DVD copying (I'm not talking about copy righted material)

[mikemorris1]

HI, I have a DVD of some home video that I had sent off to have copied on to a dvd. I got it back and they stuck it on a DVD that has 7+ Gig. How can I copy that disk and burn it to a DVD on my Mac. Is there a way to compress it into a 4.7 g DVD? Can I edit it down to 4.7?

Also, I have some iMovie DVD's that I made. I want to open the movies from the DVD and edit the video with iMovie. I don't have the iMovie file anymore. I figured that I can use the DVD as an archive, but I can't import the files from the DVD.

 

[evil]

there is a program called dvdbackup that will import dvd files onto your harddrive.

 

[dynamicd]

To copy it to a disc you will need DVDBackup and then get something called dvd2onex101. This will split up the data into two Video_TS files so that you can then burn both sides onto two DVD's using Toast. Its not the easiest process but it's a lot better now that dvd2onex101 is out since you used to have to go into VPC to have to split up the larger DVD files.

 

[the future]

I have no idea about your second problem, but the info the other people posted about your first problem is just plain wrong.

To copy the content of a DVD that is not copy protected onto your HD you need no programm at all. Just drag and drop the VIDEO_TS folder onto your HD. You can even play back the content with the Apple DVD Player.

To COMPRESS the 7+ GB content to 4,3 GB (so you can burn it on a DVD-R) you will need DVD2oneX (http://www.dvd2one.com). Note that there will be a certain loss of quality and the app is not free (50 Euro, roughly 55 USD I think). It is very fast, though (takes about 30 min.) and may well pay off if you plan to do this kind of thing more often.

To SPLIT the 7+ GB content so you can burn it to 2 DVD-Rs without loss of quality you will need either Disco+ (http://homepage.mac.com/kaicherry/index2.html) which costs 40 USD but is a very simple solution to the problem, or you can use 0SEx (http://www.cs.buffalo.edu/~afaversa/test/) to rip your content to elementary streams (mpeg2 video + ac3/mpeg audio) and Sizzle (http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/17331) to re-author them to VIDEO_TS folders. These apps are free, but I guess they will only work for you if your original content has either several chapters or several tracks because 0SEx will only then by able to 'split' the material somewhere (one track at a certain chapter or between several tracks).