So obviously there's a stickied thread on reauthoring here. I thought about putting this in there, but decided since I put a lot of work in to crafting this guide, I'd introduce it separately.
SecretAgentSuperDragon's guide is a great guide. It's what I used to get in to reauthoring. But I thought that the straight text could be hard to follow for novices. I've cooked up this guide, with plenty of visual aids and a lot of exposition. Probably too much. I tried to be thorough, but I might have overwhelmed the reader with too much information.
Anyway, here's the guide, with plenty of visual aids and links. It's in PDF.
Thrifty's Reauthoring Guide for Beginners.
Here's a
guide, written by Tralfamadorian, for Mac users.
EDITED TO ADD: Someone who's not around much wrote a decent guide on using the auto ducking feature in Audacity 1.3.
Auto ducking basically reduces the volume of the movie audio whenever a riff comes up, so that the louder parts of a movie won't drown out the riff. Auto ducking adds a significant amount of processing time to a reauthor; about 2/3 of the movie's run time.
The guide can be viewed
here.
EDITED TO ADD: This guide will ONLY create DVDs
without menus. I did it this way because a menu-less DVD can be done with only free software. If you want menus, you'll need to plunk down $250 for DVD Lab Pro, and follow
the guide I wrote on that.
EDITED TO ADD: An increasing number of DVDs are coming out with advanced copy protection. Some of these include Twilight, The Dark Knight, Twilight: New Moon, Casino Royale, Tranformers Revenge of the Fallen, and Star Trek (2009). Many people have recommended purchasing
AnyDVD. The cost for a lifetime license is roughly $86.00. I say "roughly" because the price is listed as 64 Euros, so the U.S. price is subject to exchange rates. Also, if there's a sale going on, it'll be less.
There are some ways to get around this without springing for AnyDVD, but it looks like that's becoming the new standard. Here are some of the more troublesome movies, with links to discussions on reauthoring difficulties. If anyone knows of any I left out, let me know.
Star Trek (2009)The Matrix RevolutionsTransformers Revenge of the FallenTwilightTwilight: New MoonThe Dark KnightCasino RoyaleDark WaterEDITED TO ADD:
In this post later in the thread, Misty has put in a recommendation for DVD 43 as a free alternative to AnyDVD, for help ripping those hard to rip DVDs. I haven't used it, but it's worth a try if you're having trouble.
EDITED TO ADD: See earlier in the post, where I added a link to a guide for reauthoring for Mac users.