Quick Question

[Merek]

Ok i just have a question about those commercial programs that you can buy that copy dvd's to which say they make perfect copies. Like Roughly how do they work? Like do they use DeCSS which i thought was illegal or how do they do it....

[g_shocker182]

Taking a guess, I think they copy the DVD fully, encryption and all.

[David K]

Most of them require you to de-encrpt before you load the file. So you have to use one of the rippers first (Smartripper etc.) But DVD Shrink has its own built in de-encryptor.

No program that I kinow copies the complete disc encryption and all. This would be copying in "raw" mode. It is theoretically possible. Programs like Alcohol and Clone CD do this for certain CD game discs which have built in errors to prevent copying. But since the DeCSS code is so widely available now, there's no reason to go through the trouble of copying DVD discs "raw."

[g_shocker182]

Thanks for clearing this up

[bugster]

There are several different types of DVD copying programs on the net, and many claim to make perefect copies.

The oldest type, worst and definatley to be avoided are the ones that claim to make perfect copies of DVD's on to CD. These generally re-encode (oftem badly) to VCD format. Frequently they are just a bunch of freeware programs packaged under a simple to use UI and these are a complete ripoff.

Next comes programs like DVDXCOPY. Most of these programs require you to have un-encrypted DVD's or expect you to use a seperate ripper. The original disc is copied to one or if required then 2 DVDr disks, so the copy is perfect (except for the fact it is split).

The third type are things like Instant Copy and DVDShrink. These will 'shrink' the DVD to fit on a single DVDr, if required, offering various levels of control over the copying of extras, menus, audio tracks etc. Most work pretty well.

It is NOT possible to copy an encrypted DVD to a DVDr without de-crypting for the simple reason that DVDr burners will not write to the part of the disk that contains the encryption key. For this reason alone, any DVD on recordable DVD media will not be encrypted.

Hope this helps