There a plenty of 'valid' reasons to make copies of your copy protected DVD movies or games. If you've bought a DVD of your favorite movie, there's nothing more annoying then not being able to watch because your 3 year old son has scratched it. Making a single backup of the DVD bought and owned by you is legal in many countries. It's up to you to investigate whether burning DVDs is illegal or legal in your part of the world. Please read our disclaimer in regards to our position on burning copy protected DVDS

There is no need in investing hundreds of dollars in replacing your old lost or damaged copy protected DVD discs. There are many DVD Burning software available that let you make perfect backup copies of all your copy protected DVD movies using a standard DVD burner. These backup copies of your DVD discs will also play on your Home DVD player just like the regular copy protected DVD discs. Mostly all the newer DVD Players available in the market support blank Media.

What is DVD Ripping

DVD ripping is a commonly used term to describe the process of decrypting and copying the contents of a copy protected DVD disc to your computers hard drive. The reason why you have to rip the DVDs is that all movie DVD are copy protected and encrypted with an encryption called the Content Scrambling Systems (CSS) and you need to decrypt the files before you can manipulate and get further access to them. As the technology progresses the DVD manufacturers are using newer techniques for encryption, therefore make sure to use the latest DVD Ripping software when ripping and burning a copy protected DVD that you just bought from the store. Older software might be able to rip your older copy protected DVD discs.

How to rip a copy protected DVD disc?

The DVD file contents - There are basically three types of files in a DVD. (1) .VOB files (2) .IFO files and (3) .BUP files. The .VOB files are the default format of the DVD movies. These store the several streams of audio and video together including the titles, subtitles, multiple camera angles, chapters and language selections within them. The .VOB files are MPEG-2 (high level compression technology for movie files) encoded files. The .IFO files are the information files. The .IFO files contain the information about the .VOB files which tells the DVD Player exactly how the DVD should be played. If is very important that while ripping and burning a copy protected DVD you should rip the .IFO files also as with the .IFO files the DVDs might not play correctly or might not play at all. .BUP files are nothing but the backup copies of the .IFO files. These are not used unless the .IFO files get corrupted or the DVD Player is unable to read the .IFO files.

First, you need to work out which files should you be burning? Usually the files on a copyrighted DVD are huge (especially if you are trying to back up a movie or computer game).. Sometimes they might take up as much as 9 GB of your Hard Disk space. If you are burning from a copyrighted DVD then just ripping the main .VOB files would take up most of this space.

Some conversion tools will require you to rip all the files from the copyrighted DVD to function properly. But if you are only interested in the copyrighted movie then technically the .VOBs and the associated .IFO information files is all that you will need. The type of rip you perform is totally dependent on the DVD Burning software you will use for burning from a copyrighted DVD.

The process of burning from a copyrighted DVD is heavily memory dependent. Therefore, the faster your computer is; the faster will be the process of burning. A faster DVD Drive can also minimize the amount of time taken for ripping the copyrighted DVD discs. Depending on the speed of your computer ripping a copyrighted DVD may take as much as 1 hour of your time. Of course the time and amount of space required on the hard disk will vary based on your hardware and whether you rip the Full DVD or just the main movie .VOB / .IFO files.
How to copy a copyrighted DVD

Requirements for burning from a Copyrighted DVD

* 1) A DVD drive, the faster the better.
* 2) A copyrighted DVD disc you want to rip
* 3) DVD burning and DVD ripping software. - We have listed many DVD burning and DVD ripping software on this site. Please feel free to browse this website however be aware of other software solutions on the internet that claim to be the very best. Some of these programs are freeware programs that are bundled together and charge you for their use. All the DVD burning and DVD ripping software listed on this web site are the best available at this time. These software are capable of copying the exact clones of the original DVDs with no loss or any sort distortions in the quality.
* 4) DVD player software if you want to watch the movies from you PC.
* 5) Large hard disk. A DVD movie can take up to 8 GB.
* 6) Operating system. Windows 98 recommended / Windows XP.
* 7) In addition, you may need a DVD drive which is either region free or the region setting of your DVD drive matches the DVD disc you want to rip