Backing up dvds

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There's likely a few different ways to accomplish this. You will need a 'cracker' to break the security codes on the DVD and a 'ripper' to create the backup on your hard disk. Once that is completed, you can run another program to compress/author and save select components of the file or eventually burn to DVD.

Cracker -- something like AnyDVD works well. It also duals as a ripper to allow the backup of the media to disk.

Authoring/Backup -- something like DVD shrink will allow you to customize what components you wish to keep on the backup (some like to remove extras and bloopers etc) and compress the file for you.

Burning to DVD media - something like Nero will allow burning to physical media.

Hunt around the web, some of these are commercial software, but if you're resourceful, they can be found.....

Enjoy.

I have used clone DVD to make back ups of my DVDs for my own personal use (wink wink, nudge nudge), which surpasses the built in protection in comercial dvd's. It will remove frames to shrink a duel layer dvd (8 gb) to a single layer dvd size (4.7 gb). An other program is dvdshrink which works with nero.

As for ripping dvd's a handy open source program is handbreak:

http://handbrake.fr/

which allows you to rip dvd's and encode them how you wish.

Another very good program if you want to make DVD's out of avi or other files so you can watch them on TV is 'ConvertXtoDvd 3'.

And if every other burning program fails, 'HTFireman' works.

I agree, dvdshrink is great! Nero is nothing but a pain. I never use it.

DVD-Shrink is no longer being supported but the latest version ( a few years old now) is still tops in my book. If you have Nero installed it will work in partner with it so that you don't need to use any interface other than dvdshrink's.

One other thing I love is the ablility to give certain parts or elements of the disc precedence. For instance... if you're putting dual density DVD 8.7GB or thereabouts... onto a 4.7GB disc, you can go in and give preference to what is compressed and thus of a lower quality.

If it's a concert DVD, you can tell it to keep the audio as pure as possible at cost of the video quality, etc. Although in general, the defaults are usually all you need.

You can also do some crazy high compression on extra features, remove foreign language tracks you may not want and basically give as much space to the stuff you want so that it is compressed as little as possible.

All this in less than 4MB, I think!

Magic DVD Copier is the best I have found so far, able to decrypt alot of different protections on DVD's. Easy to use and free to evaluate, google it.

Good lord, using physical DVD's is so early 2000's. Get a decent USB external drive around the 1 TB size range and rip all your DVD's to AVI files in DivX format. I use ImToo DVD Ripper Ultimate. Then get the Western Digital Media Player from Best Buy for $140.00 to connect to this USB drive and play the files on your TV via HDMI or plain old composite video (unfortunately it lacks component video out). It sure beats tying up a computer to play video on your TV.

This cool device will also play the Blu-ray rips which are usually in H.264 format inside the .mkv container format. Get an account on Rapidshare and join one of the forums such as warez-bb.org and get started.

If you need any more info feel free to pm me.