Got Pioneer DVD-RW. Best way to copy DVD to DVD-RW??

[R6]

I know that the media is slightly different to normal DVD's and movie DVD's have encryption.

So I think I can ripp the movie to HDD then record it back to DVD-R or DVD-RW disc.

What's the best proggie or method to do this?

Please help.

Thanks heaps

R6

[Darkbird]

SmartRipper.

However, good luck on finding a movie that is less than 4,700,000,000 bytes in size. To get around that problem, you have to either re-encode the video to a lower bitrate or edit the files into two (or more) discs. Either way you'll have to reauthor the disc(s), which means putting menus together to play them.

[R6]

ugh.... neva knew that.

That's a real bummer. Thanks for the info

[alkieman]

Yup, Darkbird is correct. Smartripper is pretty good and will rip the movie to your hard disc without too much problems. However, the majority of movies are encoded for commercial DVD at very high bitrates and therefore, use dual layer format discs. Dual layer home recorders are at least a couple of years away, and in the case of DVD+RW will never materialise at all (see http://www.DVDPLUSRW.ORG for info on that).

One piece of good news though is that with the original VOBs from a commercial DVD you are starting with such a high quality source that you can encode down to a lower bitrate without too much quality loss. I've done a couple of test movies down as low as 4000 and the quality is still pretty good, better than the VCDs I used to create anyway. However, you will have to manually create your own menus, chapters etc. so you will need a pretty decent authoring program. With the costs of blank DVD-Rs still being high, its better to just buy the DVD for yourself to be honest.

[R6]

double ugh...

alkie, To save the hassle do i have to put in all the menu's and scene's? Can I just record the movie without the menu options etc to save time? So if I insert the disc into my dvd player it just plays the movie?

Thanks

R6

[Darkbird]

R6: Sorry if I mislead you about the difficulty with the menus, but no, you don't have to put in any menus. You can even skip putting in chapters if you're in a hurry, although I find chapters are very nice to quickly jump to an important scene.

DvdMaker, by Vitec Multimedia, which is a part of their DVD Toolbox, only makes simple insert and play discs without menus. (chapters are optional)

With a simple authoring package like MyDVD by Sonic, you can create one very simple menu with a single "Play Movie" button, and reuse the same menu for all your movies. You may even be able to make the movie the First Play item, skipping a still menu altogether (I've never tried that since I found MyDVD to be a crash prone product and switched to a better authoring package).

With a higher end authoring program, you can create a PRE command for the First Play PGC that jumps to the title VTS, and it will just play the movie.

[Darkbird]

alkieman: I've encoded a few movies using Cinemacraft with bitrates in the 2000-2500 Mbps region and get very decent results. I use the half-horizontal setting which creates 352x480 (NTSC) sized frames. If you manage the bits carefully you can get two average length movies on one DVD-R disc this way. Perfect for those so-so/b-grade movies that don't need the absolute highest quality. Closest thing to SVCD, video-wise, but even better because you can use the orignal ac3 dolby digital soundtrack (with the right authoring program).

[frogster]

It would be nice to put movies on DVDs. I'll probably hold off on them until they drop in price.

For those of you with DVs, you can store your movies on the tapes using some DV tools. I think you get about 4.5 gig on a tape.

[AntnyMD]

With the cost of DVD-R still being at cheapest US$5 per disc when bought in packs of 10 (at apple.com and jandr.com), I figure its more cost effective to focus on high quality MPEG-2 at 352x240 or 352x288 and pack a DVD with 3 or more movies.

[alkieman]

Yeah Darkbird, i've done a few that way. Got a couple that have two movies on each disc with a menu and chapter points too. Was trying out Spruce's DVD Virtuoso and am mightily impressed. Shame Apple have taken them over and are dropping all but the most expensive package.

I still stick some very old movies on VCD too, can't beat it for cost but DVD-R is getting cheaper all the time.