop DVD movie backups, with programs such as DVD Decrypter being forcefully withdrawn, then limiting those functions is probably a very wise choice.

Final Word:

There is no doubt about it, this application has everything you need to tailor a DVD Movie and have it play in exactly the way you wish. DvdReMake Pro also manages to do this without sacrificing video playback quality.

We were very impressed by this applications features and performance. We therefore awarded DvdReMake Pro the CD Freaks Safe Buy award.