Brendan’s Blog

My kids have lots of movies, and I quickly found that DVD movies are not kid-proof. Scratched and lost discs cost us a number of titles before I took action to protect our investment.

The process involves making copies of DVD based movies that I have purchased. I am not a lawyer, but I contend that what I’m doing does not violate the spirit of copyright laws. If anyone has evidence otherwise, send it to me, and I’ll send it to my lawyer for review.

There are several reasons why I make copies of my DVD movies:

• I’m a fan of backups. I like knowing that if a disc is lost or scratched, I don’t have to re-purchase a new copy.
• Backups made with this process start playing the real movie immediately when it is inserted.
  

  Note to movie studios: I hate the commercials that you force kids to watch before they can actually watch the movie that is on the disc. It is unreasonable to me that you block the ability to skip or fast-forward through commercials on a DVD that you charge money to buy.

  Four things are needed to make a copy of a commercial movie DVD. This is not “secret” knowledge. A quick Google search will tell you the same thing.

1. A PC with a DVD recorder. If your PC has two DVD drives (at least one of which is a recorder) things are even easier.
2. Blank DVD media. Most commercial movie DVDs use dual-layer media which can hold up to 9GB of video and audio data. Most blank DVDs for use in computers is single layer and only holds 4.5GB of video.
3. Software to disable DVD copy protection mechanisms. I use AnyDVD. Once installed, all DVDs appear to your PC as having no copy protection. AnyDVD also includes an option to skip the movie trailers. (My favorite feature.)
4. Software to compress the source video (9GB) so that it will fit onto a standard blank DVD (4.5GB). I use CloneDVD. It is very easy to use and works quickly.

Once I had all of the software installed, the following steps summarize what I do each time I want to make a movie backup:

1. Configure AnyDVD to “Remove annoying adverts and trailers” and “Jump directly to the movie.”
2. Insert the original movie in one DVD drive, and insert a blank DVD disc into the DVD recorder drive.
3. Start CloneDVD and click the “Clone DVD” button.
4. Point the software to the source DVD drive.
5. View a portion of the on-screen movie player to ensure that it found the right movie content. Click Next.
6. In this screen I don’t change anything. If you want you can remove foreign language content to save space and potentially have less need for compression. Click Next.
7. Confirm that it is writing the copy to the blank media, and will erase any temporary files from your hard disk once the process is complete. Click Go.
8. Watch the video in fast forward mode if you like, and relax. A sound will play in 30-40 minutes to let you know it is complete.

Blank DVD media can be purchased almost anywhere. You may find that some media works better than others in your recorder (DVD-R vs. DVD+R). You may also notice some media works better than others in your DVD players (like the one in your car.) Some players (usually older ones) don’t support writable DVD media at all.