The BEST way to backup DVD's with a Mac

1) Rip with OSEx into elemental ac3/m2v
2) Make a DVD image consisting of half the chapters(or as many that fit)
3) Make a DVD image consisting of the remaining chapters
4) Burn them with toast

why wasn't i told its that simple to backup a movie?! i was messing around with encoding and decoding for the past 2-3weeks, the only thing i have to do yet is get menu's on and working if anyone knows how to do this and is willing to tell me or once i get it to work, you can be assured that a DVDXCopy like program for mac will be coming out!

 

i hear people saying this causes sync problems, i'll look into what causes that for people

 

I don't bother backing up the extras, but if you're splitting over 2 DVD's then you might as well have the movie on one DVD and the menu and extras on the other. then you don't have to change DVD's mid-movie.

if the movie and sound is longer than 4.38GB then you may have to compress the movie, but I'm still happy with the results to date.

http://www.hillmanminx.com/transcoder

I'm pimping this product because it's easy to use, not fast but reliable.

heck I can backup small DVD's in an hour start to finish

 

well my main problem was how long other methods took...i wouldn't mind loosing a little quality to fit a movie onto a DVD, but it takes forever, and that is a problem to me, specially when i can take far less time, not lose quality and put them on 2 dvd's

...i do have to figure out how to get menu's to work yet

 

ok then use osex and convert the files into chapters rather than title..

that way you can put the vob files over two disks.

so far i just let transcoder run while i'm at work or overnight but today I've been asked to get a 7.5gig DVD with full functionality onto two disks...

:lol i'll have to wing this one!

 

its gonna be hard, but you can...or should be able to get everthing onto both discs. the hard part is if u want a menu, you might have to create one

 

Have you found a solution for the sync problems when using chapters instead of title in OSEx yet? I've tried the Mediapipe re-encoding method to get a 6GB file down to 4.whatever, but no matter what I do, I have sync problems.

 

i do it by chapters in OSEx, and i havn't gotten any sync problems...i'm extremely happy, should i get them i do not know whwat i'll do

 

deville try splitting the title by selecting elementary streams and pass the resulting files through transcoder to reduce the size of the M2V file...

..it works!!

ast3r3x I successfully made a part backup of a DVD with full menu functions. I simply removed selected VOB files but included all first chapters. I'm having trouble creating a second DVD with the missing tracks and a full function menu, but when I crack it I'll let you know.

What I'd really like is a compaction program to reduce the size of a VOB file in one step, also on my wish list is a program to edit VOB files directly.

 

mike71...what are you saying, if i do the way i said and then just throw on the menu .vob file, it will work?

 

I used DVD backup for this job and simply deleted end chapters until I was under 4.4 Gig.

BUT I left all the 0 and 1 chapters....

and messed around with a couple of combinations on rewriteable, as soon as one worked I burned!

I'm getting busy with work and the G/f ain't been getting much attention lately but i'll try and get you a better explanation in a week or so.

good luck m8

 

Hi, thanks for the response. I tried transcoder, and it successfully changed the original 4.5GB m2v file to... get this: 4.83 GB!

I chose the "DVD-R" option (which I assumed meant that it would make it small enough to fit on a DVD-R) and had the 3:2 pulldown option checked, as I was using NTSC DVD.

Any idea what I did wrong?

 

not really sure I encode to PAL (I'm down under)did you add the AC3 file as well??

I'm at a bit of a loss as I've never had this problem.

You could try adding a larger AC3 file to transcoder, as it only uses it to calculate the length of the final M2V file. OR fiddle with the fit settings.

 

is it possible to add the original AC3 audio file to the m2v video from transcoder? i'm trying to create a disc image with sizzle but it doesn't recognize the AC3 audio file.

cheers

 

suspect the ac3 file

i think in other posts "fixing" ac3 files was mentioned

sizzle shouldn't complain