Burning DVD Movies to CD/R on ThinkPad

[2901bruce]

I have a ThinkPad T23 with one DVD-CD/R drive. I need an application which will allow me to backup one copy each - of the DVD movies I bought from Wal-Mart, to CD. I heard of DVD CopyPro & DVDxRipper. Does anyone have any suggestions. This is not for an illegal purpose.

[tfflivemb2]

OK, first of all, with a DVD/CDRW drive, you will only be able to back up movies to your hard drive. To get it onto a CD-R, the format quality would be toooo low for standard viewing.

You need a DVD-RW drive, to burn them to a blank DVD, which would provide enough room for the movie.

As for software, there is no legal software available in the US, for a copyrighted movie.

P.S. Your profile is coming up as "user with bad email address". You need to check your email address stored in your profile and make sure that it is correct. That indicator in your profile means that Bill/the forum is getting emails bounced back from you. After you update your email, you need to notify an Admin, so that they can update your profile.

[rkawakami]

I have a ThinkPad T23 with one DVD-CD/R drive.

Please confirm you have a DVD-CDRW (i.e. "combo") drive. Otherwise the rest of this is moot... Not sure if there ever was a CD Recordable without also being Re-Writable capable...

I need an application which will allow me to backup one copy each - of the DVD movies I bought from Wal-Mart, to CD. I heard of DVD CopyPro & DVDxRipper. Does anyone have any suggestions. This is not for an illegal purpose.

As such then, here's some general information: Any program you get which is designed to transfer the complete contents of a DVD (assume a 1.5 hour movie here) onto a CD, will degrade the quality somewhat. That conversion process will probably take slightly longer than it takes to play the actual DVD (i.e. 2 hours) using your T23. I have a 1.13Ghz T23 and am playing around with programs to transfer videos onto an iPod. So far I have found that a 2:20 movie takes about 3 hours to convert. The end result of the conversion is file around 500MB at 320x176 resolution. The original was a 7GB file.

It would probably be cheaper (in the long run) and certainly more time-effective to buy a DVD writer and create backup DVD copies instead of CDs.

And as tfflivemb2 has already pointed out while I was typing this up, there is the question of legality in using this type of software.

[GomJabbar]

I bought ImTOO DVD Ripper v4.0 to use with an iRiver personal video player that my wife bought. I can be used on a PC as well. It does take a long time for the process to complete. AFAIK, the end result will not play on most set-top DVD players, but I could be wrong (video is not really my thing).

http://www.imtoo.com/dvd-ripper.html

[christopher_wolf]

I think, going along with what Ray was saying, a very good option would be to convert the DVD to VCD or Super VCD format; this usually takes down the resolution somewhat, but it is still quite viewable on a widescreen television. There are various encoding programs that will allow you to convert and do this, even from VOBs.

[claudeo]

There is quite a history of codecs that can compress a DVD quality movie into something much more compact and still viewable. Divx, for example, can put a feature film on a CD with amazing quality when you consider how much smaller the file is. Most of that is illegal, unless you own the rights to the movie. A great resource for legitimate producers (useful also for less legitimate rippers) is http://www.videohelp.com/

[Thinkpaddict]

You can use mencoder (which should come with MPlayer). I have used it in Linux successfully, and was able to put 2 hours into a single CD. The quality is about VHS (or slightly lower) but still viewable. In order to do this, however, your DVD player (if you intend to have a desktop DVD player play the CD) must be able to collaborate by accepting nonstandard bitrates. This is because in order to fit 2 hours of video into less than 800 Mb you need to go quite low (about 480 kbps if I remember correctly for the video stream). Some DVD players won't accept that, but some will. I know because I did this to convert a DVD from my in-laws wedding into a CD, and they couldn't play it in their DVD player, while it worked on mine. The reason? I didn't have a DVD recorder at the time

[2901bruce]

I have a ThinkPad T23 with one DVD-CD/R drive. I need an application which will allow me to backup one copy each - of the DVD movies I bought from Wal-Mart, to CD. I heard of DVD CopyPro & DVDxRipper. Does anyone have any suggestions. This is not for an illegal purpose.

Hello Guy's!

Thanks for your input! Very informative & useful!

OK................. I've decided to burn my copy protected DVD's with a DVD Burner - from my T23. What do you recommend as far as the software application, and which DVD burner? (internal? external?) I'm leaning towards replacing my internal slimline DVD-CD/W drive with a CD-DVD/W drive. Possible? Suggestions?

Thanks Guys!

[BillMorrow]

lets clear up the email address problem FIRST..
i can see that the email address is correct, but not why system emails will not work..

also, talking about ripping a DVD movie borders on unacceptable conduct..

[2901bruce]

lets clear up the email address problem FIRST..
i can see that the email address is correct, but not why system emails will not work..

also, talking about ripping a DVD movie borders on unacceptable conduct..

Bill,

1) What are we going to do about my e-mail address?

2) If you read my post, it states that "this is not for illegal purposes".

Regards... 2901bruce.

[tfflivemb2]

2) If you read my post, it states that "this is not for illegal purposes".

Whether or not your intentions appear to be legitimate to you, unfortunately the law says otherwise.....hence Bill's reason for trying to avoid these kinds of conversations.

I can feel your pain though, as I have a 4 year old that can easily scratch his DVDs.