How long actually does it take to copy a DVD?

[byron23]

Hi I'm a newvie, sorry to ask this basic question. A friend of mine has tons of movie titles so I'm seriously considering a DVD burner. I understand that there are DVD5 and DVD9 and..

1. If a title is single layer(DVD5) and less than 4.3G, it's easy to copy
2. If its content is significanly bigger than 4.3g, you have to re-encode it to make a copy, which takes usually HOURS(similar to divx-ing work)

What I want to know is that what percentage of movie title in Blockbuster fall in category (1). If most of them fall in (2), I'm not buying this, and wait for a new media or method come out. I used to make divx movies on my onw a while ago, and don't want to torture my hdd for hours again.

Thanks in advance.

[musher70]

it really doesnt take all that long really,did goldmember
in 2 hrs flat,its one of those infinity discs things,the main
vobs only come out to 3800 mg,dump the menu and
you wont have any probelms, kept all the subs also,
if its too big,just strip out scenes you dont like or
the credits,sometimes you have to make sacrifices,
but reencoding stuff isnt the answer,then there is always
a program called dvdxcopy,splits to 2 discs if u want to
go that route....

[medievil]

hours??? hmmm most dvd reencodes take , for me on my system, about 1.2X realtime. This is on a plain thunderbird 1.3. Divx rips also run at or near realtime enoding.
I suppose my point is, it doesn't take hours to re encode if you have a decent system. you might want to consider an upgrade.

[byron23]

Thanks for your reps. My system is Athlon 1.2G, not cutting edge but I think around average now.

The thing is that I got concerned after reading all those threads here, complaining 8 to 10 hours of reencoding for ripping a title. If this is about just chopping some unimportant credits or suppls, i think i can go with that. but re-encoding for 10 hours, as some people said, is really not my favorite stuff. I also heard that DVD9 media of DVD-r/+r standard is not likely to come out in the near future, which only frustrated me more.

Thanks anyway

[ImaWeTodd]

As far as the number of single sided single layer disks, there is a good post about that here:

http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=63214

You can also get an idea of the number of disks that are out that are 4.3G by looking here http://www.imdb.com/Sections/DVDs/DiscFormats/ . Looks like a big % are SS-SL.

Finally, it has been my experience, that if you strip out the xtra audio, menues, special features, etc... most movies will fit without re-encoding.

After all, a 105 minute movie at a avg bit rate of 5Mbps (3.5 is a typical avg), with 2 DD5.1 steams will fit on 1 little DVD-5. Page 253 of my copy of DVD Demystified, tells me this. I could never have figured that out myself.

[tonyp12]

and don't want to torture my hdd for hours again.

While re-encoding, it reads the video in a slow and steady stream.
and writes back in a slow and steady stream.

Not much torture going on here, so I can not see why you would say that.

Probably should degrag the HD first, so the disk head does
not move back and forth.