Welcome to my first How To: Guide!
This guide is going to focus on the many aspects of copying DVDs (or, for the legally minded of you – making backup copies of DVDs that you own…) All software mentioned is free to use, so this won’t cost you a penny to do!
Types of Disc
First of all, there are lots of types of DVDs you can write to. The main types are either DVD+ or DVD-. These come in both R & RW flavours, and also in single (4.5gb) or dual layer (9gb) capacities. Now, for most films you will require a dual layer disc for directly copying the entire DVD, but as we will find out a bit later single layer discs can be used.
DVD- is the more popular format, and I would suggest has the widest compatibility of all the formats. Now, here’s the clincher. DVD-R single layer discs are very cheap. DVD-R dual layer discs are for reasons beyond me still between £1 to £2 each! So, for those of you wanting to create numerous DVD copies, single layer discs are going to be a huge saving in the long term.
We will explore later on how you can fit the contents of your film onto a single layer disc. For now, we will focus on copying a DVD onto another identical capacity disc (i.e. single layer onto single layer, or dual onto dual).
Direct Copy
Copying a DVD without copy protection is simple enough. Any simple Burning software will perform disc copying (freeware: Infrarecorder, CD Burner XP, Nero 9 Free Edition)
If you wish to copy a DVD that contains encryption, then copying is still fairly simple. Copy using software as above, but you’ll also need a decrypter. The very best decryption software is DVD43 (DVD-for-free), which is an “on-the-fly” decoder. All you will have to do is merely run DVD43 before & during the copying process, and this will enable the above copying software to bypass the encryption.
Copying Dual Layer onto a Single Layer
A little more tricky this, although not immensely so.
Basically, for us to fit a 9gb film onto a 4.5 gb disc we will need to reduce the quality of the film (either through resolution or bitrate). However, we can minimise the amount that the film has to be compressed itself with a couple of tricks (sometimes not having to compress the film at all!)
To begin with, you’ll need to download an excellent piece of software called DVD Shrink (in addition to DVD43 above). An excellent guide how to use this software can be found here.
This is where the aforementioned “trick” comes in to play. When re-authoring a DVD, create your new copy to only contain the main title, without any subtitles & with only one audio track (i.e. English 2.0 for the stereo sound). This way, the film itself will have to undergo less compression than if you were to include all the extras, subtitles and audio tracks etc (to the extent where you probably will not notice any change in quality at all!)
When re-authoring the DVD, get DVD Shrink to create it as a Disc Image file (.iso). Once the .iso image file of your new 4.5gb DVD has been created, download another excellent piece of software called ISO Recorder. You should now find that if you right click on your newly generated .iso file that you will have the option to ‘copy image to cd/dvd’. Place a fresh single layer DVD-R disc into your drive and click on this option in the right click menu. ISO Recorder will launch and all you should have to do is click next, and you’re away! In a matter of 10-20 minutes, you should have your new copy of the film created!
Ripping & Encoding for MP3 Players
Loads of people want to rip their favourite films so that they can watch them on their MP3 players. First step, download DVD43 as above.
After this, you’ll need some encoding software. There are many excellent free pieces of encoding software (Mediacoder, Quick Media Converter, Handbrake & Super)
The essentials for ripping your DVDs to a format for your MP3 player are:
1) Look at your mp3 player manual, and look at the list of video files compatible for your media player (likely to be H.264, DivX etc). Also, look for the resolution of your screen (likely to be 320X240). Frame rates of 25fps are fast enough.
2) Point one of the above software to the DVD drive, with the DVD to be ripped in it.
3) Set the software to rip the DVD into files compatible with your MP3 player (which you looked up in 1)
4) Click start!
5) You should have resulting files that you can rename and transfer to your MP3 player and watch!
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So this has been my first How To: guide. I hope that it’s been helpful, stay posted for more in the future!
Dave x
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