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Why do I need to backup a DVD? The major problem with CDs and DVDs is that they can easily get damaged. Unless good care is taken of the disc, then it is easy to scratch the bottom of the disc or even worse the top of the disc. The bottom of the disc is designed to have a little bit of wear and tear to it and for the laser from the player still to be see through and read the data. However if this light scratching becomes progressively worse, then the DVD can become severely scratched causing playing difficulties and effectively making the DVD useless. Backing up the original DVD allows you to use a less valuable copy to use on a regular basis, and protecting your original disc. Making one copy of a DVD you own for this purpose is perfectly legal. Please note that by sharing this copy with your friends etc would nullify this backup legitimacy. Problems with Backing up DVDs With DVD movies the majority of these are what called DVD9 format. This means they are double layered discs, containing 8.4GB of data. DVD-R and DVD R writers are mostly using single layered DVD5 discs. These hold 4.7GB of data. The problem is making the data nearly 4GB less to make it fit on a DVD-R or DVD R. On top of this the original DVD movie disc will have copy encryption and region coding to prevent copies being made. There are double layered DVD-R and DVD R but these are expansive and almost 10 times the price of a single layered DVD. However for best quality then double layered are best. How do I backup a DVD? Firstly you need to get past the region coding and copy encryption. DVD43 is an excellent program to get past this problem. Firstly DVD43 will allow you to play any region DVD in your PC, in any DVD drive. Secondly DVD43 will decrypt the movie stream as you access it from the DVD. This software sits in the tray of your desktop and gives you multi region access to DVDs the way it should have been in the first place. The next problem is making the data smaller. The solution many others and I use is DVD Shrink. This program ‘shrinks’ the bit rate of the video so that less detail is shown on screen. Also DVD Shrink allows you to chop the menu, foreign languages and extras out of the DVD so that more space is available. This can all help to achieve the desired size. DVD Shrink is also very fast with full DVD shrinking and writing possible in about 20-30 minutes depending on your computer speed. What are the advantages and disadvantages? The advantages of this are that it is very quick to copy a DVD, and also you can take out unwanted features like movie trailers and copy warnings. It is also possible to have a complete copy of your movie including all menus and languages if you require. The only major disadvantage is that if you shrink the DVD you are going to lose quality in the video. On the majority of televisions you will not notice the difference, as the quality will be very good. Larger plasma style televisions may show up the shortcomings a lot more as some pixelization and artefacts. It is best to only shrink by a maximum of about 70%, and lose features from the disc to make it fit.
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Fatmunter is the author and editor of the Free Software GuidesArticle Source: The FREE Article Distribution Center
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