Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Problem copying a DVD I own, please help??

Ok, I have the DVD "American Beauty" that I purchased a few years ago. Anyway, I was going to make a copy of it, so my sister and brother in-law could watch the movie. I would loan them mine, but they don't live close and I would have to mail my original.

First I tried DVD Shrink, the most recent version, it gets about 50% during the analyzing stage then freezes up and won't complete, I believe I get an RCE error. This happened one other time when I tried to Copy Robots for my son. Must be something the way the DVD was created that can't be encrypted.

So then I tried the famous DVD Decryptor, the is a very very popular program, and has a high success rate. Anyway, same thing, about 20 minutes into the decrypting, it failed on one sector and was not able to complete.

OK, I like the above programs because they are freeware online, and I like supporting freeware. Since they didn't work I fired up my Retail copy of DVDXCopy I got at Best Buy. Again, after about 15 minutes into copying the files to the Hard Drive, DVDXCopy went into a "Not Responding" state. This really bites.

So, for those that do a lot of DVD copying, is this normal for some DVD's not to allow you to copy them? The first two programs above will crack the macrovision fine, so it is not that, must be this RCE stuff, whatever that is.

Any other options out there I don't know about, hopefully, Freeware.

Thanks, Randy

ps: for those that are wondering, yes I make copy of DVD's I own, to preserve my originals...

Hi sirquack,

Sadly, it seems like development of DVD Decrypter ended in June 2005. If the version you have is the most updated and does not work, see the link below for more info on DVD Decrypter's sad ending and links to alternative backup software:

http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/dvd_rippers/dvd_decrypter.cfm

(DVDFab Decrypter is freeware and is updated).

Hope it helps.

Hey bud, do you have a DVD authoring program? I've made a copy of that same movie with no problems.

I believe you are using the wrong app - Shrink works based on the premise that the files you are copying are part of an existing DVD (basically it is used to copy DVD to DVD). You need a DVD authoring program like Nero VisionExpress. I was able to make a DVD copy using Nero.


Sutter

Never mind my last post, that's what you're trying to do. Copy a dvd to dvd. I was thinking in terms of creating demo discs, which I make quite often.

Might give Nero a try though, for that's what I used when I made a copy of American Beauty.


Sutter

I use RecordNowDX which came with my Sony burner to actually copy the files from the harddrive to the blank DVD-R. First though, you have to Copy the movie to your harddrive using DVD DeCryptor or DVDFab, or Shrink. This removes the copy protection, and then gives you options to copy the movie only, copy the whold DVD with compression to one DVD, or re-author it to remove certain special features.

I downloaded DVDFAb last night and gave it a try, It also failed about half way through the process. Who nows, I know the disc is not bad as this has happened to me on other DVD's before, and the movie plays fine, the DVD is new and has no scratches. I don't know..

Here's how you get around that. Now you're not going to like what I have say, cause it is a pain in the a$$, but it works.

What it's doing is trying to analyze the entire disc first. There's two problems with that.

1. DVD Shrink cannot decrypt 100% of ALL discs and was not made to be a decrypter program from the beginning. It was made to be a "shrinking" program with the depcrypting function "added" after the 3.2 release.

2. It results in that not so lovely en error message.

Now here's how you get around it. And again, it is a pain, but it works. It's mostly a pain simply because it's time consuming. But anyways, here's what you do.

Instead of letting it try to analyze the entire disc which doesn't always work on ALL dvds, click on re-author, and drag each scene over to the left one at a time. By doing it this way it will analyze each scene you want to copy seperately...this works. I do it all the time when I'm making demo dvds. Only difference here is you'll be selecting all the scenes from the dvd and not just selected ones.



Sutter

I'll play around with it a bit, Title 1 is all I'm dragging over when I reauther, it takes about 2 minutes for it to go throught it, when it gets to 50% it freezes. I'll see what I can do, all I care about is the movie, not the extra's. I've been messing with these types of programs for some time now, but recently have come across a few DVD's that are not nice.

ha ha

later slater.

Which of these programs would any of you guys recomend for Mac?

Bray,

I sent you a PM, part of it I can discuss here though. DVD Shrink is not compatable with Mac's, but there are other dvd shrinking programs that are. Problem is most of them are not free.



Sutter

Hmm, just completed decrypting A-B with DVD Decrypter. Am shrinking now. I don't know what to say. Maybe it truly is a bad sector? I have as yet not looked into what error-correction DVD-D has, if any. But mine zipped through with no problem.

One thing that DID happen once, now that I think about it. I kept having a backup fail until I finally realized I was out of space on my data drive. After moving a bunch of stuff to my storage server the backup completed with no problem. I believe you need enough space for a working temporary file and the completed ISO, so make sure you have 10GB or so free.

hey Joe, what version of DVD Decryptor do you have? I'm using the latest 3.5.4. Also, are you using the default settings or have you changed any of the options?

I'll check the DVD again for any scratches...Thanks, Randy

In addition to trying to figure out AM, I have another DVD problem. A friend of mine gave me a DVD he owns that is kinda like a King James Bible Trivia Challenge. He was wanting to make a copy to put in his library at his church. I can decrypt it ok with any program, however, DVD Shrink won't shrink it to fit on one DVD-5 (4.7GB) I put DVD shrink in Automatic Compression mode, and according to the progress bar across the top it won't compress everything to one DVD+R. I suppose even Shrink has limits, has anyone else every had issues fitting an entire dual layer DVD to one DVD-+R with compression?

hi sirquack , do you try clonedvd2 ,you can download it on the web, good luck

Same as you. Just changed tools-mode-ISO to read.

Finally got AB to work. With DVD Decryptor I selected Movie only from the Edit menu. By default it usually Decrypts the entire DVD first, which froze on one of the VOB files. Anyway, after that completed, I used Shrink in Automatic mode to make it fit on one DVD+R.

Now I just need to figure out that Bible Trivia DVD for my friend, why Shrink won't shrink it to fit on one DVD+R.