How to Copy your DVDs in OS X: Part 3

Yesterday, I discussed making master disk images of your CDs / DVDs in Disk Utility. Now, for the final installment of this trilogy of posts, I’ve done away with the CD aspect, and will be focusing on how to copy those larger-than-4.7GB DVDs you own to another DVD.

I should warn you first, that whereas the previous methods mentioned here avoid tampering with DRM (Digital Rights Management) and therefore remain more or less legal, the method I am about to outline becomes illegal if you use it to copy a commercial disk with DRM protection, even if you are trying to legally exercise your fair use rights. This is a huge problem with DRM: it interferes with your rights as a consumer. So, going into this you now know two things: 1. This could be ruled illegal in a court of law. 2. DRM is bad, because it infringes on your fair use rights.

Here’s the possibly illegal step you will have to take should the DVD be either DRM-protected or region-encoded for a region that is different from what your DVD player currently supports. Get a copy of DVDBackup. This free program copies the content of your DVD to a VIDEO_TS folder on your hard drive and in the process of copying the files can strip them of DRM and / or region-encoding. It’s fairly simple to operate. Read the read me. Read the warnings. Run the program.

roxio popcorn Now, you have to find a way to compress that VIDEO_TS folder and burn it back to a 4.7GB DVD-R disk. This can be done simply and effectively (though in a fair amount of processor-number-crunching time) by Roxio’s Popcorn ($50). Drag and drop the VIDEO_TS folder you created with DVDBackup into Popcorn, click the “Burn” button, throw in a blank DVD-R, and Popcorn starts compressing the video files from your DVD into the highest quality format that will fit onto a 4.7GB disk. The resulting DVD will have all the same functionality (extra tracks, special features, and subtitles) that the original DVD had, but with a slightly lesser video quality.

That’s it! Now you can copy nearly every DVD that comes your way. Now if you’re interested in copying the DVD into a compressed format—I don’t know—perhaps so you can have multiple movies loaded up on your portable Mac for the next long plane ride you have, you’re going to want to use one of the many tools available to rip the DVD to DivX. Maybe I’ll write something about that in the future. In the meantime, Google it.

View Tags

Yesterday, I discussed making master disk images of your CDs / DVDs in Disk Utility. Now, for the final installment of this trilogy...

Add a Comment

Sign in »

11 Comments

Filter by:

Tim

I used Mac the Ripper and it saves my files as video_ts and when I burn a DVD it doesn't burn in a playable format. It only shows me the files? Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

December 03 2005 at 2:54 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Tim

I used Mac the Ripper and it saves my files as video_ts and when I burn a DVD it doesn't burn in a playable format. It only shows me the files? Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

December 03 2005 at 2:48 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

david morgan

Does the software also rip copy protected DVDs?

August 09 2005 at 6:44 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Rich

I'm getting "invalid argument" when it attempts to create an image. All I want to be able to do is make duplicates of DVD's that I burn on my set-top unit, tv shows and such.

March 15 2005 at 11:10 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jimmy

Mac The Ripper will strip the region and DRM, download it to your HD and it's free. Nice for taking movies on the plane with you.

March 05 2005 at 12:14 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

mick

You can use DVD2one (commercial) to reduce VideoTS folder to burning size for Toast and it is quicker than Popcorn

March 04 2005 at 1:25 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

C.K. Sample, III

Brian, there are plenty of other straight to DivX rippers: HandBrake, ffmpegX, etc. Search for DVD rip at Versiontracker.

March 04 2005 at 12:20 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

brian

I haven't checked lately, but for the longest time, DVDibbler (DVD-to-DivX tool) didn't work in 10.3. (So I have an extra 10.2 box in my cube just for this purpose, heh.) Does it work now? Is there something else that does? DVDibbler was great. Made great little AVIs that played fine on Windows (with WMPlayer and the DivX codecs) and Mac (with MPlayer or VLC.) Could encode as DivX, XviD, and others. Pretty easy to use. Just checked, looks like it hasn't been updated: http://sourceforge.net/projects/dvdibbler/ dvbinaries - 1.4 - June 13, 2003 dvdibbler- 1.8.4 - August 24, 2003

March 04 2005 at 11:42 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

C.K. Sample, III

Hi, Mike, The only other programs I know about that will do it quickly and well are also purchase items and more expensive than Popcorn. That being said, there is a huge collection of freeware and shareware DVD-ripping and converting software out there (search Versiontracker), but to do the same thing as Popcorn you have to first rip the DVD into a compressed format, like DivX, then reconvert it into a format capable of being burned to a playable DVD, like a demuxed Quicktime file for iDVD, or a Toast compatible MPEG-1 / -2 / -4 file. The entire process would also take a good 16-24 steady hours of processing on anything under a G5. A G5 could knock it all out in about 5-8. (In other words, spend the $50 and if it doesn't work for you, sell it on ebay.)

March 03 2005 at 7:27 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Navarro

Your comments: Popcorn is well worth the $50. (You can get it for only $30 if you already own Toast Titanium!) If your DVD Player was made after 2000, chances are it can play back DVDR/W just fine. Slimline PS2s can playback them fine too. Instead of DVDBackup, I recommend MacTheRipper. DVDBackup hasn't been updated in three years.

March 03 2005 at 7:05 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply