DVD to DVD / Macrovision help

[cmcmurt]

Hello,

Newbie here looking for some help from some people better versed in these things...

Basically, I want to make back up copies of some of my DVDs. I have an older (two years old or so) DVD recorder and an older DVD player (probably 7 years) and tried to do this, but came across Macrovision, which I remember from my days as a college student dubbing tapes in my dorm room.

What is the best way to get around this? I did a brief search and have seen advice for VHS to DVD, but what about DVD?

Is the best bet a video stabilizer? I dont THAT much about quality, as the primary reason Im doing this is so that my children dont damage the original DVDs.

The stabilizers seem to go for about $100 each based on what I have seen. Is this a reasonable price? If so, which would give the best bang for my buck.

Thanks in advance

[yoda313]

Do you have a dvd burner on your computer? Just use a dvd ripper to get a digital copy of it on your harddrive. Then burn the copy. You will preserve the menus and digital surround sound this way and usually its much much faster than realtime (don't know the numbers off hand but won't take two hours to do a two hour movie even on the slowest dvd burner.

[cmcmurt]

I do have a DVD burner on my laptop, however, as best I can tell, aren't most of the DVDs copy protected in terms of getting ripped?

Forgive me for not being super knowledgeable on this issue. I'm quite uninformed on this whole issue, and was pointed to this forum by a friend.

[yoda313]

Yes but that is what the ripper does. It removes css (the copy protection system used on dvds - most of them anyway - some new variations but do the same thing) than you can do what you want with them.

Dvd fab has a free version that will rip movies for you. Though I think now the free version delays the updates on newer updates for new protection schemes - the pay version gets them sooner.

An alternative is anydvd (there is an hd version that can rip bluray and hd-dvd provided you have the appropriate drive in your machine). But anydvd is payware but is updated quite frequently.

The advantage of anydvd is you can use it in the background and use older programs like dvdshrink that haven't been updated in years. But andydvd does have its own ripper (but not shrinker - ie shrinking a dual layer disc to fit on a cheaper single layer dvdr).

[CobraPilot]

[My comments, from another thread on dvd backups.]

Here's what works for me 99% of the time for backups:

o I check the size of the original disc before starting the process to determine whether or not it will fit on a single-layer disc.

o Rip the disc to hard drive using DVDFab HDDecrypter (freeware). (If it's a very recent disc, the freeware version, which the author has decided to update to the newer encryptions after a delay from first issue, may not work for awhile. I wait.)

o If the resulting size fits on a single-layer disc, burn with Imgburn.

o If the resulting disc is too large to fit on a single-layer disc, shrink using DVDShrink, which will do it automatically. (Double-layer discs are so much more expensive than SL discs, I just never considered them to be cost-effective, so I don't use them.)

o Burn to disc with Imgburn.

Never had to use anything else. For that other 1%, nothing seemed to work and I just didn't make a backup.

When I was a newbie, I created my fair share of unusable "coasters" as a not-unexpected part of the learning curve. My "99% solution" above was the result of learning curve lessons learned the hard way.

Good lucK!