The Totally FREE & Easy DVD Backup guide

[Laz]

The Totally FREE & Easy DVD Backup Guide

Yes, you can easily backup your own DVD 9 movies with great results for absolutely nothing, zilch, zero, squat! Not only will this guide take you through all the necessary steps on how to do this but your resulting DVDR will be of excellent quality too. Don’t believe it can be done or is maybe too difficult to achieve? Download the FREE tools, follow the guide and you be the judge!


Tools Required

DVD Shrink 3.2.0.15

DVD Decrypter 3.1.6.0

burnatonce 0.99 **Edit - Please see note in burning tutorial below**

----------------------------------------------


The Rip


OK after you have installed all the above FREE programmes you will need to first rip the files from your DVD to your hard drive so place the DVD you wish to copy in your DVD-ROM reader drive. Start up DVD Decrypter and select File Mode from the menu





Then click on Edit -> Select All to select all the files on the DVD. (That way you can either do a full disc backup with all the extras or just a movie only backup. This guide shows you the “movie only” method but once you have grasped the basis a full disc backup is just as easy to process.)


Select a destination folder on your hard drive where you want the ripped files to go and click on the Decrypt button to start the rip process

*Note You can use DVD Shrink to rip the DVD if you so wish of course but DVD Decrypter is by far the ripper of choice for most people and rarely produces errors.








Now the rip process has been completed we are ready to transcode & reduce the size of the movie using DVD Shrink so we can get it onto a 4.7GB DVDR disc.

[Laz]

Transcode with DVD Shrink



Start up DVD Shrink and click on Open Files





Now select the VIDEO_TS file from the folder where you have placed the ripped files





Now DVD Shrink will analyze the files for you





Once this has been done this is the main screen that you are faced with where all alterations are made to the movie and extras. As we are doing a movie-only disc we need to use the Re-author method, the button is highlighted below so we click on that





Now we select the main movie from the box on the RHS of the interface and simply drag it across to the box at the top LHS of the interface. (You can easily tell which stream is the movie by the file size, if you ever have any doubts the great advantage with DVD Shrink is that you can preview every stream with the viewer.)

The movie only is still too big to be able to transfer to DVDR but if we remove all the subtitle streams and foreign sound streams it does lower it somewhat but it is still too large in this case. By moving the compression level of the movie from 0 though to level 4 the movie will now fit! (You can easily tell this as the size bar at the top is now totally green)





OK, we are now ready to backup the film so click on the Backup button and you now have the option given of where to back your movie up to





Now create & name a folder on your HD where you wish the finished transcoded files to go. So select your output folder and click on OK to start the backup process.

Now sit back with a cold beer and relax!


Success!!! And only 36 minutes of your time too.





Right, you should have finished your beer now and it’s time to get ready to get those files onto a DVDR.

[Laz]

Time to Burn, Burn, Burn with Burnatonce


**Please note: Burnatonce will only work with Pioneer DVD-R DVDRW drives. With the imminent release of DVD Shrink 3.1 I will be changing the tutorial to reflect that and a new burning method as an alvernative to BAO for non Pioneer owning users as soon as it is released.**


Fire up Burnatonce and click on Mastering -> DVD Video







You are now faced with the DVD Video Mastering panel, click on Add Folder and select the folder where you have placed your video files. Burnatonce will now automatically load these files into the VIDEO_TS folder it creates for you. (You will notice that it also creates an empty AUDIO_TS folder too which will turn out handy for playback on some older & fussy DVD players)

Click on Compile and give the OK to load these files into the main Gui.






Now make sure you have placed your blank DVDR in your burner and click on Write , click OK to proceed and you are away!







Time to sit back and enjoy the pleasures of yet another cold beer while we wait for our disc to burn. I’m using a 2X DVDRW in this instance so it will take just under ½ an hour to complete.





Now you have your finished disc try it out on your DVD playback software on your PC and then your DVD player to make sure all is fine and that playback compatibility is OK.


Finished!


Easy huh? Easy and FREE too!



Laz © July 2003