As I work at sea, I don't want to have to take all the DVD's I want to watch with me, I'd rather save luggage space. So, as I've already bought them, is there any way I can save them to my hard drive (like I can CD's) for watching with media player?
a, Is it legal? And b, how do I do it?
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Sorry, but I disagree. Anything that is copyrighted in any fashion cannot be copied without permission. There is a world of difference from copying for 'back-up' purposes and copying for selling at the local car boot sale, but they are basically still the same. The very fact that all DVD's use various any copy tools requiring dedicated hacking or ripping software should really be an obvious indicator.
Having said that, there are lots and lots of tools out there that let you do it, but just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should do something.
If I were you I'd copy them for my own usage as the chances of anyone doing anything about it are slim.
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It also depends on where you are in the world, and since you say you are at sea ( no idea if you mean just UK waters or elsewhere ) There are loads of dedicated forums for DVD ripping back-ups etc, and the general consensus is there is no 100% ruling. In many countries the use of software to rip DVD's is illegal, others just doing it is. I can't find anything that guarantees DVD ripping in the UK is legal, but to be fair, I can't see anything on the web that says it's 100% illegal either. Ho Hum.
Having said that, there are lots and lots of tools out there that let you do it, but just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should do something.
If I were you I'd copy them for my own usage as the chances of anyone doing anything about it are slim.
EDIT:
It also depends on where you are in the world, and since you say you are at sea ( no idea if you mean just UK waters or elsewhere ) There are loads of dedicated forums for DVD ripping back-ups etc, and the general consensus is there is no 100% ruling. In many countries the use of software to rip DVD's is illegal, others just doing it is. I can't find anything that guarantees DVD ripping in the UK is legal, but to be fair, I can't see anything on the web that says it's 100% illegal either. Ho Hum.
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No it's not leagal, but people rip DVDs all the time. Bizarrely it's not even legal to copy your old CDs onto your mp3 player.
As long as you aren't distributing anything I dont think you'll have a problem, but strictly it's illegal. Note it's also illegal to show the films to colleagues at your place of work, eg ship or oil rig!
As long as you aren't distributing anything I dont think you'll have a problem, but strictly it's illegal. Note it's also illegal to show the films to colleagues at your place of work, eg ship or oil rig!
The legal question doesn't have a simple answer because there are many different jurisdictions with many different sets of legislation. It's a bit like politics, the art of the possible. The entertainment industry has apparently given up the idea of enforcing its will on everyone because it's impossible. They've tried copy protection mechanisms but they've failed. Note that the entertainment industry rigs the markets. There are several different 'areas' in the world (area 1, area 2 and so on). DVDs which are sold in one 'area' cannot normally be played on DVD players which are sold in a different 'area'. More on that later, but it perplexes me that this market manipulation can be legal when it seems fairly clear that it is to the detriment of the consumer, yet copying your own, legally purchased DVD for convenience or for a safety backup, at least in some jurisdictions, is not legal. Anyway, before we stray too far from the forum guidelines...
My wife and I have about 500 DVDs. All of them were bought legally. As we have homes in two different countries, carrying a few crates of DVDs around on the off chance that we might want to watch one of the films isn't an option. So we copy them to 'mass storage' which can be a hard drive, flash memory or whatever, and watch films on a computer.
A typical DVD will contain four or five gigabytes(*) of data, and the information contained in there allows the display of an image which is of much better quality than the average computer monitor can reproduce. In addition there can be several sound tracks on the DVD, in as many different languages, not to mention subtitles in different languages too. As far as we're concerned, most of these are a waste of space.
We only use Linux. The best tool that we've found for reading DVDs, saving the data, and rendering it is called 'Mplayer'. I believe it is available for Windows, Mac etc., too although I've never used it on those platforms. Not only does this package allow the use of DVDs from any 'area' in the world (including the use of tools to defeat the crude DVD copy protection mechanisms), it also permits the removal of unnecessary data like surplus language soundtracks and subtitles and the re-sizing of the display to match the resolution of the screen on which the movie will be watched. The net result is that you can read any DVD no matter where it was bought, and the data storage requirement is typically about 20-30% of the DVD data, so an average two-hour movie will need around 1.5Gbytes instead of the 4.5Gbytes or so on a DVD.
So all our movies will fit on a 1Terabyte drive with room for plenty more.
(*)
Terabyte (TB) = one thousand Gigabytes = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes
Gigabyte (GB) = one thousand Megabytes = 1,000,000,000 bytes
Megabyte (MB) = one thousand kilobytes = 1,000,000 bytes
kilobyte (kB) = one thousand bytes = 1,000 bytes
Byte (B) = 8 bits (b).
Yes, it's a small k for kilo. International standard, sorry. I tend to be fussy about the proper case of the abbreviations, but not if the word is written out in full.
It tends to be a small b for 'bits' and a large B for 'Bytes', and a byte tends to be 8 bits, -- but like Topsy, these aren't really what you'd call international standards. They just growed.
PS: We also use Mplayer to play music CDs, record Videos from tape, watch video streamed online...
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resnikov
Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
DVD Shrink or DVD Decrypter will create iso or vob files depening on your preference of file format. Both are free picies of software . I would then use VLC media player to watch them again its free software which will play just about any file format.
I belive its legal to backup your discs but not to use them unless the orginals are damaged plus its ilegal to change the format of a recording (music, film etc) ie CD to tape, CD to MP3 etc etc.
I belive its legal to backup your discs but not to use them unless the orginals are damaged plus its ilegal to change the format of a recording (music, film etc) ie CD to tape, CD to MP3 etc etc.
Spot on, two great programmes. If your watching on a laptop use a programme you can use Handbrake, a free programme as well which will shrink your film down to a single .AVI file of only 500-600Mb. These files are fine on a computer but no good on your 50" flat screen.
DVD shrink lets you rip your DVD in standard format or an .ISO file and with (free) Virtualclonedrive you can 'mount' the image and play it. If I were you I'd download the programmes and have a play with them, they all have tutorials / forums online to help you.
http://www.dvdshrink.org/
http://www.dvddecrypter.org.uk/
http://handbrake.fr/downloads.php (works with linux too Ged)
http://www.slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html
All these work with Windows 7 64 bit editions.
robin wood
Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
I have a few dvd's (big name titles) with a copy system built into the disk so they actually allow you the right to copy it to your lap top, mobile phone or pc.....not sure if it just relates to the titles that carry the copy file but it sets the tone if you ask me......once you brought the disc as long as it is for your eyes only.....they allow you to watch it.....wether from a disk drive.....or hard drive.
Oh......just gone to my collection and don't have any to hand with this feature.....(embarrassed).....well I will get my dvds back and check it out......if I can remember who has them, and which ones they were
Grrrrrrr
Mojo
Oh......just gone to my collection and don't have any to hand with this feature.....(embarrassed).....well I will get my dvds back and check it out......if I can remember who has them, and which ones they were
Grrrrrrr
Mojo
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Thanks for your help everyone, I'll give it a try.
I do not see eye to eye with the taxman!
I see you live in Cumbernauld, you are not the tax man are you?
I do not see eye to eye with the taxman!
If I wasn't going to do it I would not use 1 Click DVD, or Clone DVD either as I know they both work really well, or so I'm told.
It would depend on how the drive is partitioned, and what filesystem(s) you put on it.
my honest advice would be don't bother ripping the dvd's and having to play with shrinking them.
hit the torrents engines and download em instead. its just as illegal but you'll get them in a smaller .avi format that even most tv's will happily play nowdays (plug in USB ports)
quite serious.
hit the torrents engines and download em instead. its just as illegal but you'll get them in a smaller .avi format that even most tv's will happily play nowdays (plug in USB ports)
quite serious.
But as yet not reported, you can use proxy servers if you want although I don't bother. I use torrents as a 'try before you buy' system, if I like I buy the disk. I feel no guilt as my daughter is addicted to buying DVD's and has hundreds (could even be a thousand plus I joke not). First it was VHS tapes, they had to be replaced by DVD and of course now she is going to replace all the DVD's with BR versions; for an extremely intelligent gal she is utterly irrational at times. That said, I'm not much better, downloaded 156 episodes of the Twilight Zone and then went and got the disks
I thought it was 1024 Mb in a TB? I get 1.80 IIRC on my NTFS 2Tb drives after format or thereabouts.
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