DVD Burners And What Do You Recommend?

[tiktok 22]

DVD Shrink Guide

1. If you just have one DVD drive, You must copy the movie to the hard drive first and then use the same drive to burn it back. A CD-ROM drive will not read or write a DVD but a DVD burner will also burn a CD. You will need as much HD space as you can afford as one DVD is about 9 gigs.

2. Nero is great burning software and updates are free for as long as they offer them for that version(I'm running Nero 6).

DVD Decrypter is another great free program for ripping DVD's.

There are a few free burning programs out there such as finalBurner, Burn4Free, Deepburner, Fireburner and CD burner XP pro, but Nero is worth the money. If you want to try one of the free ones just google the names I've listed here.

 

[Coop]

Thanks MayCooper but I guess there's no more free lunch in burning DVD's as in DVD Shrink? If I buy Nero will it be easy to burn DVDs and will I have to pay out the fee every year? How the heck do you burn DVDs with this new NEC burner? Do you put the blank DVD disc in the burner and then the movie in the CD-ROM?

I use an older version of Nero, which has no yearly fees. It came with my DVD drive 'for free', but I'm glad I spent that extra $12 on the retail version of the drive vs. the OEM version I was planning to buy.
There are a few good free applications to burn DVDs with, but as I don't use any of them I can't really recommend one. Take a look at sites like tucows.com there's tons of free trial software available for download. Just try a few to see which ones you like best.

 

[Bob_G]

I've never tried copying DVD movies, but there's two things I'm pretty sure of. One, you need something that will decode the copy protection, and you also need something that will decode the DVD to mpeg2 (the original format.) A lot of programs claiming to copy DVD movies decode to a lesser format I think, so your movie won't look as good as the original.

Nero is the gold standard of burning programs. I used the full blown version for CD, but now just use the freebie Express version that came with the DVD burner since all I do with it is archive my HDD.

 

[tiktok 22]

I've never tried copying DVD movies, but there's two things I'm pretty sure of. One, you need something that will decode the copy protection, and you also need something that will decode the DVD to mpeg2 (the original format.) A lot of programs claiming to copy DVD movies decode to a lesser format I think, so your movie won't look as good as the original.

Nero is the gold standard of burning programs. I used the full blown version for CD, but now just use the freebie Express version that came with the DVD burner since all I do with it is archive my HDD.

Hi Bob,

You are correct. You will need software to break the encryption (DVD Shrink, DVD Decrypter DVD fab etc.) However the movie stays in MPEG 2 format. The only loss of quality is due to burning it back to a DVD. Most original DVD's are dual layer and over 9 gigs. DVD-R/+R are single layer discs and are 4.7 gigs. The only way to get that much on the single layer discs is to edit out anything that you don't want or allow compression to fit it on a single layer disc. You can get burnable dual layer discs that will provide you with enough storage so compression won't be an issue, but these are more expensive and some people have trouble with them more than single layer discs.

 

[Bob_G]

Thanks, I've been wondering how people got around the dual layer issue. Do you know if you can simply burn back to two single layer discs? Splitting the original image, or ripping two halves to begin with or whatever?

Edit: Okay, never mind I just read through your links above. DVD Shrink has a nice set of tutorials, even works on my dialup. Looks like you can split them, but you lose the menus. I guess I'm going to have to look into this whole thing.

 

[Gene]

I am up and burning DVDs! Thanks to blake711 and others, this NEC burns like fool! All it took was to get over all that jumper jargon and put the pin cover on the pins like the original CD-ROM I removed. Then use DVD Shrink and DVD Encrypter, (Nero was NOT needed), and beautiful, clean playing DVDs can be yours!

Again though, THANKS TO ALL FOR YOUR INPUT AND ESPECIALLY BLAKE711!

 

[Lit Up]

I am up and burning DVDs! Thanks to blake711 and others, this NEC burns like fool! All it took was to get over all that jumper jargon and put the pin cover on the pins like the original CD-ROM I removed. Then use DVD Shrink and DVD Encrypter, (Nero was NOT needed), and beautiful, clean playing DVDs can be yours!

Again though, THANKS TO ALL FOR YOUR INPUT AND ESPECIALLY BLAKE711!

Just understand that DVD Decrypter was bought out sometime ago, and thus, is no longer updated. Alot of the newer movie releases use newer encryption schemes on the DVDs so Decrypter won't work on some. Older ones should be ok up to about two years ago.

Somebody made mention of AnyDVD. It's good and costs, but it does get updated with the newer encryptions.

 

[tiktok 22]

J

Somebody made mention of AnyDVD. It's good and costs, but it does get updated with the newer encryptions.

AnyDVD is great but it does cost. Try this. It's updated frequently and it's free.

 

[yybug]

NEC, lite-on
plextor is good but cost more.
newegg.com is the place I buy..

 

[eluminator]

I think some, and maybe most, of the current crop of DVD burners can do a decent job with dual layer. From what I've read at CDfreaks, the only good dual layer blank discs are Verbatim +R DL.

Make sure you get discs whose rated burning speeds aren't greater than what your burner can handle.

 

[Lit Up]

I think some, and maybe most, of the current crop of DVD burners can do a decent job with dual layer. From what I've read at CDfreaks, the only good dual layer blank discs are Verbatim +R DL.

Make sure you get discs whose rated burning speeds aren't greater than what your burner can handle.

How much have those discs came down in price? Last time I looked (it's been awhile) they were 3/30 bucks.

 

[Lit Up]

AnyDVD is great but it does cost. Try this. It's updated frequently and it's free.

Hey, thanks.

I haven't kept up lately on what's available out there. I have about 200 or so movies (95% actually bought ) that I really don't get the time to watch, so I don't really mess with it as much anymore. But have a few people that's been asking me about some software.

I think Hollywood's best protection scheme they have going for me is just by what they've been releasing. Really nothing I care to barely watch the first time around, let alone own. :laughing:

Oh, did you guys hear, somebody's already cracked the Blu-Ray encryption.

He had a video of his monitor on youtube showing him doing it. It's nowhere near as simplified as DVDshrink and others (looked like he was running through alot of code and knew what he was doing) but I'm sure that'll come with time.

 

[tiktok 22]

Oh, did you guys hear, somebody's already cracked the Blu-Ray encryption.

He had a video of his monitor on youtube showing him doing it. It's nowhere near as simplified as DVDshrink and others (looked like he was running through alot of code and knew what he was doing) but I'm sure that'll come with time.

Actually, it's HD DVD that's been cracked but Blu Ray won't be far behind. The program is called BackupHDDVD and can be had with a google search. There is a lot of reading required and some hardware to be purchased to do this however.

 

[Gene]

Lit Up,
Thanks for the head's up but so far I haven't had any problems using Decrypter even with new releases. That's not to say I won't but I've burned around 10 new releases so far and everything worked great.

tiktok 22,
Thanks much for that link! If I do encounter problems with DVD Decrypter, I'll try that one.

 

[Gene]

Just an update.

Li Up,
You were correct. With some of the newer movies, DVD Shrink And DVD Decrypter will not work.

tiktoc 22,
I downloaded DVDFab Decrypter 3.0.8.6 and it burnt a couple of new movies into my HD that DVD Shrink wouldn't. Can you now explain to me how to burn them to a DVD+R using the DVDFab? They don't have a tutorial. Thanks much.

 

[tiktok 22]

Hi Gene,

DVD fab free WON'T burn to dvd(the non-free version will). You will need a burning program such as Nero 7(my personal favorite) and select DVD video. From there simply drag all the files from the original DVD (now on the hard drive) into the VIDEO_TS folder set up by the burning program, click burn.

 

[Dorky1]

My personal preference is an external DVD burner and HD. I tend to move from one computer to another. I've found out that you can run DVD Decrypter, DVD Shrink, and IMG Burn from a jump drive ( don't have to load the programs in the computer itself ). You can rip with: http://www.ripit4me.org/guide.htmlhttp://www.ripit4me.org/guide.html.This This freeware is updated often and uses DVD Decrypter and DVD Shrink. Process the file with DVD Shrink and save it as an ISO file. Burn it with IMG Burn. Nero is not necessary to burn the file.

 

[Trashman]

AnyDVD will unprotect *any* DVD, inlcuding HD, provided you have the latest update. I use it w/CloneDVD2 (Slysoft, too) and it works perfectly every time. It really couldn't be easier. Click-click-click and it's done!

 

[Rayne]

This might be just my experience, but if anyone is considering an external DVD Writer, I'd wouldn't recommend the LG GSA-E10L. It started out great, burned a few data DVD's and a bunch of CD's perfectly but in the past few days it's only produced coasters (need to burn data DVD's to free up some HD space ) and crashed Windows XP twice. It's got the latest firmware update and the driver is good. Another thing that happens is that the little icon in the system tray that you can click to "safely remove the drive" disappears for a few seconds every so often, then reappears, like Windows loses it for a bit or something. Might just be my inexperience or ignorance in this area, but I don't think it is.

 

[dig-it]

ConvertXtoDVD is what I use and recommend. Not free, but simple and it works.


http://www.vso-software.fr/products/convert_x_to_dvd/