SmallDVD SmallNews SmallShrink
Monday, July 25, 2011
I am pleased to say that both SmallDVD and SmallShrink appear to be working perfectly OK with Mac OS X 10.7 / Lion. If you spot any problems with them on Lion, please do let me know.
Unfortunately, SmallNews has a problem, and doesn’t even start up. I will have a look at this and issue a new release when it’s fixed
SmallDVD SmallNews SmallShrink
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
At the start of 2010, I wrote about my plans for SmallDVD for the year. This is a quick review of those plans, plus thoughts for 2011.
The plan was to make a few improvements to SmallDVD 2, and start work on SmallDVD 3 which would replace the current AppleScript application with Objective C. The first of these was done, with 2.3 and 2.4 being released, but I’ve made absolutely no progress on SmallDVD 3.
SmallShrink had two releases, 0.3 and 0.4, which has taken it to a state where it works on most DVDs, but would still benefit from further improvement, particularly in the user interface.
SmallNews has had the most active development on it, with five releases, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3 and 2.4, adding significant features such as ePub and Kindle support. I also have a 2.5 release almost ready which adds the option for storing articles in a CouchDB database.
So, plans for 2011. I would still very much like to get SmallDVD converted to Objective C, but it’s quite a big task, and the current version does do almost everything I want of it at the moment. I’ve actually been using SmallDVD a lot less recently, as I have been using disk/network video players (firstly a Networked Media Tank then a new Apple TV) in place of DVDs. So I don’t have a huge amount of motivation to rewrite SmallDVD at the moment.
SmallShrink I was using extensively with my Networked Media Tank, to rip an ISO image of a DVD. But for the Apple TV, I use Handbrake instead. So I’m using this a lot less frequently now as well.
SmallNews is the one I use every day, but again, it does almost everything I want it to do already.
I have considered working on getting some of these apps into the new Mac App Store. But I recently read about VLC being removed from the store because Apple’s distribution mechanism contravenes the GNU Public License (GPL). As SmallDVD and SmallShrink use a lot of GPL-licenced components, it would appear to rule out ever putting them in the App Store. SmallNews may be possible, but I’d have to check the licenses of the (fewer) open source components it uses.
So, right now, I’m not sure exactly where I’m going to spend time in 2011. If you have suggestions or requests, please do feel free to submit them through the feedback button.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
SmallShrink 0.4 is available for download.
This version (at long last) makes it easier to work out which titles from the DVD you want to copy.
Also, I've finally got round to writing some instructions on how to use SmallShrink.
SmallShrink 0.4 only supports MacOSX 10.6. I thought that the previous version also worked on 10.5, but on closer inspection, it didn't really. 10.5 support is feasible, and I hope to add it back in soon.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
SmallShrink 0.3 is available to download. This remains a fairly technical release but it makes major improvements and flexibility to the way DVDs are processed, and adds a variety of other features:
This release has only been tested on Mac OS X 10.6.
Many of these features need a little explaining, which I will aim to document in the near future. What does need explaining now though is the extraction/demuxing/remuxing options.
The default method of extracting, demuxing and remuxing the DVD is to use mencoder. In my own tests, I've found that this works on almost all of my DVD collection. Although I've not timed it, I think that using tccat for extraction, ffmpeg for demux and mplex for remux is a little faster, but less reliable for heavily copy-protected DVDs.
If this release proves to be fairly stable, the next one will aim to hide some of the technical detail to make it more accessible for "normal" people.
Finally, the source code is now available at smallshrink.googlecode.com.
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
SmallShrink 0.2 is available for download. I feel that this is a big, big improvement on the initial 0.1 release as it has numerous enhancements in the user interface.
Full usage instructions to follow soon. Hopefully.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
I am pleased to announce the first release of SmallShrink.
SmallShrink extracts the main movie from a DVD, and reauthors it to fit onto a 4.7Gb single layer DVD-R. It is inspired by (but currently is nowhere near as functional as) the legendary DVD Shrink application for Windows, with a little help from the various Linux DVD9->DVD5 guides around the internet.
The initial v0.1 release provides a simple interface to a number of command line tools which do the extract, shrinking and reauthoring. It certainly can’t deal with every DVD, and works on about 80% of DVDs I’ve tried it with. More recent, heavily-copy-protected DVDs present the most trouble.
This release is very much experimental, and I welcome feedback – what DVDs does it work on, what doesn’t work? What would make it more useful? I am not yet sure of the final direction it will take – it may stay as a standalone application, or may become part of SmallDVD.
SmallShrink 0.1 requires an Intel Mac, running Mac OS X 10.6
UPDATE: Now also supports Mac OS X 10.5
SmallDVD SmallNews SmallShrink
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Desperate to know the latest information about the exact status of SmallDVD, SmallNews, etc, development in microscopic detail? No, I thought not. But if you were, you could follow twitter.com/smalldvd
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