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Where can i find a free dvd shrink?

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

  • 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, http://www.dvdshrink.org/what.html, http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/dvd_rippers/dvd_decrypter.cfm and http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvd.html. 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 http://www.slysoft.com/en/is-slysoft-a-new-company-from-elby-faq.90.10.html 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.

  • Answer:

    You might want to try http://www.doom9.org. they have walkthroughs for pretty much everything related to DVD backup

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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) http://www.neodivx.org/neodivx/downloads.html 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) http://www.imediaman.com/ 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.

null terminated

Funny, this link just turned up in my feed reader: http://www.oolsi.com/item/how-to-make-perfect-dvd-copies.

misterbrandt

I've yet to find a disc which has defeated http://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=427 and DVDShrink, including a few clearly labelled as copy protected.

punilux

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 http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1491355&CatId=89, you'd be set.

deadmouse

I use one of two programs: http://www.slysoft.com/en/clonedvd.html or http://www.1clickdvdcopy.com/ I use http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/dvd_rippers/dvd43.cfm with 1Click and http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvd.html with CloneDVD. They make it so simple there's simply no way to mess up. -

Independent Scholarship

I'm halfway there - I've been backing things up to several removeable hard drives (which were previously just collecting dust) in the hopes of finally coming across a reliable way to burn them back to DVDR discs. I've yet to accomplish this - sometimes the burns are completely fine, others they're lacking sound, or just don't work altogether. Thanks for asking this question - I'm enjoying reading these answers.

odinsdream

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.

deadmouse

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.

Jack Karaoke

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).

PurplePorpoise

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