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DVD Ripping and Burning Software

How to process create, copy or edit DVDs for viewing by yourself or others

Overall Production Process

The overall steps required are:

Content Capture and Editing. Content may come in many forms, from Camcorders, CDs, DVDs, Video Tapes, Photos, Images, live TV.

DVD Ripping, which is the process of copying a DVD onto your computer's hard disk in a playable or editable form, or extracting video footage from existing DVDs as clips.
Multimedia Editing your own work or a compilation, working with files on the hard disc.

DVD Burning Software, to transfer or copy the edited files onto a DVD in a commonly readable format, such as DVD-R.

Mulimedia Players

DVD Drives, Codecs, Formats and Discs

Comprehensive Guides

Website Design

Content Capture and Editing

DVD Ripping

For some copyright material it would be necessary to overcome an encryption or anti-copying scheme, though that might be illegal.

Open Source Software that handles video and image capture and format conversion

VirtualDub, open source
DVD Shrink Freeware.

See also under DVD Burning Software below.

Multimedia Editing

Adobe Premier Elements, for making home videos. $99.99, or bundled with:
Adobe Photoshop Elements, designed for photos but can be used with audio and video.
Windows Movie Maker, free from Microsoft for XP or Vista.
Photo Story 3 for photo slideshows, free for XP from Microsoft (requires Movie Maker).

DVD Burning Software

Mainstream Multimedia Products

Commercial software is widely available, often distributed with PCs or DVD drives. Most caters for a very wide range of input and output formats but may not cope with protected movies:

Roxio Easy Media Creator Suite, Ł59.99
Nero 9 - Reloaded (previously Nero Burning ROM) - 59.99 Euros, powerful but too complicated for many users?
Ashampoo Burning Studio 8, Ł19.97, 30 day trial

See also the Burnworld reviews of CD and DVD software suites.

Movie DVD Burning

More specialist DVD Burning software is available that claims to be able to copy any movie including copy protected and encrypted DVDs. But you will probably also need DVD43 to do the dirty work of decryption.

Example copy utilities are:

1 Click DVD Copy, $59, powerful options yet easy to use interface
DVD Cloner III, $59

DVD Region + CSS Free, watch and copy any region-coded / CSS-encrypted DVD movies on any DVD drive! $39.95.

Mulimedia Players

Movies and Video Codecs

Films and videos use a variety of "codecs" for compression, requiring decoding. By default Windows Media Player for XP and Vista does not contain a decoder, though it will try and locate a suitable plug-in for DVD playback.

It is recommended to add a codec plug-in pack such as the free K-Lite Pack, which is claimed to solve almost all media playback problems. Or see the Ask.com list of Free DVD Decoders.

You should then be OK with one of:

Windows Media Player, free with most MS Windows. It is worth getting the latest version, and also K-Lite Pack (see above).
VideoLAN - VLC Media player, powerfull and free Open SOurce.
Media Player Classic, comes with K-Lite Pack.

Other Codec Related

Commercial products include:

Zoom Player, needs a garphics card, runs on all WIndows for £22.95
Direct DVD 5.0, £49.95
Sonic (Roxio) CinePlayer DVD Decoder Pack, "9.99, Windows XP only.
CyberLink PowerDVD, 30 day free trial, from $49.99.

Power users can find out which codec a video uses by downloading AVICodec, which will also tell you where to download it.

Be prepared for a long wait converting a video file into a format suitable for DVD players. (Source: Guide to Troubleshooting Vista).

DVD Drives, Codecs, Formats and Discs

DVD Drive Problems

Often Windows XP or Vista seems to loose site of a DVD drive, or treat it as a CD drive only.

There is a Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 321641 on "how to troubleshoot common problems that occur when a Windows XP-based computer cannot read a CD or a DVD".

Or, for a disappearing DVD/CD-ROM drive in Vista (and XP?), see Vlad's Blog and download the associated Registry patch, save to desktop, right click and Merge. But backup the Registry first with Windows System Restore or ERUNT.

DVD Formats

Theoretically you can get DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW and DVD+RW, and also dual layer versions.

But the most common and recommended, with the best chance of being read by others, is DVD-R. There is also a re-writable version DVD-RW.

The Blu-ray format has emerged as the standard for future DVD development, after rival HD DVD lost essential support in February 2008. Blu-ray offers much higher capacity than DVD, and compatibility with High Definition TV (HDTV).

DVD Suppliers

Some sites such as Best DVD Burning Software claim that there is a great difference between DVD disc manufacturers, with some being very poor. I am not sure that this still applies to reputable manufacturers, but for safety you might want to stick to Taiyo Yuden and Maxell.

If you are at all serious about DVDs get a newish DVD drive, there has been so much improvement in the last year or two and they only cost Ł49 or so. You can get an external USB drive for a laptop, but don't even think about it if you are running Windows 98!