How can I back up my substantial DVD collection in software or hardware?

October 27, 2005 9:00 PM

I'd like to back up my substantial DVD collection. What software or hardware would you recommend?

I'm experimenting with a system involving Windows XP, good quality, single layer DVD-R media, DVD Shrink, DVD Decryper and AnyDVD. Until recently, I was able to copy most discs without running into copy protection problems, but over time copy protection proliferated and DVD Shrink either crashed, hung or my entire system simply rebooted.

Preferably, I'd like to find a free component to do the portion of the process that AnyDVD does or find a single software or hardware solution to do it all. I'd gladly pay for AnyDVD, but I'm a bit put off by their explanation of who they are. As it is, the process takes quite a bit of time and manual involvement, which has prevented me from doing a mass copy.

It would be nice to make high quality rips to a hard drive based system, but I have high expecations of a hardware solution. Any such hardware solution should operate by remote control on my television, have expandable storage solutions, rip all DVDs, despite the copy protection schemes in modern DVDs, and have user upgradeable firmware for future solutions to future copy protection schemes. I've given up on MythTV, SageTV and a host of other home theater PC solutions, but am open to your suggestions. Having said all of this, I'd still prefer to copy my discs to other discs, if only because storing 4.5 Gb per movie on hard drives will quickly become a storage nightmare.

Your legal advice is not relavant. I do not use file trading software. I do not download movies illegally. I do not share my movies or make copies of my movies for friends. I do, however, pay for DVDs that scratch more quickly than an iPod Nano, which makes my investment into DVDs quite risky. If the MPAA wants to take it up with me, that's between me and the MPAA. If this post runs afoul of MeFi's guidelines about things that may be considered of questionable legality or your personal morals, please flag it and move on. I'm really not looking for a legal discussion.

posted by sequential to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

You might want to try www.doom9.org. they have walkthroughs for pretty much everything related to DVD backup
posted by scodger at 9:09 PM on October 27, 2005

Something you're looking for would be incredibly useful myself and I'm sure others.

I don't have a perfect solution, but I can tell you what I do. Firstly I don't know if you mean "backup" as in backup or as in renting movies from netflix and wanting to store them.

1) DVD Decryptor to rip movies

2) Neodivx 9.2 to convert dvds to XVID. Typically 1400mb. This allows me to put on cd later if space becomes an issue. I had a lot of trouble not backing up entire dvds originally, but XVID at 1400mb looks amazing and HD or Blu-ray disks will be out soon anyways, so I finally gave in and converted the movies.

3) MediaMan for library management (amazing interface, try it)

4) S-Video from computer to TV & VLC to play movies on TV. Looks great.

Sorry for not pointing you to a single solution, but I don't believe one exists.
posted by null terminated at 9:14 PM on October 27, 2005

Funny, this link just turned up in my feed reader:
How to Make Perfect DVD Copies.
posted by misterbrandt at 9:49 PM on October 27, 2005

I've yet to find a disc which has defeated DVD43 and DVDShrink, including a few clearly labelled as copy protected.
posted by punilux at 9:55 PM on October 27, 2005

i use DVD X Copy, makes perfect copies, on (1) 4.3gb DVD disc. it leaves the actual movie in tact, but compresses the special features a bit, to make it all fit on one disc. as far as i know, this progam is not sold in the US anymore, so you'd have to order it from overseas. it is super simple to use, so along with this dvd burner, you'd be set.
posted by deadmouse at 10:23 PM on October 27, 2005

I use one of two programs:

CloneDVD
or
1ClickDVDCopy

I use DVD43 with 1Click and AnyDVD with CloneDVD.

They make it so simple there's simply no way to mess up.

-
posted by Independent Scholarship at 11:39 PM on October 27, 2005

How come some of you are using 2 or 3 programs to do this? DVD X Copy is one simple program, and it takes like 3 mouse clicks to copy a dvd onto a DVD-r. Just curious.
posted by deadmouse at 9:53 AM on October 28, 2005

From your initial post, I'm a little confused. I rip ISOs with DVD decrypter, and only use DVDshrink for recompression. DVDdecrypter should be dealing with the copy protection, and leave DVDshrink a perfectly normal ISO to deal with. If DVDshrink is hanging on ISOs made by DVDD, my first guess would be a problem with the DVDS installation.
posted by Jack Karaoke at 10:15 AM on October 28, 2005

There are some discs that DVDshrink/DVDdecrypter has problems with - but ime, those have been pretty rare.

AnyDVD should solve that problem (you might have to get the latest version - and aside from physically damaged discs, the latest AnyDVD+CloneDVD has always worked for me as a last resort; I like the compression algorithms from DVDshrink better than CloneDVD).
posted by PurplePorpoise at 10:56 AM on October 28, 2005

Not legal advice but I'd suggest you ask yourself this question: what's the point? If one of those DVDs croaks you'll pay around $20 to replace it, assuming it's not available for $7 at Best Buy. Alternately you'll spend huge amounts of time and not insignificant amounts of money on storage hardware in order to have the ability to back up stuff which you can then burn to an inferior DVD-5 or more expensive DVD-9.

That said, when I copy DVDs so I can take the copy with me when I travel and not lose the original, I use a combination of DVD Decryptor (free) and Nero 6.whatever. Decryptor in file mode copies the whole file tree and then Nero lets me pick which bits to not copy (the umpteen commercials on every goddamned disc these days) so it can recode in the best possible quality.

If you really want to make perfect copies then the file mode DVD Decryptor is likely the way to go. When the potential to burn DVD-18 shows up on the desktop you'll be able to burn it exactly as it came off the disc. If you need to make burns before then you can recode it at the rate that makes you happy. If your purpose is archiving then you can do this now and worry about the recode/burn if/when the need arises in the future.
posted by phearlez at 11:35 AM on October 28, 2005

Response by poster:

How come some of you are using 2 or 3 programs to do this?

The primary reason I'm not using DVD X Copy is, as their website tells you:

Authentic DVD X Copy software is no longer being sold anywhere. Many "closeout", clearance, auction and discount websites are selling fake DVD X Copy Software products and "patches" that are not authentic, CANNOT be activated or are cracked versions that DO NOT WORK properly and/or that contain spyware.

The second reason I'm using several software packages to do this is because I've yet to find one piece of software that works 100% of the time given the budget I've created for backing up my DVDs for regular use. Essentially, all I am doing is copying the movie. It is rare that I back up special features, other languages or previews. This generally means I can copy all single DVD movies to a single layer, 4.5 Gb DVD-R, which at the time I started the experiment was significantly cheaper than doing it on dual layer DVD-R. I'll evaluate that decision the next time I buy a couple of hundred DVD-R, which should be rather soon.

The result of the process has been that I very rarely have to compress a movie. When compression becomes an issue, I can always drop soundtracks, director's comments or other extras that are often included in the main movie file. Even when I have to reduce a large movie to 75% compression, it's hard to tell the difference to the untrained eye, especially if I am viewing the movie on an analog display. On my HD display, I notice a lot more, but I also have one of them trained eyes.

From your initial post, I'm a little confused. I rip ISOs with DVD decrypter, and only use DVDshrink for recompression. DVDdecrypter should be dealing with the copy protection, and leave DVDshrink a perfectly normal ISO to deal with. If DVDshrink is hanging on ISOs made by DVDD, my first guess would be a problem with the DVDS installation.

Everything you say is spot on, with two exceptions. The first is that I'm relatively lazy (or to be more forgiving, time pressed). Making an ISO, compressing it to fit on a single layer DVD-R, and then writing the disc would require an extra step. Secondly, and this should have been implicit in the self-imposed 4.5 Gb cap, I cut a lot of crap out of the DVD-9 discs I have to make the movie fit, thus I used DVD Shrink on every disc.

There are some discs that DVDshrink/DVDdecrypter has problems with - but ime, those have been pretty rare.

As had been my experience up until very recently when DVD Decrypter and DVD Shrink were regularly failing on movies produced in the last six months to a year. AnyDVD has worked flawlessly so far.

what's the point?

That's a perfectly valid question. I watch a lot of movies. The fact is that when I started looking into this in 2001, I had scratched a significant portion of my discs. Though most were still playable, many of them were not. Replacing them was not cheap, though I did manage to get many of them used through Amazon.com Marketplace and eBay.

Overall, I've spent pennies per movie I've backed up. It's like insurance, in some sense, I guess.

when I copy DVDs so I can take the copy with me when I travel and not lose the original

I do the exact same thing.
posted by sequential at 12:18 PM on October 28, 2005