VideoHelp Forum




+ Reply to Thread
Results 1 to 7 of 7
  1. Hi-
    I am new at this forum. I must say hello first. My question is this.

    I just bought a fully compadable Philips DVD player. Can I copy DVDs using A CD-RW? I heard that you can using NERO(WHICH I HAVE)?

    Or can I just drop and drag the DVD into a file and then burn it as a VCD? Can this be done???

    My brother and I want to buy DVDs and split the cost, thus I get the original he gets a copy? Any info would be helpful.

    My player plays all CD-R's and CD-RW's. What does everyone else do. Do I have to sell my CD-RW and get a DVD-RW? God I sure hope not. And what disks work with copying DVD's?

    I know I sound like a bafoon, but again I am new at this..

    THanks for your time guys..

    Spankey
    Quote Quote  
  2. Nope, you can't, it's as plain as that, what you CAN do is rip the DVD and create a high quality VCD or SVCD (or any variant of these formats) and then burn it on a CDR/CDRW and play it back on your DVD Player.
    Email me for faster replies!

    Best Regards,
    Sefy Levy,
    Certified Computer Technician.
    Quote Quote  
  3. Member
    Join Date
    May 2001
    Location
    London, UK - Bonn, Germany
    Search Comp PM
    Hi there,

    lets try and get your questions answered methodically:

    Yes, you can copy DVD's. The question is can you copy them to CD-R's - the answer: Yes and No!

    As you might know DVD's can hold between 4.7 and 9.4GB per side, whereas a CD-R can only hold between 650MB and 845MB. So you see that here is your first problem: Disk space needed. The CD-R will hold about 10-15 minutes of DVD quality files. However this method to have a DVD structure on a CD-R is called "mini-DVD".

    Second problem is playing these mini-DVD's: Only a few Standalone DVD Players will play this type of CD. I don't believe your Philips can handle these CDs. Your PC Drive however should be able to.

    Third problem the time and expense: If you think that with main feature and extras you'll easily get to 140-150 mins - that would mean that you would need about 10 cd-r's. Taking into account the ripping, copying etc. - Is it worth the US$10-25 you are saving?

    You can start the process of re-encoding. Which means you take the original DVD format and transform it into something different. I would say 4 main possibilities are available for you XSVCD,SVCD,XVCD and VCD (given in the order of quality). If you checkout the "what is" section of this website it will tell you in more detail what these standards are. Here again size is dependent on quality. The smaller the file will be less in sharpness etc. Again you should see what your player will play. Some people are perfectly happy with 1 disk of a 120 min movie in VCD and a very low average bitrate (I have never achieved anything worth viewing at this format however). Others prefer to split a movie in 2x 45mins or 3x 40mins and have a so-called SVCD format. This is where you yourself have to see what you find best. After that you can get into how you are going to make these file (Because here you decide wether yuo want to hardware or software encode).

    Next the recently released DVD-R writers; So far only 4.7GB media has been released and is recordable using these drives. Some players play them - others don't. The media is still quite expensive (I think the lowest I have seen is about 10US$ per DVD-R) and the drives themselves are still very expensive (abut US$500). Taking all that into account the question is after how many DVD's copied, would you break even....? Probably by then they have introduced SuperDVD or something like that!

    DVD+R(W) drives will be released later this year that are meant to be fully compatible with all drives. The question is how much are these drives and media. So far I have seen no data released about this - but believe me, I bet it won't be cheap.

    So you now have the basic information you need. I hope it helps you and your brother to decide how you are both going to spend your money!
    Quote Quote  
  4. wow .. i dont know what section of the world your from but its easy enough to get a dvd onto a cd .. just screw the dvd player and make a 1 cd divx movie .. buy a tv out card and watch dvd quality the same as you would a dvd

    and why buy dvds when you can just rent them and copy em
    you guys make life so hard sometimes trying to fit movies in vcd format onto a cd ..

    take the money you would have spent on a dvd player and buy a nice cpu and tv out card and computer dvdrom drive .. no more hassles and issues
    Quote Quote  
  5. Member
    Join Date
    May 2001
    Location
    London, UK - Bonn, Germany
    Search Comp PM
    @kronos

    Why didn't you advise them to get a duplicate key of the backdoor of their local cinema?
    Quote Quote  


  6. or even better .. get the equipment and get a job using the projector at the theatre, then they can copy straight off the reel
    Quote Quote  
  7. Member
    Join Date
    Mar 2001
    Location
    Antwerp - Belgium (Europe
    Search Comp PM
    I've tested and tried around.

    Ripping a DVD, no problemo!
    Then... Saving to AVI (I used MJPEG as codec) and encoding into 2-3 SVCD's was my best choice (very high quality, even better than plain VHS).
    But I tried the other possibility too : converting to DivX.
    Now I know, I'll never will use DivX. It looks great, but compared with SVCD it's worse!

    Of course, you need to have a DVD-Rom to read the DVD. Then write it to CDR (CD-RW if your standalone player can read this; Pioneer does!) and you're settled...
    Quote Quote  



Similar Threads

Visit our sponsor! Try DVDFab and backup Blu-rays!