[waffffffle]

I was wondering if Toast 6 can be used to duplicate a commercial video DVD. For the purposes of fair use time and space shifting, of course. This would be using a superdrive on a PowerBook.

Thanks.

[vasu]

Not quite, but it's pretty easy to do. On a commercial (video) dvd there is copy protection and what not, so first you have to remove this. Toast cannot do this, so you need another program that can.

DVDBackup or 0Sex (that's a zero not an O) can copy a DVD to your hard drive and remove copy protection and region coding. So now you have the dvd on your hard drive.

Most commercial DVDs are 9+ gigs wheras a DVD-R or +R is only around 4.7Gb (~4200mb). So you can either burn it across 2 discs, or reencode it down to fit on 1 disc. Most of the time, if you chose to reencode it down to 1 disc, you wont notice a big quality loss on a TV, on a monitor or lcd screen or a hdtv you might. To do either of these things (make it two dvd-r images or a single 4.7gb complaint dvd-r image) you'll need DVD2OneX.

Finally, at this point you'll have one (or two) dvd images that have your movie and are free from copy protection. At this point you'll use Toast and burn the resulting images or Video_TS folder onto a DVD-UDF disc. You want the Video_TS folder to be on the root level of the DVD, not its contents.

And for legal reasons... despite the fact that making copies of movies you have purchased is protected by fair use, breaking any form of copy protection is technically illegal by the DMCA (the biggest repeal of personal freedoms in recent times )

All of these programs can be found on MacUpdate (http://www.macupdate.com), and there are modest fees to use them.

-vasu

[waffffffle]

Thanks for the response. That sucks about the DMCA. I am not a fan of it either, but I am a little out of the loop in terms of the copy protection on DVDs because I am not much of a movie person and only recently got a superdrive.

[bbales]

OK, I tried to make a copy last night, to see if I could. But I must have done something wrong -- I used the first program (DVD backup) to make a copy, then tried to watch it on my PB. But it wouldn't open. I just had a folder with all the data in it, and that was supposed to be watchable. It's just a folder though, not an image copy or anything.

Any insights? Obviously, this is just a short-term solution in any case (good for time-shifting or watching on a glith) because the disk sucked up lots of hard drive real estate. I'd have to mull getting the program for burning. But that's neither here nor there -- I just want to get it to work!

Thanks.

[rjenkinson]

Originally posted by bbales:
I used the first program (DVD backup) to make a copy, then tried to watch it on my PB. But it wouldn't open. I just had a folder with all the data in it, and that was supposed to be watchable.

open DVD player, hit command-O, and select the movie's video TS folder.

-r.

[bbales]

fWell, I tried it and again it didn't work. Then, in desperation, I tried hitting "play." Voila! It works.

I won't keep this on my HD long -- it's 7 gigs! But the DVD has to go back, so it's nice to be able to watch it on my timetable.

thanks again. Learned something new.

[Arkham_c]

Originally posted by bbales:
I won't keep this on my HD long -- it's 7 gigs! But the DVD has to go back, so it's nice to be able to watch it on my timetable..

If you use DVD2OneX, you can recompress the DVD video and make it much smaller.

[hardcat1970]

i wonder just how long the entire process will take, let's say, for an hour and a half movie to burn the movie back to a single dvd disk?

[bbales]

Originally posted by Arkham_c:
If you use DVD2OneX, you can recompress the DVD video and make it much smaller.

Yes, thank you for the tip and the help. I'm struggling with my inner self. Yes, I can say I'm only going to back up our own DVDs. But I know I'd be able to copy things that aren't mine -- and have a hankering for the Mash television series, now that seasons 4 and 5 are out! And while I could do that, my three girls would know it and I feel I would be setting a terrible example.

So there's the good Beth on one shoulder and the bad one on the other. Not sure who will win!

Thanks again.

[hodaddy]

its a thin line we're walking right now. while copying a DVD of a season of shows may be something that gnaws at the conscience, you can use a PVR/DVDR device to snag the broadcasts with no guilt. at the moment it appears that you only have to throw a wad of money at the ethical delimma to make it go away.

[Kenneth]

I always use DVDBackup to handle that task.
Each movie is within 8GB since most of them are on a dual layer media. I have 320GB of storage on my PowerMac.. so I don't have problem with that.