Is there an alternative to DVD-Shrink, that can compress a DVD image to a smaller size to fit on a writeable DVD?

The 2 best tools I know of that work are dvd95 and k9copy.
sudo apt-get install dvd95 or sudo apt-get install k9copy
installing k9copy on a non-kde system will pull down a lot of dependencies, which may or may not be an issue with you.

The best one out there is k9copy but I've been having issues with it in 12.10 64bit, a good alternative is dvd95 and there's another app called xdvdshrink though xdvdshrink's subtitle ripping capabilities seem broken.

Another option for you would be to run dvdshrink through wine. I have been able to do this rather easily, the only thing extra needed is to list your cdrom in your fstab file and then also add the drive in winecfg as well.

Start by running this command:

sudo mkdir -v /media/cdrom

This will make the directory where your cdrom will be mounted. Then run this command to open fstab with gedit as root.

gksudo gedit /etc/fstab

Here's the fstab line needed to mount the cdrom, simply copy and paste it to the end of your fstab file:

# built in CDrom
/dev/sr0    /media/cdrom    auto    ro,noauto,user,exec 0 0

Run this command:

sudo mount -a

Then run:

winecfg

Here's a picture of where to add drives in winecfg just click the drives tab, then the autodetect button. Then apply, and OK.

HandBrake

HandBrake is really good, and this is the tool I recommend.

The download is available at https://handbrake.fr

Better yet, there is a PPA at https://launchpad.net/~stebbins/+archive/handbrake-releases/

Although the PPA for the most recent release (version 9.9) is for Raring, it works just fine in 14.04. You can add the HandBrake repository for Raring and install HandBrake in Ubuntu 14.04 as follows:

echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/stebbins/handbrake-releases/ubuntu raring main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/handbrake.list
echo "# deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/stebbins/handbrake-releases/ubuntu raring main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/handbrake.list
apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 816950D8
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install handbrake-gtk

K9Copy

K9Copy was an excellent tool, but the developer had stopped supporting it years ago. Apparently another developer has picked up the project just recently (http://k9copy-reloaded.sourceforge.net/#start) and released version 3.0.0, if you want to try it. I haven't tried it myself, so I do not know if it will work in 14.04. You will have to build it from scratch, since pre-built packages for the new version are not available yet.

I will try to maintain here an updated answer on the programs that I was able to test, discussing the solutions that have been proposed.

I will leave aside DVDShrink in Wine.

DVD9to5 (dvd95) - I have tested it by making a backup of two video-dvds as iso files. (They were both larger than 5 GB and maybe protected). There is an option to keep the menus, which I suppose means the structure of the original dvd.

But the iso files were not playable in VLC.

And I think I know why. In fact DVD95 cannot select and backup more than one track each time (a confirmation of this here).

While it may work ok with dvd movies that have only one such track (have to test that yet) the ones that have multiple tracks will put a big problem. These are dvds with more than a single movie. When backing up a dvd with multiple tracks the original menus will be lost because they relate to the other files that will not be copied. Also, subtitles are not usable in this way, and also scrolling does not work. The separate vob files would be playable separately.

In a such case the good part is that you have a better quality of the main video than in the case all the dvd image would have been there (like DVDSrink can do). I noticed in one case that the main video that was selected kept its original size, and all "shrinking" of the image was done only by removing the other tracks. It is not the same image in this way. But if that is not a problem for you (you do not need menus and subtitles) you may use a simple command dvdbackup -F (source for this here: How do I make an ISO copy of a DVD movie?) and in this way get only the main feature which might very well be smaller than 4.7GB

• DVD95 may be an alternative only in the case of dvds with a single track.

Handbrake - can convert dvd video to MKV and to mp4: maybe a good solution to convert (have not tested it yet), but not to 'shrink' dvd images,

so, Handbrake is not a DVDShrink alternative.

xDVDShrink (also .deb) - Does not work on all dvd sources (encrypted etc). The dvds tested above were not even accessed, so I tested with 4.7 dvd movie without protection.

No support for subtitles is seems (also mentioned here), one single video title and one single audio channel selectable it looks.

I had made also these settings:

that were not followed. No .iso file was to be found on the desktop or elsewhere. But nor the /tmp files had been deleted as set, so I was able to test those. The full dvd files were found in /tmp/mydvd/BUILD/, but they can be played with VLC and SMPlayer just as ordinary video files, without the original dvd structure of menus. The most severe problem is the absence of subtitles (funny in my case as I was testing with a Japanese movie.)

Therefore: xDVDShrink is NOT an alternative.

I have left aside for a while k9copy, which many have recommended in the past, and which, as already stated under this question, is considered the real DVDShrink alternative for Ubuntu.

As the initial project is now inactive, there is a new developer that supports a k9copy-reloaded version - HERE.

I have installed without any problems the latest deb posted there - the Jessie version - in a Kubuntu 15.04-development branch. It has added only 13 new dependencies.

In Ubuntu Unity and any other non-KDE desktops it will come with a lot more KDE dependencies. But that is the problem with many other KDE applications that at some point may be needed for a specific purpose. If your purpose is to backup DVS-s the way DVDShrink does in Windows, then having some KDE dependencies is not such a bad deal.

k9copy-reloaded looks like a real alternative and for now the only answer to the question.

I will update this post as soon as I am able to test more solutions.

K9copy is said(...) to be the best DVD Shrink alternative. The original developer ceased developing K9copy. K9copy-Reloaded is the continuation of K9copy by a new developer. Information:

• New project page: http://k9copy-reloaded.sourceforge.net/
• k9copy-reloaded Debian/Ubuntu Packages: http://tomtomtom.org/k9copy-reloaded/en.html

IMHO it would be valuable to include a review of K9copy-Reloaded in @cipricus great post, I recommend using the Trusty/Utopic or Jessie packages from tomtomtom site. Beware that K9copy is Qt based and is best installed in a KDE environment, other environments possibly need to pull in a lot of dependencies.

As the purpose of the question was to update the answers under the older one, I will try to maintain here an updated answer on the programs that I was able to test, discussing the solutions that have been proposed.

I will leave aside for now DVDShrink in Wine.

For a while k9copy, which many have recommended in the past, and which, as already stated under this question, is considered the real DVDShrink alternative for Ubuntu, was not supported. But, as the initial project is now inactive, there is a new developer that supports a k9copy-reloaded version. Deb packages can be found HERE. To add a PPA - look HERE:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tomtomtom/k9copy 
sudo apt-get update 
sudo apt-get install k9copy

I have installed without any problems the latest deb posted there - the Jessie version - in a Kubuntu 15.04-development branch. It has added only 13 new dependencies.

In Ubuntu Unity and any other non-KDE desktops it will come with a lot more KDE dependencies. But that is the problem with many other KDE applications that at some point may be needed for a specific purpose. If your purpose is to backup DVS-s the way DVDShrink does in Windows, then having some KDE dependencies is not such a bad deal.

k9copy looks like a real alternative and for now the only answer to the question.

Considering other tools that were mentioned on askubuntu and that I was able to test at some point:

DVD9to5 (dvd95) - I have tested it by making a backup of two video-dvds as iso files. (They were both larger than 5 GB and maybe protected). There is an option to keep the menus, which I suppose means the structure of the original dvd.

But the iso files were not playable in VLC.

And I think I know why. In fact DVD95 cannot select and backup more than one track each time (a confirmation of this here).

While it may work ok with dvd movies that have only one such track (have to test that yet) the ones that have multiple tracks will put a big problem. These are dvds with more than a single movie. When backing up a dvd with multiple tracks the original menus will be lost because they relate to the other files that will not be copied. Also, subtitles are not usable in this way, and also scrolling does not work. The separate vob files would be playable separately.

In a such case the good part is that you have a better quality of the main video than in the case all the dvd image would have been there (like DVDSrink can do). I noticed in one case that the main video that was selected kept its original size, and all "shrinking" of the image was done only by removing the other tracks. It is not the same image in this way. But if that is not a problem for you (you do not need menus and subtitles) you may use a simple command dvdbackup -F (source for this here: How do I make an ISO copy of a DVD movie?) and in this way get only the main feature which might very well be smaller than 4.7GB

• DVD95 may be an alternative only in the case of dvds with a single track.

Handbrake - can convert dvd video to MKV and to mp4: maybe a good solution to convert (have not tested it yet), but not to 'shrink' dvd images,

so, Handbrake is not a DVDShrink alternative.

xDVDShrink (also .deb) - Does not work on all dvd sources (encrypted etc). The dvds tested above were not even accessed, so I tested with 4.7 dvd movie without protection.

No support for subtitles is seems (also mentioned here), one single video title and one single audio channel selectable it looks.

I had made also these settings:

that were not followed. No .iso file was to be found on the desktop or elsewhere. But nor the /tmp files had been deleted as set, so I was able to test those. The full dvd files were found in /tmp/mydvd/BUILD/, but they can be played with VLC and SMPlayer just as ordinary video files, without the original dvd structure of menus. The most severe problem is the absence of subtitles (funny in my case as I was testing with a Japanese movie.)

Therefore: xDVDShrink is NOT an alternative.

I will try to keep this post up to date.

Handbrake was suggested already but I would put forward another option that may work for you. It is called xDVDShrink Please bear in mind that I have not used it myself. Reading the documentation it seems that you have two options of shrinking, letting the program do it for you automatically, or manually selecting a shrink factor. It also seems to maintain the filesystem of the original DVD.

It is available as a tar.gz download from sourceforge. Follow the instructions here to install on your system.

There is only one other program that I have been able to find that hasn't already been mentioned and may be worth a look. Its called Vamps

The downside is, that Vamps is not capable to make DVD backups on its own. qVamps is a GUI, which enables the user to select titles from a DVD, uses Vamps for requantization and create a new DVD. qVamps uses dvdauthor for creation of the new DVD's data structures.

On 18.04 Dec 2018

Another way to do all this or rather another permutation of tricks is to:

➊ use Vobcopy to rip dvd to a folder

vobcopy -m

in terminal is all that is required

➋ THEN if you wish to reduce your 7+GiB folder to a 4.3 / 4.4GiB folder use K9copy assistant [K9] or indeed dvdshrink under Wine [since you have already done the rip no need to horse around adding to fstab]

This way is pretty foolproof. I also raced K9copy and dvdshrink and about same time [2 or 3 minutes to do compression]

I have been "backing up" DVD movie titles since about 2005. My typical procedure is:

1. Use the most recent version of DVDfab to remove encryption and copy files to hard drive, in .vob form.

2. Then process the .vob files through DVD shrink to compress and then write the output to an .iso file. Sometimes I use DVD shrink, without compression, to create a .iso file.

3. Use DVD burning software to burn the .iso file to a DVD, single or double layer.

This worked flawlessly when I used Windows. The result is an exact copy, except possibly for some compression, of the original DVD title. Then I changed to Debian Linux and it didn't work at all until now.

I was able to get DVDfab ver 9321 non-XP, by updating my system using:

sudo apt-get update

Then opening the package manager and updating all packages. What is most important is updating the wine program to the latest stable version available.

I had to configure Wine to operate in Windows 8 mode to get DVDfab operating properly.

Then I reinstalled DvdShrink; it ran properly until it came to the encoding process, it would progress about 3/4 of the way through and then it would display the following message:

dvd shrink error message: 
dvd shrink encountered an error and can not continue
Out of memory

Thinking about all the other responses to this problem on the internet, I thought by limiting the CPU speed of the DVDshrink process I might be able to slow the rate at which data is encoded so that it matches the speed at which it can be written to the hard drive.

Linux has a program which does exactly that, it is called CPUlimit you can download it via:

sudo apt install cpulimit

So I tried DVDshrink again, using CpuLimit for the DVDShrink process. I had to experiment with the slow-down factor, though finally it worked. If I slow down the DVDshrink process to 10% of maximum it will no longer display the memory message.