newbie question about copying DVD to hard drive

[jimdagys]

I am in China and I want to describe the method of copying a DVD movie to the hard drive for the purpose of watching the movie from the hard drive. After you finish reading this, could you please explain how this process is different in USA.
First, you insert the DVD , then double click "my computer", you will see the DVD drive icon with the name of the movie. Then you RIGHT click the icon and then select open. You will see two folders, one is "AUDIO_TS", and the other is "VIDEO_TS". (All DVD movies bought in China the "AUDIO_TS folder is empty.) Then drag the VIDEO_TS folder to your hard drive, for example, the E partition. At this time the video folder will start copying onto the hard drive. This may take about 15 minutes.
After the copying is finished, double click on the yellow folder (in the E partition). You will see many files. The files that end in "VOB" and are large, about 1GB each contain the movie. Then start "Hero" (a common software in China that allows you to play DVDs in your computer). On Hero, click "file" and then "open" and then browse for the large VOB files. Put all (usually there are about 4 large files) of the VOB files into the file name box and then click open. (Use the "Ctrl" button to highlight and select all the files to put into the file name box). Your movie will start playing. When the first file finishes playing, the next file will automatically start and the movie will continue playing until it is finished.

[waheed]

A DVD contains two folders. AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS. The AUDIO_TS folder will be empty because its used for a different format known as DVD AUDIO which is High Reolsution audio and requires a special player to play the tracks.

As you can copy the files across using explorer in china, it means that the files are not encrypted. Here in the UK (and USA), DVDs are encrypted using CSS encryption. SO the DVD must first be decrypted before copying to the hard drive. This is acheived using any available tools unclusing DVD Decrypter, DVDFab Decrypter, DVD Shrink, AnyDVD etc..

To play from the hard drive, its possible exactly as you would play from the DVD. Using PowerDVD, select play dvd from hard drive, browse to the DVD folder and play. Its play exactly with full menus and movie as you were playing from the DVD itself. This way, no pauses between individual VOBs.

[jimdagys]

Thank you for the interesting info.