[wags982]

Is it legal to take a DVD movie that I've purchased and put it on my computer?

[buchrob]

If you are located in the US, then making a back-up copy for personal use is probably considered "fair usage". But good luck trying to play this "copy" anywhere.

The technical problems will drag you down long before the legal authorities, assuming that, having now made a "legal" backup copy on your hard disk, you now opt to make this a little more "secure", as in transferring the data to some relatively incorruptible optical medium, say, like DVD.

The movie studios (who all own record companies) have watched with abject horror the way that CD's are pirated with impunity and have reacted accordingly (c.f. Napster).

The average super-duper-star CD costs well under $1 Million to produce, not including duplication fees, but it's not unusual for movies to cost well in excess of $100 Million before distribution. So, having been burnt badly in the CD arena, which remains to be settled, the studios are understandably grasping at all the controls they possibly can before they relinquish the movie business to the privateers.

So here are some of the "gentleman's agreements" that have been tacitly implemented amongst the software and hardware sectors of the industry in order to make everyone (except perhaps the consumer) happy:

1) Pre-recorded DVD's are Region-encoded in order to fit with the studios' distributuion schedules (no point in letting European viewers buy a DVD before the movie is out in theatres on the Continent).

2) pre-recorded DVD's have an encryption code that is within the READABLE area of the disk but outside of the WRITABLE region of a consumer burner. Your computer can play any disc within its valid region, but can't duplicate it to another DVD. Consumer burners can also not create the master disks (-R) that are required by any DVD duplication facility.

3) commercial DVD's are dynamically compressed -- scenes that contain less detail can be compressed more than others --- resulting in a more available disk space for all those extra features, but necessitating several compression passes to achieve the ideal. The current Apple suite of authoring tools is limited to static compression --- everything is compressed by the same amount through your movie. Which is a GREAT compromise. You just want to know that if you've bought the latest-and-greatest Apple box, that an hour of DVD will take about an hour to encode and not 200 hours to save you 17.6% of your disk space (unless you were REALLY planning on Director's Commentary, Outtakes, 3 different language tracks and bios, etc.)

You also have to understand that the average user has access to consumer-grade equipment only, compared to professional-grade equipment the film distributors can afford (disappointed that junior's 2nd birthday party video shot on a consumer camera is not as sharp as the Sopranos episode you saw on HDTV ---- well, we all get the picture).

THAT HAVING BEEN SAID, I still remember as a child going to my local library and looking at whatever I wanted in any without paying anyone anything.

So the entire morals of the CD/DVD dupe thing are more complex than the studios would make them out to be.

At this stage of the game, unless you consider your time to be worth about $0.125 an hour, it's definitely cheaper to spring for a second copy on eBay than it is to try to extract, re-mux and re-burn on media that will probably cost you very close to the original anyway. The 4 films for $4 for 4 days at the local DVD rental outlet is now starting to look very good as well.


You MAY be also be interested in http://www169.pair.com/lukifer/dvd.html and http://www.dvdmadeeasy.com

[ 08-15-2001: Message edited by: buchrob ]

[wags982]

Thanks for the info. What I'm really interested in doing is not outputting back to DVD, but storing some of my favorite DVDs on my computer, in a compressed, playable format, much like I've done with my CD collection (stored as MP3s). I figure it'd be nice to have my favorite movies at my fingertips, especially since I have a laptop, but I wanted to check the legality of doing so.

[max4ever]

The only problem is this: Apple DVD player looks on the DVD drive for a movie--i don't know how to play one off the hard drive. You probably could if you could make a disk image, but i don't know how to do that. If someone does, that'd be great to know.

[King Chung Huang]

Originally posted by max4ever:
<STRONG>The only problem is this: Apple DVD player looks on the DVD drive for a movie--i don't know how to play one off the hard drive. You probably could if you could make a disk image, but i don't know how to do that. If someone does, that'd be great to know.</STRONG>

It's pretty easy to use the Apple DVD Player to play stuff on your local hard drive. Just go to the Edit menu, down to preferences, over to the Advanced Controls tab, then check off "Add 'Open VIDEO_TS' menu item to File Menu". Now, after you somehow manage to copy everything off a video DVD, just use this command in the file menu to open and play it.

Here's a new legal/technical question for someone, although there doesn't seem to be too much activity in this category....

Let's say I have aquired the legal right to use a short clip from a movie in a presentation (b/c I have, but that's not the issue). Currently, I can import from VHS, edit away, and insert clip in a powerpoint (or similar) presentation so that it plays seamlessly within the rest of the slides. I like this very much.

My simple question is.... can I do this w/ movies on DVD? What about the CSS (or whatever)? Is it possible to import/rip a selected portion of a commercial DVD, edit, and insert the clip into a presentation? Can I do this with relative ease?

Thanks.... eagerly awaiting responses.

[DominikHoffmann]

My simple question is.... can I do this w/ movies on DVD? What about the CSS (or whatever)? Is it possible to import/rip a selected portion of a commercial DVD, edit, and insert the clip into a presentation? Can I do this with relative ease?

Go to nullDigiful Visuals, like suggested above by buchrob, and you will find several tools for doing that, but with a lot of effort.

Dominik

[macwannabe]

I went to some of the websites mentioned here and took a look at the instructions for capturing DVD- holy crap

Furthermore, being resigned to the complexity and amount of time involved, the legal question comes up again. If I am covered under the "fair use" exemptions to copyright law to, let's say show a clip of a movie to illustrate a point I'm making in a presentation, do I have the legal right to capture video from a DVD and seamlessly insert it into the presentation software, rather that switching the projector from computer input to DVD input, etc., and looking less professional? Or - is the capture and change of media considered an alteration of the work that is not protected under copyright law? I'm OK ethically, at least IMHO, but what about legally? These are often separate ideas

macwannabe