Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler DVD Back-up

Can any of you recommend a good shareware product to back-up DVD's?

I have many Disney DVD's and the kids are always scratching them to where they no longer play. I would like to burn a back-up and keep the master in a safe place.

Are there any legal issues backing-up DVD for personal use?

It is my understanding if you personally own the DVD your copying for archive purposes it is ok. Obviously it is against the law to copy rental DVD's or reproduce DVD's for friends.

There are some retail products out there, for example, Best Buy has a product called ICopyDVDs2, however, it states in the product information if your going to use it for copy of retail type DVD movies, versus personal created DVDs, you have to use a freeware product called DVD43, to crack the copy protection first. It also has the ability to be used with the newer Dual Layer DVD's.

Keep in mind many professional DVD's are Dual Layer, they will not fit on a standard DVD+R or DVD-R disk. Now there are products out on the internet like DVD Shrink, DVD Decryptor, etc... that will crack the code, and allow you to just burn the movie only and not the special features. This helps to get it to fit on one standard DVD without any or little compression. In many situations, even with compression, you can't fit an entire DVD plus special features/menus, unless you have a dual layer burner in your computer.

There is also the issue that not all DVD players will play certain DVD media. Some players like DVD+R's and others like DVD-R's. Computers usually don't have a problem with either technology. Just to warn you that the media used on retail DVD's is different than the media you buy in the store, so you may or may not have issues.

I used to do a lot of this, and got to the point where it was just not worth my time. I'm a computer geek, and still got frustrated with the many problems occur trying to achieve a flawless copy. Even when I purchased top quality name brand media, freezing/stuttering can be common. Not to mention the time it takes to actually Rip/Burn/Verify your copies.

All the power to ya man.

Actually, I think it's illegal under the DMCA to copy DVDs--because you're breaking the encryption. It's certainly illegal to release software that breaks the (admittedly shoddy) encryption.

Of course, whether this provision of the DMCA is constitutional or not is another matter...

What about running an HTPC and copying to the hard drive ? One day I will have enough free time to actually try that... right now I am making plans to haul the PC up to the HT area and wondering if I feel like installing Vista again to pick up the latest MCE implementation.

Running XP I have a big-ass computer. Running Vista I am essentially a charity case trying to run a 1-2 GB operating system on a 512 MB box.

Even in that case, I think your still required to rip the movie which breakes the code, I could be wrong. When I copied my Rush R30 concert to my hard drive, I used DVD Shrink to copy just the concert. The program removes any copy protection before I can back it up to the HD>

Welcome to the wonderful world of the entertainment industry! Would the Senators from Disney please stand up?

There's AnyDVD to remove region coding and copy protection and CloneDVD to remove previews and extras, then shrink and copy. Both of these programs are 21 day free trials but a quick google search will reveal cracks for both to remove the trial limits (which is kind of ironic). I've never used either of these. I heard all of this from a friend.

Thanks for all the info. Sounds like it may be too complicated to mess with. It just seems to me that if I purchased a legal copy of the movies, I should have rights to it and a scratched DVD should not void that right.

Well that situation just sums up how MPAA is unfair to consumers. All that is common sense and I hope that they someday will wake up before they actually make piracy a viable option because of their obtuseness.