Another Newbie in need of help...

[astonia402]

Hello: The other day I bought a DVD +/- RW drive, and on my first attempt to backup a DVD, I discovered there are several different sizes of discs (DVD 9/10 and the DVD 5s that are sold for burning) which I'm sure is old news to this forum. From what I can gather, I have two options (compress or split it onto two DVDs). Are there any newbie-friendly, affordable (shareware maybe) programs that will do this?

Also, I haven't even been able to get a movie DVD to play in my drive. From various discussion groups, I've gathered that you need to get a ripper to get the movie data off the DVD to your hard drive. I downloaded Smartripper, which won't work, as it says the movie files are locked, and that I should play the movie so as to unlock them. I've got a program called Interactual player which opens when I stick in the DVD, but it won't play the movie as apparently I don't have the necessary decoder or there is something about my video card/driver it doesn't like. It seems because of this I'm not even able to get past step 1, which is ripping the DVD.

I'd very much appreciate any advice on what I'm doing wrong! By the way, I'm running a P3 600, which is a tad slower than the P3 700 recommended by the burner, but I've got 3x the required RAM. Is this a problem?

[Ripper2860]

I would try using DVD Shrink, as it will decrypt (i.e. remove any copy protection) and allow you to either split the movie across multiple DVD's or select the main movie and apply compression to fit onto 1 DVD, if required.

Another great tool is DVD Decrypter.

You do however, actually need a software DVD player such as WINDVD or POWER DVD. Sometimes prior to ripping, you need to play the DVD for a few minutes in order to UNLOCK for the ripping process.

My biggest tip is to make use of the GUIDES, as they really do cover (some step-by-step) the entire process. The Guides section can be found to the left.

** I get the sense that you've never copied/backed up DVD's to CD-R's, etiher (i.e. create SVCD's or VCD's). If that is so, I STRONGLY suggest you start with converting DVD's to SVCD's or VCD's on CD-R, as your DVD Burner is also a CD Burner. The media is cheaper, the guides and tools are plentiful and the experience provides many of the fundementals you need to then move on to copying/Backing up DVD's to DVD (which can be more complex than DVD to SVCD or VCD).