I have a Dell laptop with plenty of memory. I've been using Platinum to back up my movies, with limited success. What else can you recommend to back up. I'm a real dummy when it comes to computers, so be gentle. Thanks in advance.
To start out download free programs DVD Shrink and DVD Decrypter. Decrypter will rip your movie to your hard drive, and Shrink will encode and compress your file to fit on a 4.7 disk. You can get the software and the guides at this site. http://home.comcast.net/~bbmayo/index.html Try these out and see how they work. If you are looking for pay programs then I recommend AnyDVD and CloneDVD2 available from http://www.slysoft.com There is a 21 day free trial period for the programs. AnyDVD runs in the background to break encryption and CloneDVD2 will encode, compress and burn your movie. It also has great editing capablities. Also make sure you use good quality media for your burns, such as Taiyo Yuden, available online, or Sony, Fuji, Verbatim or Maxell. No store brands such as Staples or CompUSA, or brand Memorex.
If you want dvd-9 to dvd-9 backups rip the dvd with Decrypter as an ISO and burn it back with Decrypter to a dvd-9
darita Dvd9 discs are pretty pricey say $5 for 1 as opposed to maybe .50 for quality DVD5's. You could just do the main movie only or if you want a working menu use shrink to make still pics of the extras you don't want to cut down on the comression. Check out Arniebear's sig for great guides from bbmayo and scubapete.
If you want to use the dvd9 (dual layer blanks) you have to have a dual layer burner to work with them. That will give you a 1 to 1 exact copy but as stated above the cost per disc is about 10 times as much. Thats why most of us use a compression program to fit the movies on single layer blanks at about 50 cents each. You sure don't want to make a $5.00 coaster. Jerry
Thanks for the tips. Some of this is over my head, but I'll look for more info. I just thought, like with XCopy Platinum, there was a way to run full backups on two discs. Sorry for my lack of general computer knowledge.
The quality is so good with some of these applications that visible quality loss from compression is almost nonexistent. I started with the free apps listed, and I still use them from time to time (especially Decrypter), but now I mainly use Nero Recode2 ($8).
