Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Copy your DVD, part 1

There must be dozens of ways to copy a DVD. I'll tell you how I've done it. (Actually, I told you before, but this time I'll go into a little more detail.) Copying a DVD is a two step process.
  1. Copy the movie from the source disk to the computer's hard drive.
  2. Copy the movie from the computer's hard drive to a blank DVD.
This post explains Step 1. A subsequent post will address Step 2.

1. Download and install DVDShrink.

2. Insert the source disk (the DVD you want to copy) into you computer. If your source disk is a classic like Carl Theodore Dreyer's silent masterpiece Joan of Arc, so much the better. If it's an Elvis Presley movie, stop and reconsider. After inserting the source disk, a window like this pops up:


Scroll down to the bottom of the window, select "Take no action," and click "OK."

3. Launch (i.e., start) DVDShrink. When I do it, I get a window that looks like this:

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4. At the top of the window, click "Open Disk," and get a window that looks like this:

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5. When I click "OK" in that window, I get:

Click the image for a bigger picture.

6. This is probably good enough, but I hold down the Ctrl key on the keyboard and click the "Menus" item in that window. Doing so brings me to:

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7. Clicking on the "Backup" icon at the top of this window gets me to:

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8. And when I click on "OK," the copying begins with a screen like this:

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9. When the job is finished -- it takes a long time -- this screen appears:

Click the image for a bigger picture.

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