the random musings not worthy of new thread thread

[Seabiscuit36]

The quality is ok when you copy, barely noticable, you just dont want to overcompress

[SunMo]

can anybody vouch for the quality?

[phattymatty]

i, for one, can not.

[Rome]

can anybody vouch for the quality?

I have no idea but you seem to need someone to vouch for them, so sure, I'll do it.

Vouch!

[Susquehanna Birder]

It depends on what you're using, and how you're going about it. Like Biscuit implied, you can compress the video to the point that it's really ugly. On the other hand, I've seen some pretty good copies. In one case, the copy was stripped of all the menus and bonus material, and copying just the movie was capable at original quality. I saw the copy on my 50" plasma, and it looked perfectly acceptable.

[hbionic]

phatty, how's the vouching coming along?

[Sgt PSN]

It depends on what you're using, and how you're going about it. Like Biscuit implied, you can compress the video to the point that it's really ugly. On the other hand, I've seen some pretty good copies. In one case, the copy was stripped of all the menus and bonus material, and copying just the movie was capable at original quality. I saw the copy on my 50" plasma, and it looked perfectly acceptable.

Any special software you'd recommend for burning a dvd?  If I were to try it today, I'd just be using windows media player.  Will that work just fine or should I look at picking something up? 

[Seabiscuit36]

i use DVD Fab Platinum to rip dvds, its free on http://www.doom9.org

you can also look on http://katz.cd for dvd fab platinum sarge, its more up to date on there. 

With that prog, you can rip DVD's then burn them to a DVD, and pick what you want to allow on the dvd.  I typically use DVD Fab to rip stuff, then DVD Shrink to edit out stuff i dont want(previews of other movies, other languages/subscript, stupid extras).  DVD Shrink does the editing and burning.  Thats also available on both sites

[SunMo]

can you vouch for quality?

[phattymatty]

phatty, how's the vouching coming along?

i'm having a really hard time today, actually.

[phattymatty]

can you vouch for quality?

i wish i could.

[Seabiscuit36]

can you vouch for quality?

i vouch for it, because i'm the awesomest at bootleggin yo

[Cerevant]

Clarifications:

1) All commercial DVDs are copy protected, but that copy protection has been broken for several years.  They cannot fix the protection without obsoleting all existing DVD players.

2) The quality of a DVD rip is exactly the quality of the DVD.  You get a reduction in quality if you re-compress (to fit on a DVD-R, which can't hold as much) it or convert it to another form (DivX, for example).

[Sgt PSN]

i use DVD Fab Platinum to rip dvds, its free on http://www.doom9.org

you can also look on http://katz.cd for dvd fab platinum sarge, its more up to date on there. 

With that prog, you can rip DVD's then burn them to a DVD, and pick what you want to allow on the dvd.  I typically use DVD Fab to rip stuff, then DVD Shrink to edit out stuff i dont want(previews of other movies, other languages/subscript, stupid extras).  DVD Shrink does the editing and burning.  Thats also available on both sites

Thanks J.  I'll check them out when I get home tonight.

Clarifications:

1) All commercial DVDs are copy protected, but that copy protection has been broken for several years.  They cannot fix the protection without obsoleting all existing DVD players.

2) The quality of a DVD rip is exactly the quality of the DVD.  You get a reduction in quality if you re-compress (to fit on a DVD-R, which can't hold as much) it or convert it to another form (DivX, for example).

I think this just answered my next question which had to do with Sus' post about how his friend had stripped basically everything except the actual movie when he burned it. 

So basically, if a blank dvd holds (just making up #'s here) up to 1000mb but the contents on a dvd movie are 1200mb then I would need to either compress the file if I want to copy everything, including bonus features, previews, etc (which would/could lessen the quality of the picture).  Or I could just strip 200mb worth or crap off of there that I don't want, which would leave me with the same quality as the original dvd.

Is that about right? 

[Seabiscuit36]

Blank DVD's hold 4.7 GB's, Typical DVD's with movies have around 7 Gigs, you can removed most stuff off there and be left with around 4-5 gb's and can compress it a little bit and get the entire movie with very little loss of picture.