Help! Can I burn Commercial Dvds?

[caflyguy]

So I just bought an external QPS DVD-R/RAM drive with firewire thinking I could burn dvds I rented. I had the idea that the dvd burner was the same as a cd burner in that you could just simply burn a dvd like a cd. Well I've tried and been told that you can't get around the copyrighting and macromedia and so there is no way to burn a commercial dvd to play on a regular dvd player. Is this true or is there a way to burn a licensed dvd? I know I know! But then really there must be a way otherwise I'm going to end up returning this drive because I'm not interested in only burning dvds of home video stuff!

Anyone with any basic info for a newbie on here, please email me!

Thanks.

-James

[BJ_M]

http://www.dvd2dvdr.com/

[Craig Tucker]

Look at how to DVD rip on this site.

You cannot do a simple 1 to 1 copy for a few reasons.

Original DVD's are encrypted have macrovision and region protection, and on the whole are dual layer with a capacity that exceeds that of a DVD-r.

The movie needs to be ripped from the disc to remove any protection, and burned without all the extras so it will fit on a single layer disc.

Craig

[mpb]

So I just bought an external QPS DVD-R/RAM drive with firewire thinking I could burn dvds I rented. Anyone with any basic info for a newbie on here, please email me!

Thanks.

-James

You need to do a LOT of reading. www.doom9.org and the DVD ripping guides to your left on this site. Also download DVD Decrypter, IFO edit, and Rempeg2. Mix in your favourite DVD burning software, flavor to taste.

You can copy ANY commercial DVD. It's just a matter of following the steps and learning the process. Good luck!!!

[PNANCOO]

CAFLYGUY my friend, you are in luck! The DVD burner is a great invenstment, keep it! With the price of media dropping, DVD-R will soon be as cheap as CD-R's. If you are looking to copy retail DVD movies, the easiest way to do it is by using a device called "USB Instant DVD". It is manufactured by a company called ADS (www.adstech.com). All you do is connect your standalone DVD player to it and press play!. The device will copy the DVD as MPEG2 (dvd quality). It will save the file on you hard drive via USB. You can then use your DVD burner/software to create your own DVD. You can buy the device from Tigerdirect.com for $179.00 You can obviously record any type of video using this device, the best part of it all is that the device automatically disables macrovision or any other type of security encryption!!! Forget about those DVD rips, they take hours. With this device you can watch a movie & record it at the same time since it has an output to your tv. e-mail me if u need more details. This thing is the best/cheapest kept secret

[Craig Tucker]

As it is a capture the quality can't be as good as that of a rip.

Craig

[PNANCOO]

TRUST ME. YOU CANNOT TELL THE DIFFERENCE. TRUE IT IS A CAPTURE DEVICE, BUT IT IS SOFTWARE BASED. THE CAPTURE & COMPRESSION IS DONE ON THE DEVICE BEFORE IT IS SENT TO THE COMPUTER.

[shakti]

PNANCOO,

I have the "USB instant DVD". I must be doing something wrong. It copy's home videos for about a minute. It doesn't burn
DVD's into my Sony Vaio laptop. (It's only a CD burner and DVD player) and when it does copy......the sound is off sink.
I am Really new to DVD's. Do I have to purchase an outside DVD burner?? What do you suggest??

[PNANCOO]

shakti,
If you are capturing a dvd movie using the "USB instant DVD" you should be given 2 options for the type of video format: VCD or DVD. You should make sure you are using the newest version of "CAPWIZ" (capture software) If not, go to adstech.com to download it. The new version of CAPWIZ fixes the audio/video synch problem. If not you may need to tweak the audio recording delay settings in capwiz (depending on how fast your computer is) If you choose to record in DVD (mpeg2), remember that final movie file will be huge-and you will only be able to fit it on a dvd-r, so yes, you probably will need an external dvd burner. If you choose to record as a vcd, you will be able to store up to 82minutes of video on a cd-r (if you use Nero Burning Rom which allows overburning) , thus you will have to put one movie on 2 cd's. I suggest using nero for creating vcd's, it creates a much more compliant vcd. Many people have problems playing vcd's on certain types of dvd players, I have found that using nero eliminates compatibility issues. I hope this helps, if I have totally not even touched on your problem, give me some more details.....

[mpb]

CAFLYGUY my friend, you are in luck! The DVD burner is a great invenstment, keep it! With the price of media dropping, DVD-R will soon be as cheap as CD-R's. If you are looking to copy retail DVD movies, the easiest way to do it is by using a device called "USB Instant DVD". It is manufactured by a company called ADS (www.adstech.com). All you do is connect your standalone DVD player to it and press play!. The device will copy the DVD as MPEG2 (dvd quality). It will save the file on you hard drive via USB This thing is the best/cheapest kept secret

DO NOT USE THIS!!!!!!
PERIOD!!!!
This is a capture device. There is no reason to run a capture on a DVD, EVER. A DVD can be copied entirely digitally. A capture device, unless it's miniDVcam, is always lossy, even if it's not immediately perceivable to the naked eye. You NEVER re-capture anything that is ALREADY DIGITIZED. It is not physically possible to improve the quality, or even to keep the quality level identical.

Plus, this USB-DVD will lose all the chapter points, you'll have to set them up yourself with an authoring program... if you can. Plus, no extras, unless you capture those too. Subtitles? Audio tracks you DO want to keep? Angles? I could go on for a week about how unnecessary this $179 rip-off device is.

Just read the guides on doom9.org, download DVD Decrypter, IFO Edit, Rempeg2, and a burning software like Primo or Nero, and you're all set. I have copied a frightening number of commercial DVDs using only those programs, and they all run perfectly:

*My backup of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has both Mandarin audio with english subtitles, AND English dubbed audio, selectable by the user with remote control. Yours can too, if you copy it digitally. USB-DVD can't do this. You can view this film as the director intended, or switch on the fly to a version more easily viewable by casual American viewers. And I didn't even have to transcode the video.

*My backup of American Pie Ultimate has all animated original menus, deleted scenes, extras, photo galleries, etc, and was accomplished with a simple 80% transcode and some creative IFO work, and dropping the "an inside look at the making of AP2" featurette.

*My backups of most films are simply this: perfect digital copies of the source DVD, chapter points intact, perfect sync, compatible with a wide spectrum of players, and often with no need to re-encode once superfluous streams are stripped. This means the movie on that backup disc is functionally identical to the source for our purposes.

Just do it digitally... you'll get good at it fast, and you will be amazed at how much you can do once you learn how each function works.

[PNANCOO]

MBP:

You are right. However I never said the duplication is exact, that would be impossible. It is merely a matter of preference. I am a Netflix member, so when you averarage 6-7 DVD's per week, I don't have time to sit and do all the ripping. I know it takes a few hours to rip a movie I simply want a copy of the movie itself that I can play in my computer at work. For the real DVD enthusiast such as yourself, of course all the extras are important. There will be simple plug-ins that will work with your DVD burners soon, I am also going to hold out for DVD media & burners to go down in price. But for the mean time USB DVD works fine for me.

[mpb]

MBP:

You are right. However I never said the duplication is exact, that would be impossible. It is merely a matter of preference. I am a Netflix member, so when you averarage 6-7 DVD's per week, I don't have time to sit and do all the ripping. I know it takes a few hours to rip a movie I simply want a copy of the movie itself that I can play in my computer at work. For the real DVD enthusiast such as yourself, of course all the extras are important. There will be simple plug-ins that will work with your DVD burners soon, I am also going to hold out for DVD media & burners to go down in price. But for the mean time USB DVD works fine for me.

A few hours to rip a movie? What sort of underpowered machine are you using? I'm well under 2ghz, and it takes less than half an hour to rip a disk, less than THAT to strip streams, and if the disc needs no transcode, half an hour to burn in a Pioneer 104 to DVD-R. If it DOES need a transcode, sure, rempeg takes time, so you just let it run overnight. Less than half of the discs you rent will need that, so you could still acquire 7 or more DVDs per week... with chapters, audio, etc preserved.

I'm sure it's easy from the operational side to use a capture device like this, but it's horrific as far as output. You're totally corrupting the software you're trying to copy. It's SO EASY to do it digitally once you know how to use the software... why waste time doing it wrong?

Of couse, if you're copying to VCD, that's another issue. The quality will be significantly less, so whatever method you use is as good as any other.

[shakti]

Thank you PNANCOO for the information!

Since last I posted.....I purchased a Pioneer DVR-7000.

A new problem:

Is there any way of copying OLD video (that will never be made into commercial DVD's) movies?

Can they be transfered from video into DVD-R without having to go thru a camcorder... first.. and then....recorded on the machine?

[PNANCOO]

what type of media is the original video, VHS, 8mm, Mini DV ? If you are using the USB Instant DVD, you will need to connect connect a VCR, Camcorder, etc...to the device and capture the video as MPEG 2.

[Barnabas]

Forget the ADS Instant DVD, I owned one and they don't work well at all, nothing but problems with it. Read PC Mag's review about it here:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,425685,00.asp

[PNANCOO]

This is a half-assed review. What they forgot to mention is that ADS has released a new version of the capture utility software that eliminates the audio synch problem by automatically adjusting the audio delay to create a perfectly syncronized movie. I have copied well over 100 dvd's and countless video tapes with this device without any synch problems, and I have done it on a P3 500mhz 192ram!

[Barnabas]

This is a half-assed review. What they forgot to mention is that ADS has released a new version of the capture utility software that eliminates the audio synch problem by automatically adjusting the audio delay to create a perfectly syncronized movie. I have copied well over 100 dvd's and countless video tapes with this device without any synch problems, and I have done it on a P3 500mhz 192ram!

Bull! The ADS Instant DVD with ANY software works poor at best. You can get MUCH better results with a $15 capture card!

[PNANCOO]

What software! Capwiz is a capture utility. Editing software is a whole other discussion. It comes with Ulead which is garbage, and is known for ******* up videos. We are discussing the unit's main purpose: video capture. I am assuming you have not even used the new utility since you no longer have the unit, so how can you comment on it's performance?

www.vcdhelp.com has suggestions for better editing/authoring software.

[PNANCOO]

oh, I forget to mention...

The best thing about this device Is that is disables Macrovsion on DVD's which allows for DVD duplication.

You can't do that with a $15 video capture card!

[Barnabas]

I DID use the new cap wiz, and then got rid of the ADS Instant DVD as SO many others have. The ADS Instant DVD gives nothing but problems for most users. Capwiz IS software btw.

This guy probably works for ADS folks!

[PNANCOO]

All these postings & still no description of your "problems" This guy is just pissed of that he does not know how to capture video folks!

[LloydAZ]

CAFLYGUY my friend, you are in luck! The DVD burner is a great invenstment, keep it! With the price of media dropping, DVD-R will soon be as cheap as CD-R's. If you are looking to copy retail DVD movies, the easiest way to do it is by using a device called "USB Instant DVD". It is manufactured by a company called ADS (www.adstech.com). All you do is connect your standalone DVD player to it and press play!. The device will copy the DVD as MPEG2 (dvd quality). It will save the file on you hard drive via USB. You can then use your DVD burner/software to create your own DVD. You can buy the device from Tigerdirect.com for $179.00 You can obviously record any type of video using this device, the best part of it all is that the device automatically disables macrovision or any other type of security encryption!!! Forget about those DVD rips, they take hours. With this device you can watch a movie & record it at the same time since it has an output to your tv. e-mail me if u need more details. This thing is the best/cheapest kept secret

I bought one of those and returned it. I wanted to make backups of old videotapes, but when I encoded them with that thing the audio was way out of sync.

For the extra money, try the Dazzle Digital Video Creator II or the Dazzle Hollywood DV Bridge.

Lloyd

[PNANCOO]

My girlfriend has the Dazzle product. It is flawless. However we got the USB instant DVD for MPEG1/VCD capture. The Dazzle only does MPEG-2.

[thxkid]

well bought a $499 Panasonic DMR-E20 a Sampo 631CF DVD player and I record any Commerical DVD backup that I want, with perfect results, can't tell the copy from the original and thats viewing on a 36in JVC tv.
Plus now I don't have to spend HOURS ripping, encoding and burning, 90min. disc. takes 94min. to get a perfect copy( 4 minutes to finalize).
Oh yes I have been using discs that cost $1.60 each without any failures.
When recording old VHS, SVHS or 8mm tapes I use the ultra high quality 1 hour speed(9800 bitrate) and the DVD-R's actually slightly look better than the originals, I am sure the full frame TBC has alot to do with that.

[PNANCOO]

THXKID:

NO PROBLEMS WITH MACROVISION WITH YOUR SET UP?