At least for United States law it is not legal to have multiple copies of DVD you own--only ONE is allowed, after you contact the distributor of said DVD. As for music CD it differes from a distributor to another distributor. This 'able to backup one copy' condition is not to have an extra copy for your car, etc, but it's due to surface damage that might hinder your entertainment during a playing back. When you purchase a DVD media you are actually paying for 'enjoyment' value and not the ownership of the movie. Because the movie is owned by the studio it was released from and its studio production people. So you cannot have multiple ownership of something you only paid once for it--according to loosely translated terms.
Additional legal fine prints: When you rent a DVD movie, let's say from BlockBuster, only 1 person per rental is to be viewed--additional viewing person must pay for the rental cost. But this isn't the issue or the subject in discussion. I just wanted to clarify (or further confuse) that the digital copyright law is very hard to understand.
Anyway, to backup a DVD without losing quality is a simple matter of can you fit all into one disk? If you don't mind splitting to two disks you don't have to sacrifice the playback quality. But DVD5 (4.7GB) can only handle about 2 hours of movie. This means sometimes you have to strip off all other extra features--scene selection and previews, even subtitles and commentary sections. DVD9 (8.4GB) can hold 1:1 copy but it's in DVD DL format. Not many old DVD players can support this playback format.
Since DVD5 is more common and inexpensive, people are resort to compressing the quality to meet the limited space. And you don't mind losing previews and all other features but the main movie, you can fit most of movies in one DVD+-R disk.
So how do you make a successful backup when DVD anti-copy protection won't let you make one? One solution is to contact the distributor of a DVD and request for instruction on backing up. But you will find that they would rather replace your "damaged" disk if you send in the original DVD media accompanied with proof of purchase (receipt). Who wants to pay for $10 round shipping when you can go out and buy another one for little more than that?
Backing up yourself is the next best solution. Using DVDFab Decrypter is currently the best way with Windows platform computers amoung free software. DVDFab Decrypter allows you to strip and/or compress the quality to fit the necessary limited DVD+-R space. To further compress to fit into a single DVD+-R disk, use DVD Shrink to adjust the compression ratio. These two program can be used together by using DVDFab Decrypter to make a full image to your harddrive. Then using DVD Shrink you can adjust higher compression before burning to a disk.Although backing up is your right, overcoming copy protection is against the law. So it's catch 22 always...
All previous topics were closed because after explaining the process of backing up a DVD the next natural question is, "how do I make this particular DVD movie to backed up successfully?" or "where do I get this program for free?" Helping out how to overcome copy protection is against Trap17 forum rules.
And the discussion to a particular DVD backup software is basically covered in Truefusion's provided link. And a specific discussion to a software should be resorted to that program's forum. Afterdawn is another great site to discuss DVD backup software.
PS, DVD+DL can be played on some older DVD players if Booktype is set to DVD-ROM. This is a special finishing process after the burning process. Please refer to Afterdawn for further detail. This is another reason, the Booktype, why some DVD players cannot read DVD+R. DVD-R are automatically set to DVD-ROM at the end of burning process.
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