How easy it is to actuall make "back-ups" of your own DVD's with a DVD Burner?

[Eug]

Originally posted by: Mallow
geez, Eug, I thought it was fairly clear by the mood of the posts that "backing-up" DVD's applies not only to backing my own DVD's that I own but also theoretically backing-up rented or borrowed DVD's for education reasons and then I would destroy them of course. I just want to see if it can be done.

You don't really need a DVD recorder to see if can be done. As long as you can create a usable VIDEO_TS folder then you then play it with a PC based player. Or to go one step further you can even make a Nero disc image to be mounted, and then play from the disc image for testing purposes.

The main reason though that I brought up the hard drive method is that it is much less work, and you'd have the entire discs at your disposal, not just some hacked versions. A 160 GB drive costs about US$215 and would hold around 20 DVDs. You can delete the ones you don't need on an ongoing basis. The drawback of course is that you can't play it on your DVD player.

But then again I'm biased. I hate watching re-encoded DVDs or DVDs missing the extras, but that's just me.

 

[Mallow]

As a poor college student I don't give a flip about extras and even if I wasn't a poor college student I don't think I would care. IMHO if you have ever seen a good quality SVCD, for free, it is more than worth it. DVD's are so expensive as are music CD's. I'd say the difference between DVD and SVCD (high bit rate, like 3000kbits/s+) is the difference between a mp3 encoded @ 256kbps and one @ 128kbps, and trust me I have a lot of experience with both. Mp3's @ 256kbps are essentially CD quality, mp3's @ 128 are the most efficient use of space while conserving great quality. I guess it boils down to me being a cheap bastard

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: Mallow
As a poor college student I don't give a flip about extras and even if I wasn't a poor college student I don't think I would care. IMHO if you have ever seen a good quality SVCD, for free, it is more than worth it. DVD's are so expensive as are music CD's. I'd say the difference between DVD and SVCD (high bit rate, like 3000kbits/s+) is the difference between a mp3 encoded @ 256kbps and one @ 128kbps, and trust me I have a lot of experience with both. Mp3's @ 256kbps are essentially CD quality, mp3's @ 128 are the most efficient use of space while conserving great quality. I guess it boils down to me being a cheap bastard

OK, it's your (or your parents) money of course so you can do what you please.

We have different thresholds though. I consider 128 Kbps MP3 of only borderline sound quality, and I consider SVCD similarly as well. For MP3, it's a little more acceptable, since 128 Kbps MP3 plays on any machine. (However, I have encoded several thousand songs at 256 Mbps for better sound quality.) For SVCD I haven't even bothered because a) the video quality is noticeably poorer, b) it's too much work, and c) it's an orphan pseudo-standard anyway, since good brand names don't bother including SVCD compatibility, simply because nobody really cares about it besides a small subset of computer geeks.

But then again, I'm playing my video through a 16:9 widescreen progressive scan HDTV, from a high-end DVD player, so every little bit of video quality counts.

 

[Mallow]

hehe, I can tell our incomes differ by too much to really have any kind of the same thresholds of quality I love 128kbps mp3z, but prefer 160 or 192. But, if you haven't played w/ SVCD I don't see how you can possibly comment on the quality comparison... though I will give you that there is of course noticably a difference but for the price of free I can tolerate it. I will also grant it does take considerable effort but again your working for the price, which is free. Hard to get something for nothing. In this case your trading a little time and effort for money Something I am happy to do.

My system consists of an Apex DVD player (not high end ) and a good ol' Philips 25".

 

[bocamojo]

I have been using both Eazy VCD and EasyDivX to rip DVD's. I originally undertook this effort to copy some movies to my laptop's harddrive for a trip (it doesn't have a DVD player on it). I found that the process is now quite simple with freeware programs like these. Eazy VCD uses TMPGEnc and BeSweet, to name a few, and gives the option to split files (for whatever size CD or DVD media you have) or just keep one file. Also, it automatically selects the aspect ratio and finds the correct set of VOBs (which it calls the program chain). The ripping and encoding process does take some time, but still can be quite good, since TMPGEnc can do DVD quality (MPEG2) (free for 30 days, then you have to buy the TMPGEnc Plus upgrade to keep using it for MPEG-2), which is around the SVCD or above that you've probably been doing. The whole process can take about 3 hours on a 1.3GHz AMD system or comparable Pentium. I've been using either SVCD or VCD template, since it's just for the road, and not for a widescreen TV. I've been able to fit about 20 VCD's on the laptop HD, which is about 30GB, with room to spare for TV shows I've recorded and MP3's. Also, EasyDivX is cool too, because of the DivX codec (MPEG4) and quality for the relatively small size.

 

[Eug]

hehe, I can tell our incomes differ by too much to really have any kind of the same thresholds of quality I love 128kbps mp3z, but prefer 160 or 192. But, if you haven't played w/ SVCD I don't see how you can possibly comment on the quality comparison... though I will give you that there is of course noticably a difference but for the price of free I can tolerate it. I will also grant it does take considerable effort but again your working for the price, which is free. Hard to get something for nothing. In this case your trading a little time and effort for money Something I am happy to do.

My system consists of an Apex DVD player (not high end ) and a good ol' Philips 25".

I've played a bit with SVCD, but after making some discs I decided it was too much work, esp. considering the very low compatibity.

Also, 3 Mbps SVCDs don't play on some machines consistently when compared to 2.5 Mbps SVCD, which of course means even lower quality for somewhat increased compatibility.

I have an Apex too, and it's a dual boot in fact. See here. However, Apex players in general have pretty mediocre video quality. The quality between my Apex and my Panasonic RP91 is like night vs. day on my TV, even in interlaced mode. I keep the Apex for its computer geek features, but not for its video quality.

I've been using either SVCD or VCD template, since it's just for the road, and not for a widescreen TV. I've been able to fit about 20 VCD's on the laptop HD, which is about 30GB, with room to spare for TV shows I've recorded and MP3's.

For the road I just rip DVDs. Much easier and much faster, and of course I can view all the extras. But then again, I have a widescreen laptop (Mac G4 Titanium), and a 60 GB drive. On vacation I don't really have time to view 30 DVDs. Usually just about 3 or so. I rip the DVDs simply so that I don't have to carry DVDs in my carry-on baggage. And I don't risk customs thinking I bought them on the trip.

 

[human2k]

Whats wrong with dvd rips into divx? Quality is good considering the price (free of course). And with kazaa or direct connect you just type in the movie name and in 1-2hours you got yourself a good dvd rip. Buying dvd's and cd's are pointless unless its the LOTR DVD

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: human2k
Whats wrong with dvd rips into divx? Quality is good considering the price... Buying dvd's and cd's are pointless

First of all, it's illegal to download these files as you know. Second, when was the last time you tried to play a Divx file on your DVD player? Third, as we've already established, video quality is in the eye of the beholder.

 

[Ben50]

Mallow if you are a college student you probably have a fast enough connection to just download dvdr movies so you don't have to waste time reencoding them. PM me if you want to discuss it more because I won't be back to this thread.

 

[Mallow]

hrm... d/l dvdr movies? I guess I'll PM him just to see what the heck he is talking about

So what are people actually using all of these DVD Burners for? Only to burn private video to DVD for viewing pleasure and backing up large amounts of data and for presentations and such? Seems like such a waste, the only reason I would buy a DVD burner is for long term economic benefits ^_^

Any opinions on other good uses for DVD burners for the general public?

 

[Mallow]

I also want to know.

Has anyone got a dvd, copied only the vob files to a dvd+-r/w disc and then watched it on a dvd player? This would give exact DVD quality for your DVD backing up needs. I guess ultimately, this is what I want to know if it's possible as this is what I would want it for.

 

[Shagga]

I use DVD+R/RW to backup all my MP3's. I have about a 1000. I also use it for backing up Ghost Images of my entire system. Usually about 1Gig in size. I have also backed up DVD's with just the film not the extra's etc etc...oh not gorgetting everything I download and need to store, e.g. Drivers, Apps, Game Patches, WinXP SP1 and updates, you know the score.

It means that most of the files go on 2 DVD's as opposed to 13 CDR's...

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: Shagga
I use DVD+R/RW to backup all my MP3's. I have about a 1000. I also use it for backing up Ghost Images of my entire system. Usually about 1Gig in size. I have also backed up DVD's with just the film not the extra's etc etc...oh not gorgetting everything I download and need to store, e.g. Drivers, Apps, Game Patches, WinXP SP1 and updates, you know the score.

It means that most of the files go on 2 DVD's as opposed to 13 CDR's...

Yep. I've got about 30 GBs of MP3. Around 4 double-sided DVD-RAM discs. (I use DVD-RAM because you can do incremental additions to the discs easily - drag and drop.) I also keep my second hard drive as FAT32 so Ghost's DOS can recognize it. I then Ghost my XP NTFS boot drive to a file on the FAT32 drive, once I have all my main software installed. About 2 GB. I keep a backup on DVD-R. It saved me having to do a complete Windows and app reinstall from scratch a couple of times when some crappy drivers/software made my Windows go wonky.

Oh and on my last trip alone I took around 500 digital pix - about 1 GB of pictures. :Q Then I made a DVD video out of some of them. The final result (with a built in pix backup on the same DVD-R) was around 4 GB - perfect for a single DVD-R.

 

[Mallow]

bump for any other input out there?