In this final installment of our DVD burning series, we will look at a free DVD decryption software that allows one to make copies of commercially-produced DVD's that are encrypted with CSS (see part 3) that supposedly defeats any attempts to make copies.
Before I go any further, I again must reiterate that my discussions here about copying DVD's that are protected by copyright laws is not an endorsement of this practice. Indeed, I am still of the opinion that this practice is illegal and should not be condoned.
A friend of mine, who I will call Jack, (I am hiding his true identity for obvious reasons), has a large collection of commercially-produced DVD's that he purchased over the years. He loves movies and wanted to collect his favorites so he could watch them whenever he desired.
He also wanted to make backup copies of his movies in case of accidental destruction or if a friend borrows one of his DVD's to watch and fails to return it.
He uses a program called DVDShrink, Ver 3.2, which is available free on the Internet. This program copies the contents of a DVD onto your hard drive, and, at the same time, removes all copy protection. However, it does not burn a new CD for you.
For that, you need Nero. The good news is that if you have Nero, DVDShrink will automatically activate it and start the burning process for you. When it is finished, you are left with an exact copy of the original DVD, without any copy protection.
Jack is fortunate to have not only a DVD burner, but also a separate DVD player that came with his computer. So, he puts the original in the DVD player and a puts a blank DVD in his burner. When he starts the process, which takes about 1-1 1/2 hours to complete, it is all automatic and he doesn't have to do anything else. If he had a only burner, he would have to remove the movie from the burner drive after it was copied, then insert a blank DVD to begin the actual burning.
As mentioned in Part 1 of this article, most commercial DVD's are done on dual layer media. But because blank dual layer DVD's are still so expensive, Jack uses single layer disks for his copies. Normally, this would mean that Jack would have to use 2 blank DVD's to copy a movie. But, DVDShrink, as its name implies, allows you to compress the video down to a smaller size to fit the copy onto one blank DVD.
How does this this affect the quality of the copy? Actually, from what Jack showed me, you can compress the video a great deal without affecting quality. We compared several DVD copies with their originals. Quite frankly, I saw almost no differences in the copies. Those slight differences I did see would not be noticeable unless you had the original DVD to compare it with.
When you start the copying process, DVDShrink runs a quick 2-3 minute scan to let you know how much the compression will be if you copy the DVD onto a single disk. The program uses a percentage figure to let you know the compression factor. A 100% rating means you will get an exact copy, no compression needed. Jack showed me one DVD copy that had a compression factor down at 47% and it looked just fine.
DVDShrink also gives you several additional options to help improve compression. You can remove certain soundtracks, like the French and Spanish versions of the soundtrack, or leave out the subtitles to help improve the compression ratios. You can also just copy the movie and leave out all the extras. Or, if you are a fanatic, you can copy across two disks. There are also some additional controls you can use to improve video quality, but they add additional time to the copying process.
In short, DVDShrink is loaded with options (including burning to a dual layer disk, if you want to spend that kind of money) that can make your copies as good as the original. And, as I mentioned above, it is free, although you will have to purchase a copy of Nero. By the way, Jack got a free copy of Nero when he bought his DVD burner, so you might want to look for that also.
You can learn more about DVDShrink by going to their website.
I hope you have found this series of article to be helpful. Here are some other useful web links that you might find useful to learn more.
Learn more about which is the best blank DVD media to purchase.
Reviews on Software that copies commercial DVD's.
Learn more about all aspects of video creation.
Nero's Home Page.
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