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Does the Superdrive burn Movies DVDs? This is over a bet....

M

MacDuff

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 17, 2002
175
0
San Francisco
My friend and I are trying to solve a bet. Does or can the superdrive have the capability to burn movie dvds? If anyone knows this would be great information just for betting's sake. I shouldn't bet on things such as this but we both really want to know either way.
:cool:
 
Hmmmm

DV file, can you tell me more? I'm asking for one (TiBook) for Christmas. Does the DV file on the DVD-R play on a regular DVD player? My friend says that DVD-R's don't have the space to fit any parts of movie files on them. What do you think?:(
 
Well...

If you are taliking about hollywood movies already out on DVD, then it is a tentative no. There are always "hacks" or tricks to beat this, but it is designed for burning your own edited footage onto a DVD. Yes, the DVD-Rs that the Superdrive uses are playable in commercial DVD players.

Gus
 
Re: Well...

Originally posted by Gus
Yes, the DVD-Rs that the Superdrive uses are playable in commercial DVD players.
Gus
Click to expand...

You just have to use iDVD2 and up to 90 minutes of video are ready to go on the disc, including menus, backgrounds and so on. For more than 90 minutes and more features you´ve seen in professional DVDs you would need something like DVD Studio Pro. But leave that to the pros...;)

The major problem is, IMHO, that DVD-Rs and other "burnable" DVD formats are single sided and single layered. That means, you have to live with 4.4 GB of data, and the more video footage you want on the disc, the scarier will the video quality be.

Professional DVDs circumvent this by using dual-layered discs. --> higher quality on one side.
 
Yes, and, well, yes...

As stated, the Superdrive can burn DVD-Rs in standard DVD movie format. The thing is, your typical cinema blockbuster will take 7-8 GB while there's only 4,3 GB available on a DVD-R. You can split your movie into two DVD-Rs, or recompress the movie with a lower data rate (to make it fit on 1 DVD-R), thus losing picture quality.

There is no legal way to extract the movie data from a copy protected DVD, and even if there was, you would still lose the menu structure etc.
 
interesting.....

My apologies, I should have been specific about what kind of "movies" I was referring to. The debate I'm undertaking has to do with yes, Hollywood movies already on DVD. But it looks like Gus claims it's close to impossible, but i keep hearing different from things from different folk. I tend to agree that Hollywood would keep some kind of protection on these things, but also that of course there are hacks to cut through the protection. Hmmm, does anyone know for sure who actually owns a Superdrive?
 
There is no legal way to extract the movie data from a copy protected DVD, and even if there was, you would still lose the menu structure etc.
Click to expand...

Not true. A freeware app like DVDBackup 1.2 (current version) will rip a perfect copy of a DVD - menu structure and all. The MPAA may be doing their utmost to stamp out any DeCSS apps, but despite what the MPAA wants you to believe, the possession and use of such an app is NOT illegal, provided your usage of the app is applied to Fair use purposes (backups of your own discs, etc.). DVDBackup makes ripping DVDs about as difficult and foolproof as ripping audio CDs (though a bit more time consuming, granted).

Another good thing about DVDBackup is that it can strip out region coding and Macrovision protection, as well as giving you the ability to rip the DVD directly to your HD (DVD Player in OS X will play mounted disc images, as well as the VIDEO_TS folder.)

Incidentally, most commercial DVD's are NOT dual layer but rather single layer, and will fit perfectly well on any standard DVD-R. It is relatively trivial to split a dual-layer disc onto two DVD-Rs, if need be.
 
You can extract an MPEG2 Stream from a DVD using an app called OSeX. You can then transfer that MPEG2 somehow into iDVD, though I am not sure if you want to copy DVD's directly. Currently, you can re-compress those ripped DVD's into MP4 (DiVX .AVI) and get the file down to 700-1000MB in size with THE SAME QUALITY.

You can do this with Mencoder or FFMPEG for OSX. After the file was transfered into a Quicktime (.AVI) file by the compressor, make sure that you have the DIVX codec installed, and you just drop the file into iDVD, and it will re-encode, but like the previous poster said, you are limited to 90 Max mins on each side.

This is of course, Illegal in the U.S, so I do not condone this. If you lived in H.K or Taiwan, well it may be a little different there! Therefore I leave further research to you...

The answer is YES and YES.
 
No need to bother with extracting the MPEG-2 stream. Just use DVDBackup - nothing could be easier. I forgot to add that you need Toast to burn the resulting disc image. DVD Studio Pro and/or iDVD is useless for this task.

Again, this has never been tested in a U.S. court, so it is not a crime to back up your DVDs (in the U.S.)!

Of course you can extract the MPEG-2 stream and reencode to MPEG-4. MPEG-4 is a much better and more modern codec than MPEG-2, the DVD standard. (MPEG-2 isn't all that efficient or flawless. In fact, it's not a very high quality codec and it is full of motion and other noticeable artifacts.) And, yes, you can then fit the results on a CD-R with no loss of quality. However, you will be stuck with playing this only on computers and it will be a time consuming hassle; getting the audio and video back in sync is a real exercise in frustration.
 
Why thank you

Pepzhez and ***,
You two seem to have your knowledge down. You're two jivin' mac cats. Thanks for all the info, I'll look into this, and I believe I just won my bet. :D
 
As long as the DVD is less than 4.6GB, then you're in luck, I have copied movies before using the superdrive.
 
Originally posted by Pepzhez
No need to bother with extracting the MPEG-2 stream. Just use DVDBackup - nothing could be easier. I forgot to add that you need Toast to burn the resulting disc image. DVD Studio Pro and/or iDVD is useless for this task.

Again, this has never been tested in a U.S. court, so it is not a crime to back up your DVDs (in the U.S.)!

Of course you can extract the MPEG-2 stream and reencode to MPEG-4. MPEG-4 is a much better and more modern codec than MPEG-2, the DVD standard. (MPEG-2 isn't all that efficient or flawless. In fact, it's not a very high quality codec and it is full of motion and other noticeable artifacts.) And, yes, you can then fit the results on a CD-R with no loss of quality. However, you will be stuck with playing this only on computers and it will be a time consuming hassle; getting the audio and video back in sync is a real exercise in frustration.
Click to expand...

Why is there an audio sync problem? And what do you to fix it?
 
Why is there an audio sync problem? And what do you to fix it?
Click to expand...

The Audio Sync Occurs because some MPEG-2 Streams are encoded using variable frame-rate and variable bit-rate, in addition, the AC3 Dolby Audio is also VBR. When you demux (split) these streams into separate files (for re-encoding), the two streams lose the references to where certain points the sound and certain frames should be syncronized, so when they are re-encoded, the encoder (like FFMPEG) would need to remember where these were originally and re-encode accordingly. I read somewhere that Mencoder does a better job at this than FFMPEG. This is an over simplification, but MPEG2 when combining VBR with VFR and VBR Audio, can get really confusing to an de/encoder because when splitting, the video, I have observed, it loses its Variable Frame Rate, and becomes pure 29.97/24 frames per second, as a result, sometimes the Video Track is longer than the Audio....

It's a diffuclt problem.

P.S This is how I understand the problem to be, maybe it is not totaly the right explanation.
 
Hi there. First let me say that in most countries it is legal to make backups for DVDs that you paid for. Please check first if this applies where you live.

I do have some experience with OSeX and FFMPEG (both of which can be downloaded free from macupdate.com or versiontracker.com. .

About the sync Problem: You need Quicktime pro for fixing it. After processing the movie to .avi I usually trim the video track, about one quater of a second at a time, until the audio is in sync. It is true that this is a tedious procedure, but worth it. With a little experience, it takes about half an hour to get it right.

The only way to really work around this is to buy (heaven forbid) a PeeCee. For the beige boxes, there are applications that rip and process a DVD in (virtually) one step.

Good luck to you

And don't do anything I wouldn't.;)
 
Wait aminute

I never said that it was impossible to get a "hollywood" DVD to copy. I only said that this was not possible with iDVD or other built in tools on your Mac. I said that you would have to get a trick app or a "Hack". It IS possible, but not condoned as stated previously. I would think that any Hollywood studio would have an issue with any copy of the DVD you made, including a "backup" copy, thud the warning on the beginning if any DVD that says, "FBI WARNING...under penalty of law, you may not duplicate the motion picture contained on this disc..."

Just wanted to clear that up.

Gus
 
That FBI "warning" has never been tested in court. And I don't care whether Hollywood studios have "issues" with what I choose to do with my personal property.

Please learn what the laws truly are and know what your rights are instead of bowing down to any corporate threat.
 
Look man, whether you like the law or not, you do not have permission by law to do with what you please. You DO have the right to do to that physical disc whatever you darn well please. You can play it, break it, or use it as a frisbee if you want to, but you do NOT have the permission to do what you will with the movie on that disc. You do not "own" that movie any more than you "own" Mac OS X. You ar buying a liscence for private use, and private use only. You may not duplicate the material that someone else, NOT YOU, created without their expressed permission. It is not your work. Before you are so flippant with your berations, maybe you better think about what you are really saying. Don't just take the opposite viewpoint of something because it's made by a "big corporation".

I know the laws, and I have studied copyright law very thoroughly, and you do not have the rights you think you do over material that you do not have any stake in the creation of.

Sorry if this is heated, but you attacked me, and I felt like defending myself.
Gus
 
Pepzhez, I how do you make DVDBackup 1.2 create an image? I tried and it made tons of seperate files, not just one image.

Does it require any other program?



-jeff
 
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