Tech: Copying DVD to hard drive

05 Feb 13 - 04:43 PM (#3476179)
Subject: Tech: Copying DVD to hard drive
From: gnu

Bought a laptop and I want to copy DVDs to the hard drive so I can watch them when I am travelling.

So, what's the easiest and cheapest way to do it?

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05 Feb 13 - 05:19 PM (#3476196)
Subject: RE: Tech: Copying DVD to hard drive
From: CanyonHiker17

Ripping the various files is not usually a problem, the challenge is circumventing the various forms of copy protection on most DVDs. You might want to take a look at this info from How-To Geek. I have not tried this, but I have feedback from my son who has and says it does work OK.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/20293/how-to-rip-a-dvd-to-your-hard-drive-and-play-it-on-your-pc/

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05 Feb 13 - 06:30 PM (#3476216)
Subject: RE: Tech: Copying DVD to hard drive
From: gnu

Thanks.

I should say that I have searched the net and read a lot but personal experience advice like that is exactly what I am looking for.

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05 Feb 13 - 07:10 PM (#3476234)
Subject: RE: Tech: Copying DVD to hard drive
From: Nick

Weird question but why don't you just put the DVD in the DVD thing and watch it? It will run with MediaPlayer or RealPlayer or VLC Media Player or... a host of stuff

Or...

Can your machine not play DVDs?

Seemed overcomplex

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05 Feb 13 - 07:11 PM (#3476235)
Subject: RE: Tech: Copying DVD to hard drive
From: Nick

Should you be driving and watching a DVD? One only asks.

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05 Feb 13 - 09:31 PM (#3476278)
Subject: RE: Tech: Copying DVD to hard drive
From: McGrath of Harlow

The assumption that the only way to travel is to drive...

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05 Feb 13 - 10:27 PM (#3476297)
Subject: RE: Tech: Copying DVD to hard drive
From: Stilly River Sage

Set up the drive where you are going to store the films. If you're just loading them into the computer and not burning a copy then see about ripping it to the computer with Windows Media Player. You probably also have Windows Media Center - that may also let you rip a DVD - I use it to watch DVDs.

If those don't behave the way you want, you can look into some of the free trial/fee software that lets you rip DVDs and take out the stuff that won't let you copy the disk. You own the film, you want to put a personal digital copy on the computer to watch. Sony makes some of their films too difficult to rip (but I've been told that the fee version of DVDFab works) but most of them you can still load into the computer. You should be able to find an offshore version of DVD Shrink to download (so you can reduce a film to the size of a single recordable DVD and save room on your drive). Reviews of DVD burning software.

Files in Windows Media Center don't play anywhere else, so if you network devices (my computers connect between each other and to the BluRay player and if I had the right model, I could send it directly to the TV) then you need a file type that plays nicely with others, hence the suggestion of burning software, even if you don't burn anything.

SRS

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06 Feb 13 - 02:07 AM (#3476320)
Subject: RE: Tech: Copying DVD to hard drive
From: JohnInKansas

I recently copied a few VHS tapes to DVD. Our purpose was to get rid of the space-eating tapes and store on more compact DVDs in a smaller bookcase.

We eventually concluded that the remnant tape quality was so poor that it wasn't really worth the time required, and since most of the tapes were "old classics" we could get for $4 or $5 on DVDs we just replaced what we thought we wanted with new purchase DVD originals.

The significant point, though, is that a 4.72 GB DVD will only hold 2 hours of VHS movie as a straight across copy (with the DRM pulses filtered out). At that density, if you've got 30 GB of free space on your laptop hard drive, a half dozen movies is going to be your limit, for "TV-compatible" copies made that way.

I haven't studied the problem enough to make much comment, but it does appear that "ripping to file" might allow significantly more flexibility in compression and/or format, but I'd suggest being careful with your expectations about how much you can put on a built-in laptop drive, especially if you want a few programs there as well, and intend to download all the pictures from you digicam during a trip.

If you expect to want more than a very few movies with you, I'd suggest a portable USB external hard drive. My experience with those advertised as "backup drives" as a way to take stuff along to festival has been extremely poor since the "desktop" versions don't survive at all well when moved around, even with extreme care. The ones advertised as "portable" are more like the ones designed for inside laptops where an occasional bump is expected, and are reasonably rugged in a suitcase.

You'll still need to decide how you're going to copy and whether or not you need (or just want) some sort of "conversion(s)" before making a firm decision about where you'll put them for the trip, of course, but video files do tend to be surprisingly BIGGGG, and the "big hard drive" in your laptop may turn out to be almost tiny when you start loading it up.

John

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06 Feb 13 - 07:31 AM (#3476373)
Subject: RE: Tech: Copying DVD to hard drive
From: gnu

Great info. Thanks all.

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06 Feb 13 - 04:03 PM (#3476497)
Subject: RE: Tech: Copying DVD to hard drive
From: Bonzo3legs

Surely you can just copy and paste the contents of the DVD on to your laptop. Provided that you have software that will play vob files you should be home and dry.

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07 Feb 13 - 07:55 AM (#3476706)
Subject: RE: Tech: Copying DVD to hard drive
From: GUEST,Jim

I use DVD Shrink. Free download and is quite good. Some newer DVDs are protected and I can't burn those. Usually I just download the movies as avi files from a reliable torrent site. Saves on space, but the quality isnt quite as good

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07 Feb 13 - 03:42 PM (#3476828)
Subject: RE: Tech: Copying DVD to hard drive
From: JohnInKansas

Not too closely related to the subject here, but perhaps interesting to those more into video in general and the latest toys for playing them, PC Advisor's recent newsletter touts an article about "how to play any video on iPad or iPhone.

The interesting part is that the article discusses (vaguely?) a number of different video formats with some references to which pinball machine plays which format, and has links to several other articles that may have more general help.

How to play any video format on your iPhone or iPad

> No need to convert video to MP4: play MKV, DivX, AVI and more

> By Jim Martin | PC Advisor | 05 February 13

> The iPhone, iPad and iPod touch are all great for watching videos, but Apple's devices don't support most video formats. In fact, the new iPad and iPhone are limited to playing H.264 videos if you want high resolutions: they can play MPEG-4 videos but only up to 640x480.

> You don't have to stick to Apple's video formats

> Related Articles
     How to convert videos to different formats
     How to convert videos for a phone or tablet, for free
     How to convert videos into an iPhone compatible format
     Convert video for free using Freemake
     How to convert videos to different formats

> It's time-consuming to convert videos that aren't in exactly the right format, but ...

Each of the "Related Articles" is linked to the article.

John

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08 Feb 13 - 02:54 PM (#3477234)
Subject: RE: Tech: Copying DVD to hard drive
From: Stilly River Sage

The discussion is about making digital versions of legally owned disks, not downloading torrent files.

SRS

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08 Feb 13 - 05:01 PM (#3477274)
Subject: RE: Tech: Copying DVD to hard drive
From: kendall

I wish someone would invent a machine that would do whatever I want it to without a lot of gobbledegook.

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08 Feb 13 - 05:03 PM (#3477276)
Subject: RE: Tech: Copying DVD to hard drive
From: kendall

I mentioned that to a friend of mine and he said "Hell, that's what women are for."

He's out of the ER, but I doubt he has learned anything.

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08 Feb 13 - 10:04 PM (#3477384)
Subject: RE: Tech: Copying DVD to hard drive
From: Stilly River Sage

Garg, Guest Jim suggests the films can be picked up by a bit torrent download - not as high quality, but available. That form of download is a form of piracy and can lead to some other nasty consequences. For someone reading this thread later, I made it clear that we're not talking about piracy, we're talking about personal use of legal discs. You have a problem with that?

Probably should have deleted that remark instead of responding to it, but decided to present the moral high ground.

SRS

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09 Feb 13 - 12:32 AM (#3477399)
Subject: RE: Tech: Copying DVD to hard drive
From: Gene

For what its worth... several friends have DISH and other whatever it's called systems that can store 6 hours on a single DVD.

They get programs such as RFD, Wilburn Brothers, Porter Wagoner, Marty Stuart, Don Reno, Marty Robbins, Del Reeves, Billy Walker, Larry's Country Diner, Family Reunion and other great old country shows of yesteryear.

And it has a storage and recording system that can record 12 30 minute video shows on a single DVD or 6 one hour video shows on a single DVD, Of VERY GOOD QUALITY.

IN FACT it is Excellent Video.. PLUS the system can store MANY hours of video to record saved programs to DVD later in whatever mixture of saved programs is desired...

I strongly advise making a copy of any Original DVD or CD and playing the copy.

Several times thru the years a player has developed a sudden taste for plastic and tinfoil and GOBBLED them up.. and they can WARP and get SCRATCHED easily..

Gene

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09 Feb 13 - 05:24 PM (#3477687)
Subject: RE: Tech: Copying DVD to hard drive
From: gnu

Well, here is the real deal. I paid $200+ bucks for a Xmas present of a set of DVDs for an elderly relative and I wanna back them up on an external drive. I wanna be able to take my new laptop to her house with all the stuff loaded on it and play them for her one show at a time a couple of times a week. I don't wanna mess with the cheap piece a crap DVD player that is hooked up to her TV at present.

My question was straight forward for a reason. Simplicity. And to avoid the problems Gene cites... I can't afford another $200!

So... okay... copying to an external drive is a bad idea??? Can I make copies of Carol Burnett's TV show disks just by copying them?

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09 Feb 13 - 06:40 PM (#3477703)
Subject: RE: Tech: Copying DVD to hard drive
From: GUEST

On Linux, I'd just copy the dvd iso image to hard disk. Players like VLC player can open and play and iso image plus the image is on hard disk ready to burn to another dvd if needed:

dd if=/dev/dvd of=mydvd.iso bs=1024

Take care with dd though. It can (and is also used to) wipe entire drives and does not give any warnings about where you've told it to write.

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09 Feb 13 - 11:02 PM (#3477745)
Subject: RE: Tech: Copying DVD to hard drive
From: Stilly River Sage

If you're copying them to a hard drive no problem. Use DVD Shrink and set it to the double layer setting so it doesn't actually compress any of your videos. You won't need to when you're putting them on a drive. What you will have to do is create a file for each program you copy that way or it will always want to put the new one over the top of the last one.

DVD Shrink (a newer version than I have been using on a Win XP computer - this is supposed to work with all Windows software, but it is from 2010 and your computer has Win8, doesn't it? You might have to test it.)

Once it's in your computer drive, use Windows Media Center and navigate to the files you want to watch and that should do it.

Scroll down to read about compatibility.

More about DVD rippers.

SRS

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10 Feb 13 - 05:21 AM (#3477790)
Subject: RE: Tech: Copying DVD to hard drive
From: gnu

Thanks SRS and all.

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10 Feb 13 - 05:39 AM (#3477793)
Subject: RE: Tech: Copying DVD to hard drive
From: JohnInKansas

While I haven't fully determined what the differences are, there do appear to have been some changes in the Microsoft Media Player in Win7 from what I think I remember from WinXP and Vista. The insistence that you should let Win7 put everything in "Libraries" and difficulties in connecting between the CD/DVD burner and anything except the libraries - if you select to burn a video - appears to affect what can and can't be done, at least easily.

This is from a fairly cursory look at it, so it's possible I just haven't found the right buttons as yet.

It also has been reported that Media Player is not a default part of Win8. If you want it in Win8 it's a free download from Microsoft if you have a premium version of Win8, or at a nominal(?) cost if you have a more basic version.

John

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10 Feb 13 - 06:38 AM (#3477810)
Subject: RE: Tech: Copying DVD to hard drive
From: gnu

It also has been reported that Media Player is not a default part of Win8.

Quite correct. Ya gotta set it. I also blew out the piece a crap default after it kept telling me it could not play this but it could play that when this and that were the same type of file... no problems with Win Media Player.

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10 Feb 13 - 06:40 AM (#3477813)
Subject: RE: Tech: Copying DVD to hard drive
From: GUEST,Jon

Two things 1 hate about Windows there. 1 making you do things there way and 2 the way they charge.

As far as I can make out, Windows 8 does include Media Player but this version does not play dvds. To play them with Windows software apparently needs Windows Media Centre. This is $10 but it needs a pro version. A basic user would have to spend $70 to upgrade to pro first!

VLC player is freely available for Windows as well as Linux.

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10 Feb 13 - 11:42 AM (#3477908)
Subject: RE: Tech: Copying DVD to hard drive
From: Stilly River Sage

You should keep your program software on your C: drive and put your data on another partition or actual drive, but the default in Windows is to put all of that on the C: drive. Run a google search on how to move your data (what I did was created those folders/libraries on the other hard drive and then I had to go through a dialog box, if I remember correctly, and copy it all over. Then when you click on the original Library location on C: it has the library name again in the folder and you click on that to open your files on that X: drive.

You can create an new library, though it isn't always treated with the same importance by the operating system. I have a separate library for InDesign work, for example, and if I open a Windows program that refers to Libraries it doesn't list any I made up myself, but I can navigate to those locations. There is a default Videos Library that will be on the C: drive, and I don't know if you can get away with putting a library on a portable drive, but you should put it on a virtual or slave drive in the machine and then you can drag/copy the files from there to the portable drive.

SRS

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10 Feb 13 - 04:49 PM (#3478011)
Subject: RE: Tech: Copying DVD to hard drive
From: gnu

"Windows 8 does include Media Player but this version does not play dvds."

Mine does... try "Open with" and set WMP as the default for future operations.

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10 Feb 13 - 07:21 PM (#3478053)
Subject: RE: Tech: Copying DVD to hard drive
From: GUEST

Maybe the sources I used to follow up on John's comments I used is wrong then gnu but for the record here is the link to one I used

pc world article

and a bit of the text

Windows 8 still includes Windows Media Player, but the new version of the program lacks DVD playback support. If you've yet to take the plunge into a digital-only lifestyle, you could spring for Windows 8 Pro and the optional $10 Media Center Pack (which Microsoft is giving away free to upgraders until January 31, 2013). This is one solution, but I recommend downloading the free and flexible VLC instead.

btw. I'm not trying to push VLC. I just know it as a very good media player on Linux.

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