Copying a Homemade DVD - Troubles.

[ehmjay]

okay so here is my dilema. i have been asked to copy these dvds for my school of our school production. they were burnt on a mac, and we have a mac at school with a dvd burner. burns wonderfully, however its locked for some odd reason, and we cannot play, and to unlock it we need the admin password, a password we lost. so this results in a large problem. how can i go about copying these dvds (i only have one drive) and i dont know if i can install any software. if it asks for an admin password i cant use it. i know there is some programs that are just executable and dont require install. those should work. what do you think i should do? i have a dvd burner at home aswell but its not mine and i cant use it to burn these large amounts of dvds. my thoughts were to rip the dvds, convert to MPEG2, burn to DATA dvd, then copy the MPEG2 to the mac and burn it. is there an easier way? my dad thought maybe drag all files from inside the dvd to the hard drive and burn that way. i said that wouldn't work. i need help please.

im running (at school) OS X ( i think its the first build, not jaguar or panther, but i could be wrong) and have iDVD 3 and Final Cut Pro 3 (Academic).

any help would be EXTREMLY appreciated.

[andkiich]

Find out who is responsible for the machine and have them unlock it or set up a user account on it for you.

[ehmjay]

i dont think that will work because its a teacher and they're not around. i know whos incharge but we cant deal with it right now. any other suggestions?

[Gurm]

Put in the disc, fire up the burning program, and hit "copy".

You're making too much fuss about it. If they're homebrew discs to begin with, there's no protection, and copying them is like snapping your fingers.

- Gurm

[galactica]

Gurm
you ever do any work on a mac?!? doesnt sound like it.....


ok here's the thing
it depends on the amount of privlidges you have on the machine

1. can you copy the data over off the dvd?
2. can you install any apps?
3. does it have toast titanium?

if it has toast you are golden!
just put the dvd in, choose COPY and go to FILE then SAVE IMAGE AS and save the dvd as a disk image to the HD
then you just eject your dvd, put in a blank and double click the image you just made. toast will automatically switch to the burn mode and you just click burn

if you dont have toast
you need to get DVDImager. install that. Insert your dvd, copy the VIDEO_TS folder over to the HD. Open DVDImager and make a dvd image of the VIDEO_TS folder. you can then use DiskCopy [built in burning software] to burn that image to a blank dvd. This step is needed because you HAVE to get an image in UDF format for it to be dvd spec. Toats does it automatically thats why if it has toast you are set

hope this helps

[Gurm]

Mac, PC, it's all the same. It's an UNPROTECTED DISC.

If there is ANY SOFTWARE AT ALL on the machine that BURNS DVD'S, then you just hit "copy" in it.

End of story.

- Gurm

[jarvis1781]

i dont think that will work because its a teacher and they're not around. i know whos incharge but we cant deal with it right now. any other suggestions?

sounds more to me like the real trouble is this guy is trying to do something he isn't supposed to be doing.
he said he can't burn that many discs on the home dvd burner because it is not his. same story with this one he is trying to use that is not his.
perhaps you shouldn't be trying to use the school's resources like that...even if you SAY it is a school production...if it WAS a school production i'm sure someone incharge would be more than willing to help you