dvd burner software

[e36racer]

Hey everyone,
I am wanting to backup all of my dvd's onto my external hard drive, but I am not sure what free software is the best to use. The software that came with my dvd burner, will let me view the dvd's on my computer, but it is going to cost me around $100 to get the full version to back up the dvd.
I have been onto download.com, but I didn't find anything that was useful. All the ones that I have been looking at, say that you can burn info from your computer onto a dvd, but I haven't found any that say you can take info from the dvd and put it on to the hard drive.
Any and all help is appreciated.

Bryce

[Able]

What type of data is on the dvd's?

[fritzi93]

I'm guessing you're a complete novice at this.

If the data in NOT encrypted, just copy over.

But more likely you mean DVD movies, right? In that case, you must decrypt them, the precise term is DeCSS (content scrambling system). DVDShrink and DVDDecrypter are popular and will do the vast majority of commercially-pressed DVD-Video. A minority (mostly Sony, Columbia, et.al.) use ARccOS, Disney and couple others use RipGuard. If DVDShrink or DVDDecrypter throw an error, try the following:

RipIt4Me, DVDFabDecrypter, AnyDVD (payware). Just to emphasise, all except the last mentioned are FREE. Fab and AnyDVD are dependent on frequent updates to keep up with the latest protection schemes.

You can rip to a file folder or rip to ISO image (disc image). To play an ISO image, you must "mount" it on a virtual drive like DaemonTools.

You need not pay for multimedia player software. MediaPlayerClassic (an independent development of WMP6) can play DVDs without an external MPEG2 codec, as can VideoLan. VideoLan can also play a variety of other formats without any codecs external to itself, and can play partial files. Both are free.

For storage on an external drive, you have a few choices: Recompress them to something like XviD, which will reduce the file size to perhaps one-fourth previous size without too much loss of quality. AutoGK is easy to use and popular for recompressing to XviD. Or leave as DVD-Video. ISO images are convenient in that you have one single file rather than a folder full of files.

You can use ImgBurn to put an ISO image on DVD, it is most dependable and compliant for the purpose, whereas Nero, for example, is not (the reason is technical relating to positioning of IFOs and BUPs). On a side note, if you wish to fit a movie onto a single-layer DVDRecordable, DVDShrink is convenient. Also, if you had to resort to the stronger methods of decrypting, you can still open the ripped files in DVDShrink for compression if desired.

Tools mentioned above, along with guides, can be found here:

http://www.mrbass.org/

And here:

http://www.videohelp.com/

I strongly advise you to use freeware tools, they are superior to commercial equivalents, seriously. Good luck.

[e36racer]

this is for a dvd movie, and yes I am pretty new at all this.

[fritzi93]

Originally Posted by e36racer

this is for a dvd movie, and yes I am pretty new at all this.

Okay, thought so. At videohelp, look under "Tools" for the programs I mentioned. Also, it would be worth your time to read a guide or two specific to whatever apps you'll be using.

The DVDShrink guide at mrbass is quite good, you should have a look.

Might as well put up a link for converting various format videos to DVD-Video (e.g. downloaded video clips). Look for the old freeware version partway down the page:

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/ConvertXtoDVD

Good luck.

[marko3499]

do these programmes also work ok in windows vista (64-bit)?

[DaveC2003]

Have a look in the link below, it will probably have the software you require which will mention if they can work on Vista.

http://www.softpedia.com/