How to take a short movie that is on 2 dts discs and burn a copy so the entire movie fits on one disc.

(AKA: how to cram the third "Lord of the Rings" movie onto 2 discs)



(Please see "benefits" at the bottom of this page)

Got a cdrom burner and some blank 700MB CD-Rs?  You've got all you need.
(Apologies to those who are fully versed in the art of burning discs, since this will literally be step-by-step.)


Insert disc A of the movie you are going to re-assemble into your computer's cdrom drive.  In the "root directory" (shown) you will have a folder called "DTS" and a file called "DTS.EXE"




Inside the "DTS" folder you will find various files.  In this disc "A" of this particular example there is:

PREVIEW.TXT
R14.TXT
R14T5.AUD
R1T5.AUD
R2T5.AUD

It is important to note that any trailers that have been printed on feature discs are always titled "R14T5.AUD".  The text file "R14.TXT" tells which trailers are on the disc.  Frequently these trailers eat up so much space on the disc that a short movie must be spread out over 2 discs.  If you aren't having a love affair with playing trailers in dts, or intentionally want to ensure that they do not, when you make your burned copy you may simply not include those files.




Click the BACK button so you are at the root directory of the cdrom drive.  Hold the CTRL button down while you left click on the "DTS" folder as well as the "DTS.EXE" file.  Now right click one of the files and select COPY.


Head over to whichever hard drive you plan on temporarily storing these files.  In this instance we have selected to store them on drive C.  Right click inside this folder and select NEW --- FOLDER.




When the folder appears, simply type DTS or whatever you want to call this temporary folder.  (You will delete it once you are finished.)



Now open up the folder and right click and select PASTE.  The contents from the disc will now be copied to this folder on your hard drive.



When the files have finished transferring, you will have a copy that looks just like this.  Now eject the "A" disc and insert the "B" disc into your cdrom drive.



This time go into the "DTS" folder and select all of the individual AUD files inside of it, right click and select COPY.



Go back to the DTS folder (or whatever you labeled it as) on your hard drive and open the DTS folder that is beside the DTS.EXE file, then right click and select PASTE.



The remaining files will transfer.



When all of the files have transferred, inside that "DTS" folder will be everything from the two discs, as if you had one HUGE cdrom.



Highlight all of the MOVIE files.  For your reference:
R1T5 = reel 1
R2T5 = reel 2
R3T5 = reel 3
...and so forth.

Now the left side of the screen where it says "Total File Size: 644MB".  As you can see, all of these files would EASILY fit onto a 650MB disc when you delete the trailer files...so let's do that.




Highlight the 3 trailer files, right click and select DELETE, then press ENTER.



You should now have a folder on your hard drive that looks like this, with a "DTS" folder and a "DTS.EXE" file in it.  It is important to note that the finished disc only needs ONE copy of "DTS.EXE" on it.  Do not copy both of them.  You may copy either one, they are identical files.



If you were to open that "DTS" folder above, you would see ONLY the movie files for reels 1-5 (the complete feature).
Now you are ready to burn your 2 disc movie onto 1 disc.


For this example, we are using Nero 5 burning software.  You may however use most any burning software.

Select CD-ROM (ISO) disc and click NEW.



Browse to your hard drive and find the folder "DTS" and open it.  As you can see on the right side of the screen above inside that folder is the folder "DTS" and the "DTS.EXE" file.  Highlight those two items and drag them over to the left side of the screen.



Your screen should now look like this.  Looking at the blue line at the bottom of the screen, you have only used about 650MB of space on your 700MB blank disc.  (Remember, the R1T5.AUD, R2T5.AUD, R3T5.AUD, R4T5.AUD and R5T5.AUD files are inside that DTS folder.)



Now before you burn that disc, right click on the name of the CD to be burned and select RENAME.



Rename it to read "DTS".  Your new dts cd has now been compiled and is ready for burning.  Click FILE and then WRITE CD and this screen will appear...



Assuming you have burned discs on this computer before, all you now have to do is click WRITE and wait for the cd to be burned.


BENEFITS OF THIS PROCEDURE

There are many benefits of re-burning dts discs.
***Please note this assumes you are burning with 700MB CD-Rs, and not 650MB discs like dts uses.***

*When you get a short movie (under 107 minutes in running time) and you want to fit it onto one disc because you have a 2 drawer dts player and desire to play a trailer disc in the second drive.

*When you get a short movie (under 107 minutes in running time) and you want to fit it onto one disc because you have only one functional cdrom drive in your dts player.

*When you want to delete the trailer files so that your trailers may play in analog sound to help prevent your audience from getting their heads blown off due to the extreme volume of the way trailers in digital are recorded.  (Note, even for longer movies over 107 minutes, you can simply re-burn the one disc that contains the trailer files.)

*Lord of the Rings - Return of the King  -  When you are playing a movie that dts sends on 3 discs, that has a running time of less than 3 hours 35 minutes, but you only have a 2 drawer player (or only 2 of your 3 drawers are functional).  Likewise, converting this 3 disc movie to a 2 disc movie would allow owners of 3 disc players to continue to use their subscription trailer disc.  In this instance, you would set up a disc to have the "DTS.EXE" file as well as a folder "DTS" that contains any 5 of the 10 reels.  Then you would make another disc that also has a copy of the "DTS.EXE" file as well as a folder "DTS" which contains the other 5 of the 10 reels to the movie.  Remember, the dts players do not care which reels are on which discs, just so long as they are all there.


IMPORTANT - Please remember that not all cdrom drives are created equal!  The drives which dts uses in their players are of high quality.  If you are trying to read an original dts disc with a low quality cdrom drive, it is possible that it may not be able to read all of the data.  Likewise, if you are using a cheap burner, your results may not be of a high quality and glitches in playback may occur.  For this reason we STRONGLY recommend that the first time you make a burned dts cd, that you do a test run-through to an employee with the analog sound turned off (block the led's light from reaching the analog pickup lens or turn off the exciter) to verify your components are of proper quality for this task.  If you have sound problems, make SURE you try to run the film with the ORIGINAL dts discs before complaining.  The error may be yours.

We highly recommend Plextor cd burners and TDK VeloCD burners.  They have proven themselves hundreds of times to burn flawless dts discs, readable in ANY dts player.  These can be had for under $50 from reputable online dealers such as newegg.com