Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

Dakkon · Jul 16, 2003, 01:53 AM

Hi guys, I'm thinking that I will be buying a new powerbook in the near future, and I was looking at the superdrive, and was wondering 2 things�

#1 can I make a direct copy of a DvD movie with the drive and software?
#2 can I play the back up DvD on a regular DvD player? One that was made before the DvD-R standards?

Thanks guys.. Also how long would it take to burn a DvD movie? 30min+?

Axo1ot1 · Jul 16, 2003, 02:38 AM

DVD-R works in something like 90-95% of home players (DVD+R is a little less compatible). There are some applications for making backups of DVDs available for the Mac and they are geared toward transferring the contents to DVD-Rs and CD-Rs for use in home players. It's definitely a legal gray area, though, so don't expect to get really good support for that in something like iDVD. You'll be going through shareware to do it.

GENERAL_SMILEY · Jul 16, 2003, 04:24 AM

I've actually found that 3 out of 4 DVD players I've tried with the the DVD-R (apple discs) have failed to read properly.

Now I don't know if it is because my friends have ass DVD players - mine works fine - and one of the ones which failed to read properly was an XBox, but still it doesn't look too good.

Maybe I've just been unlucky.

mism · Jul 16, 2003, 05:15 AM

I've found that movies I have shot, edited in iMovie and authored with iDVD have played in all but one of the DVD players I have tried. They play on my XBOX, a friends Hitachi, my parents Toshiba and another friends player. The only player that didn't work was a wharfedale which is pretty old and has had problems with discs in the past.

Regarding 'backing up' DVDs check out DVDBackup and DVD2oneX on version tracker.
DVDBackup is great if you want to copy a few movies onto your hard drive to watch on a train without having to carry the discs or spin the DVD drive.

Dakkon · Aug 8, 2003, 01:59 AM

actualy the reason i ask is i have an alpine indash DvD player (iva-d900) and was wondering if it would read them..

thanks for the replys guys!

Eug · Aug 8, 2003, 08:30 AM

It depends on the make, model, and revision.

Most new players work, but for old ones it's much more hit and miss.

I have one very old player that won't play DVD-R at all. I have one player that wouldn't play DVD-R reliably but did once I updated the loader's firmware. All my other players play DVD-R fine, but they're newer.

And Apple DVD-Rs are reliable. Noname brand discs often don't work in anything but the burner.

juanpacolopez · 10:06 AM

Originally posted by Dakkon:
Hi guys, I'm thinking that I will be buying a new powerbook in the near future, and I was looking at the superdrive, and was wondering 2 things�

#1 can I make a direct copy of a DvD movie with the drive and software?
#2 can I play the back up DvD on a regular DvD player? One that was made before the DvD-R standards?

Thanks guys.. Also how long would it take to burn a DvD movie? 30min+?

To answer your questions...

You CAN backup a DVD to a DVD-R. However, a standard DVD-R disc is only 4.7Gb, much smaller than most movies.

You have to decrypt the DVD first, copy the contents to your HD. Then you have to compress the video to fit on a 4.7Gb disc. Then you can burn... it takes abotu 1 hour to burn +/- 2.5 hours to process.

I won't mention specific software because I don't want the DMCA police busting down my door... but search around on versiontracker and you'll find what you need. Look around for the #42 spelled out in english

[EDIT] I can however mention DVD2OneX (as someone else did) since it doesn't decrypt... it only works with unencrypted mpeg2. One of the best pieces of software EVER. And, it'll compress and entire DVD's worth of video in ~20 minutes (at least on my 1Ghz G4).

juanpacolopez · Aug 8, 2003, 10:14 AM

Originally posted by mism:
I've found that movies I have shot, edited in iMovie and authored with iDVD have played in all but one of the DVD players I have tried. They play on my XBOX, a friends Hitachi, my parents Toshiba and another friends player. The only player that didn't work was a wharfedale which is pretty old and has had problems with discs in the past.

Regarding 'backing up' DVDs check out DVDBackup and DVD2oneX on version tracker.
DVDBackup is great if you want to copy a few movies onto your hard drive to watch on a train without having to carry the discs or spin the DVD drive.

Yeah... for legit backups you can't beat DVDBackup--->HD. Works great, and you can even (usually) watch 2 DVD's on 1 battery charge if the drive isn't spinning the whole time... really useful for roadtrips, etc.