DVD BACKUP

Sometimes it is useful to be able to back-up either DVDs you have created yourself or commercial ones you have bought. For example if I am going on a business trip overseas, I prefer to take backed up copies of DVDs with me, in case they get lost or damaged.

Because most commercial DVDs are dual layer and most home PC DVD writers / burners are currently still single layer, commercial DVDs will not fit onto a single layer DVD-R or DVD+R unless they are compressed.

In order to achieve the compression I like to use DVD Shrink, since this allows me to be somewhat selective about what I copy. By removing menus and extras such as cast interviews, I free up more space and so the compressed material I retain, will be of higher quality. I select the setting "enable burning with Nero" and choose to write an ISO image to my hard drive.

Because I also have DVD Decrypter installed, when I instruct the software to burn, Under "select backup target" I select "ISO Image File and Burn with DVD Decrypter".

Once the compression has been rendered DVD Decrypter opens. I load a blank DVD and instruct it to burn.

One interesting thing I have observed is that when burning is complete, a message pops up saying "Operation successfully completed". If I press OK and then remove my DVD from the burner, I can then view the DVD on my PC or the DVD player attached to my Television. However if I remove the burnt DVD before clicking the [OK] button, in DVD Decrypter, it will not play on my DVD player. However in this situation I can still go into the file structure of the DVD and play the VOB files on my PC. I have noticed there is some activity on the burner after clicking OK, so I suspect the disc is not fully finalised until this is done, even though the operation has been reported as complete.

I am using DVD Shrink V 3.2.0.15 and DVD Decrypter V 3.5.4.0