Storing Dvd On Hardrive

[manchestermike]

Now that harddisk drives have reduced again in price.

I would like to store my music dvd collection on my hard drive so i can play them directly without using the DVD disk.

Does anybody know of a good program to use ? Ideally I dont want to lose the quality of the source and would like to keep the dvd menu's ?

[monty]

To do exactly what you want, you only need to create one folder on your harddrive per dvd you want to copy.

Then you just copy both the audio_ts and the video_ts folders from your DVD to the folder you created on your harddisk.

Later you can play the copied dvd by any software dvd player (powerdvd, windvd,etc). You'll just have to browse the player to the correct folder on your hard disk. This should play exactly like the DVD would, including the nag screen about the copy penalties from the fbi, the menu's, subtitles, soundtracks...

This does eat your hard drive pretty fast though, most dvd's are dvd9 nowadays, indicating you'll get anywhere between 5 and 9Gb for 1 DVD.

I personally prefer to rip the DVD's, you can use a program such as smartripper (google for download).

With this you can rip only what you need (meaning just 1 audio track and the video) resulting in much less space needed. In case of music DVD's you can set the program to create a seperate file for each chapter, so you will end up with one file for each song, much like your mp3 collection, only with video then!

[guardian]

Hi Mike, is the music DVD audio or video? Assuming they are video DVDs, there are basically 2 folders in a disk. Audio_TS and Video_TS. Not sure about the format in a audio DVD. But, you can simply copy the Video_TS folder to your hard disk drive and rename it to whatever you like, usually the name of the album. This way of copying retains all the DVD menus. Then you can use VLC player to "play" the folder whenever you want. Hope this helps.

Guardian

[manchestermike]

Thanx for the prompt replies.

I would like to copy both the audio and video.

I know it will use a reasonable amount of harddrive space but HD are not so expensive now. I bought a 320gb drive for 4250bt last week.

The other reason for storing on harddrives is that many of my dvd are becoming scratched and damaged.

[katana]

Commercial DVDs are encrypted. I'm not sure they can just be copied onto a hard disk. May need ripping software to do it...

[astral]

Commercial DVDs are encrypted. I'm not sure they can just be copied onto a hard disk. May need ripping software to do it...

Careful please.

Ripping an illegal aspect we cannot discuss here.

Thanks

Astral

[Sunny Valentine]

Commercial DVDs are encrypted. I'm not sure they can just be copied onto a hard disk. May need ripping software to do it...

Careful please.

Ripping an illegal aspect we cannot discuss here.

Thanks

Astral

Ripping DVDs for personal use was perfectly legal in the EU until about 2 Years ago. Still today the legality of the process (as long as it is for personal use) is anything but clear.

Anyone has real and profound information on the Thai law situation concerning this topic?

Sunny

[lomatopo]

Still today the legality of the process (as long as it is for personal use) is anything but clear.

Anyone has real and profound information on the Thai law situation concerning this topic?

Sunny

To the extent that Thailand, directly and as part of ASEAN, participates in the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), which has adopted Digital Millenium Copyright Act (a U.S. law, code 1201), which specifically restricts any methods to "circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work”, I’d say that it would be illegal in Thailand to decrypt a commercial DVD, even one that you purchased and intended for “fair use” (personal use, backing up, ability to skip through commercials, etc.).

I have no idea if legal, commercial VCD’s and DVD’s have any sort of encryption here? If they do not, then the data files (audio, video) should be able to be copied for “fair use” as you would not be using any means to “circumvent a technological measure”. I am not a lawyer.

[monty]

Technically, ripping is illegal because you are circomventing a copy protection.

If the Copy and Paste works, then it's also safe to rip because no protection is on the DVD...

However, in my humble opinion the fair use policy should allow me to rip a personally owned DVD to my own personal PC, or even to make a single copy of the disc to safeguard any mishaps wich might happen with the original.

I'm even perfectly convinced that no court (in Thailand nor anywhere else) will convict anybody circomventing the copy protection to protect his original under the fair use policy. Things can and will get ugly if you rip your dvd to a PC hooked up to the internet and running P2P software...

For this reason alone most major PC magazines will regularly publish articles on how to back up your DVD's to another DVD or to your PC. To keep legal (they are just as prone to the lawsuits from the recording industries) they only have to publish a note to reitterate that the copy you make is only to be used by the person who actually payed for and owns the original copy!

It's also exactly for this reason the Norwegian courts completely aquitted Jon Johannsen (DVD Jon) from all charges brought against him by the US DVD copy control association (Jon wrote the little piece of software allowing you to rip a DVD to your Hard drive)

The prosecution appealed, but lost once more and then decided not to appeal anymore at their last chance with the appeal court...

[Sunny Valentine]

Still today the legality of the process (as long as it is for personal use) is anything but clear.

Anyone has real and profound information on the Thai law situation concerning this topic?

Sunny

To the extent that Thailand, directly and as part of ASEAN, participates in the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), which has adopted Digital Millenium Copyright Act (a U.S. law, code 1201), which specifically restricts any methods to "circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work”, I’d say that it would be illegal in Thailand to decrypt a commercial DVD, even one that you purchased and intended for “fair use” (personal use, backing up, ability to skip through commercials, etc.).

You say Thailand "participates" in WIPO, which lobby for an US law (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) to become standard legislation elsewhere. Do you have any information on wether a law similar to the 1201 has been issued in Thailand? To my knowledge not, but I am not a lawyer either. Fact is that lots of governments have close participatory contacts to this Organisation, but have already decided to implement other, different legislations on that topic.

In general, a question to the moderators: When mentioning illegal procedures as a reason to stop discussions on several issues, which laws are you refrring to then? (For copy protection, OS patchin

g, Illegal Web content, use of Proxy servers ....)

Sunny