[jqp]

Anyone used DVD Xcopy? Or other similar apps?

I have used DVD Xcopy Express a couple of times. It strips off all the menus, extra features, etc and gives you only the movie on one DVD R or RW. If applicable, you have to pick the audio track (English/Spanish/French etc) or subtitles that you want.

The regular version puts the whole thing on 2 DVDs.

[Bones]

I have the regular version of DvD Xcopy and have found it to be quite useful.. I have small children, so I have found that making backups of my movies is good insurance against little fingers...

I've had good success making backups.. with only an occasional frisbee.. I"m using the Sony DRU500A burner and another DvD drive as a reader.

I was thinking about buying the express.. are you happy with the picture quality?

[jqp]

I have the regular version of DvD Xcopy and have found it to be quite useful.. I have small children, so I have found that making backups of my movies is good insurance against little fingers...

I've had good success making backups.. with only an occasional frisbee.. I"m using the Sony DRU500A burner and another DvD drive as a reader.

I was thinking about buying the express.. are you happy with the picture quality?

I would think DVDs for kids would be the best reason to make archives!  

I have an HP 200e which I use via firewire. I carry it in my laptop case sometimes.

My understanding is that the picture quality (for any of these copy programs) is equivalent to the original DVD, since it uses the original mpeg2 file, of the version of the movie that you select. That is, if there are multiple versions of the movie, you have to pick the version you want to archive (for example widescreen versus 4x3) But it does not alter the movie file. If you put a DVD onto an SVCD you are compressing the original, and that is a different process.

DVDs may have different versions of video and audio tracks on the DVD. For example an English version, a French version, a Spanish version of the video. Then there may be different audio tracks...English Dolby digital, French Dolby 5.1 etc. Plus the menus and the special features such as trailers, cast and crew notes, etc. That is why most DVDs use more than 4.7GB ( a DVD R or RW disc). COmmercial DVDs are DVD-9 dual layer discs - 9 GB on two layers. As far as I know there are no PC burners that can burn on 2 layers, and no DVD-9 discs for sale to the general public.

So the Express version gives you one video track and 1 audio track - the one you would choose ( and have chosed for the archive) if you watched the original DVD. When you insert the DVD in your player, there is a DVD Xcopy splash screen stating that it is an archive. Then the movie plays...thats it!

I think I want the full version, though the Express is convenient. It automatically burns a copy in about 50 minutes after you choose a couple of options.

[Bones]

From what I have gathered about the 2 programs...

THe full version will do NO compression.. you can eliminate features to get movies to fit on one disk sometimes, but there is no compression to the video nor sound tracks.

The express version will allow you to use one sound track and it WILL compress the video.. and from what I understand, the degree of compression is determined by how much is needed to get the movie to fit on one disk.

I think I'm goign to get the express.. I want to see how the video compression is and if it's not too bad for most movies I'll sacrifice a little video quality on most movies.. I'm more interested in the sound tracks.. for those really good movies I'll just continue to use the full version and span it across 2 disks.

On the DvD Xcopy website forums there are some pretty interesting debates about other programs compared to theirs.. it's worth checking out!

[PeteG]

I've been using the regular version and been very happy with the
audio & video. But if you want the whole DVD copied it will be on
two discs. Are their DVD+R with more than 4.7GB.

[jqp]

I've been using the regular version and been very happy with the
audio & video. But if you want the whole DVD copied it will be on
two discs. Are their DVD+R with more than 4.7GB.

Apparently not that we can buy, or burn with current DVD burners. The 4.7GB limit means that 9GB commercial DVDs will have to go on 2 DVDs. A form of 'copy protection'. That is why DVD XCopy Express was created. It crams the movie only onto 1 DVD.

I read once that we will be able to buy 9GB DVDs in the future. Can't remember if they were flippers (4.7GB on a side) or Dual Layer (need a new type of burner for those).

[bob82274]

I think I have seen the 9GB around but I don't think they were for DVD+R (Which is what I use) and they were flippers.

[donutman]

JQP,

Quite a few movies takes less than 4.7 gb, after ripping out the 4:3 version, foreign soundtracks, menus etc.

If you are happy with just the movie, probably you can get all of it on a disc, without recompressing video, 50 percent of the time.

Not sure about DVD xcopy, but there is a freeware util called DVD Shrink, that has a neat feature. It can compress key frames (I think..) (an Mpeg2 stream consists of different kinds of frames. Some frames are the entire image, like a jpeg picture, while most only show the difference from the last frame - to save space)

Using that, you can take the quality down somewhat, in increments (90% quality, 75% quality etc), without having to completely redo the movie. It takes about half an hour on a fairly slow computer.


On your other issue, yes there are 9.4 GB flipper discs, but only for DVD RAM, which is a rewritable format that seems to be loosing out to DVD+RW and DVD-RW. It is actually the best format of all of them when it comes to storing data, as the recording technique is very much like how a harddrive works. The discs are expensive though.