Backing up DVDs

I've found a couple of easy ways to back up my movies and thought I'd share on the new forum. Plus I was just backing one up and had to search the old one for an mplayer command.

First thing needed to backup encrypted dvds is have all of the software installed to player them, such as libdvdcss.

My favorite way is to use K3B to just copy the dvd. Generally I just create an iso file and keep it on my hard drive. Burnt DVDs can go bad too afterall.

My second method is to use mplayer to rip the movie to an mpeg. The command is "mplayer -dumpstream dvd://1 -dumpfile mymovie.mpg". Change "mymovie.mpg" to the name of your movie. Now you have an mpeg and can use any conversion program you want. For me the easiest is to make the new mpg available to mythtv and use it to create the dvd.

Of course if you rip to mpg then you can also convert to other formats and play on your mobile devices.

Hi
I have at hand a great number of DVD movie collections, and some of them are very old. I have to take good care of these old DVD discs. However, exactly last Sunday, when I wanted to watch a movie, one of my favorite DVD movies became eternally unusable as it was over-scratched.

While accepting the fact, it is necessary for me to find an active and effective way to solve the problem. If I had had an extra copy of the disc, I could still enjoy the movie. So I guess whether there exist such programs that backup DVD movies to blank DVD discs so that I can still take the copy out even if the original disc is broken or out of use. I made a Google search for them and my final target was Wondershare DVD Copy for Mac. I only wanted to backup those old DVD movies. What frustrated me was that the majority of them are copyright protected and the other applications I found were not able to copy the DVD movies. However, this program helped me out. It can remove the protection mechanisms for me and I can make another copy of my movies.

Besides, I also have several VIDEO_TS folders that were ripped from several DVD's before. I thought this was able to keep the DVD movies, however, I found this help me nothing but take up much hard drive space. In the end, I burnt these ripped files to DVD's again.

So you see, this Mac application really lent me a helping hand. Now, I don't need to worry about how to save the DVD discs' life even if they are terminally unusable. And I don't need to rip the DVD's to my computer in order to back up them. And for you, I am sure you can find it more useful and helpful. Well worth a shot, in one word.