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The first step is to download DVDDecrypter or SmartRipper to remove the copy protection from the DVD video and copy the DVD files to your hard drive (need 9+ gigs free for that).
Then, I would recommend downloading DVD95Copy, DVD2One, Pinnicle Instant Copy, or DVDshrink (the more choices you have, the better), which will compress that 9gigs of data on your drive to 4.7 gigs, which you can write to your DVD+/-R with Nero 5.5 or other burning software. The trick is to remove stuff you don't need, like foreign language tracks and trailers which you can live without. The goal is to remove enough that you are probably only trying to squeeze around 6 to 7 gigs (or even less) onto your 4.7gig DVD-/+R.
The big decision is whether to copy the movie only, or copy everything including the menus.
I usually use DVD95copy to copy everything, and most of the time the end result after compression is very, very close to the original, and certainly is acceptable for viewing. If you only want the movie itself and no menus, then I recommend using DVDshrink or DVD2One (trial version), then you don't get a menu on your DVD, and you can just pop it in the player and it starts playing from the beginning- no movie trailers, no copywrite warnings, etc. You can add special features, but they just play after the main movie. My wife prefers the Movie-Only disks, and I prefer to keep the menus and special features intact, so its all about personal choice there.
So, with your software of choice, you will compress/reauthor your video from 9gigs to 4.7gigs, again writing to the hard drive (so you need another 5+ gigs of HD space). Then, play the end result using your DVD player software (like WinDVD) to make sure it looks OK and works (might have to move your video into a VIDEO_TS folder on the hard drive to view it correctly, depends on the player software). And, last step is to write it to your blank DVD media. I use Nero 5.5 for that, and it has a DVD-Video template. All video on a DVD needs to go into the VIDEO_TS folder, so don't write a DVD with files in any other folder or your set-top player will not see them.
I have a 40gig hard drive dedicated to copying DVD's, and often times I will run DVD95copy, DVDshrink and DVD2One at the same time all with similar settings, each software saving to different directories (running overnight). Then view each one's results and choose the best quality one. Seems to be almost random which one does better.
Your other completely different choice is to use DVDXcopy which will copy a 9gig DVD to 2 4.7gig DVD's, and split the movie. This does not involve compression, so quality is always great, but the software itself has some bugs and drawbacks (like adding a watermark to your copy). You can also use the software listed above to split to two disks and avoid compression, but splitting the main movie is somewhat problematic (menus don't work, etc).
Someday we will have writable 9gig DVD's, and then copying movies will be a snap. Until then, you're stuck with either splitting to two disks, or compression.
Good luck!
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