Okay...just bought a dvd burner. Excited about making copies of DVDs, but am totally new at this. I've done lots of copying of CDs, but after some research on the web, DVD copying seems to be a bit more complicated...I've done some looking through the threads here, but am still a bit confused. I just need to know what exactly I need (software wise, really) to begin making copies. Thanks!
Hi, welcome to burning. Start with the free programs DVD Shrink and DVD Decrypter or DVDFab Decrypter which are all available at http://www.filepedia.com. There are guides available for these programs at
This will get you started and as stated these are free programs. If you have Nero you will be able to use Shrink and burn with Nero, if not Decrypter will rip and burn. DVDShrink will encode and compress your movie to fit to a single layer 4.7g disk. Buy good quality media i.e. Sony, Verbatim, Maxell or Fuji. Preferred burn speed is 4x it makes for less errors.
If you want to pay for programs you can always try AnyDVD which breaks encryption on movies and CloneDVD which compresses and burns. A 21 day free trial of these programs is available from http://www.slysoft.com and the site I gave you for guides covers these programs also.
janedoe
There are two freeware progams that work very nicely to do this. They are DVD Decrypter and DVD Shrink. They are down loadable at this site as well as others. Decrypter removes the copy protection codeing and shrink can be used to shrink the movie ( and remove features you may not want)so it will fit your standard DVD5 disc. There are several guides telling you how to do this and two of the most well known I've included below. I use these programs all of the time and they work well over 95% of the time. I rip with Decrypter and re-author with shrink, and then burn with decrypter through shrink.
As Rotary said alot use DVD Decrypter or AnyDVD and DVDShrink
Lets get into why you need these programs.
DVD Decrypter: is a program to rip the DVD files to your hard drive. While it does that it takes the copy protection off the movie for you to beable to actully copy the DVD itself. In my opinion it is best to use this program so you can rip it to your hard drive then load up those files off your hard drive to yourrecoding program.
AnyDVD: is a program that you run in the baclground and it takes off the copy protection without ripping it to your hard drive. That way you can copy the DVD with your recoding program without ripping to your hard drive.
Now for recoding programs. Theres a few of those out there. But lets explain why you need those programs. If you have a DVD Burrner and are using blank single layer DVDs you need these programs to recode(compress) the DVD down to fit onto a DVD5 disc.
DVD5 disc=4.7G (dvd has 1 layers burnt on 1 side)
DVD9 disc=8.5G (dvd has 2 layers burnt on 1 side)
So if you have DVD5 blank media and have a comercial DVD9 movie you have to compress the DVD down to fit on the DVD5 blank media.
Now if you have a Double Layer DVD burrner then you could use a Double Layer DVD without recoding a DVD9 disc cause you can burn 2 layers on a DL disc.
The reason most still use single layer disc is cause DL disc are alot more expensive.
Recode programs are
DVD Shrink Which is free
Nero recode 2 which comes with Nero Ultra Edition
Clone DVD which you have to pay for but can get it with AnyDVD in a package deal @ http://www.slysoft.com
Now you will need a burning programs to burn the DVD to disc after you recode it or rip it to your hard drive.
Burrning programs:
Nero
DVD Decrypter will burn the files
and there are others out there as well them are just the 2 I use myself.
Now if this all seems complicated there are a few other programs out there that will do it all at the same time which are called 1 click programs.
DVDFab
CloneDVD also I think does it all
1 of the most important things to remmber when you burn is to use good media and burn no faster then 4x
Most of these programs you can get in the program section of this forum and also you can go to the guides section of this forum for guides on how to use most all these programs.
