Okay, I need a little techie advice.

Say I'd like to take my Lois and Clark DVDs and create a "Best Of" DVD, wherein I find clips and scenes that are my favorites, then compile them all on one DVD. Get rid of the stuff I don't want and keep what I do.

What, exactly, do I need equipment and software wise? I don't want to do this in Movie Maker or anything like that because it seems the quality would be degraded. Or is this the best way? Create a "Movie Maker Trailer" kind of thing with my best-ofs?

Is there any way to record directly from DVD on to a new DVD? Kind of like recording a TV show onto video tape, when you can pause the video tape during the commercials and then start taping again so the final result is commercial-free? Can I put a DVD into the player and find a way to record to another DVD with the ability to cut out stuff I don't want?

And if I burn it to DVD, is this something that I can watch on a regular DVD player on a regular TV?

Thanks for any advice.

Lynn

Tech-wise, you need a DVD burner.

Software-wise, you need the drivers and such that came with the DVD burner and WMM.

I suggest using WMM to cut out the individual clips and such that you want, then saving them at the highest possible quality (if you fiddle with the "save as..." options, you can get full quality). Use your DVD burning software to put those clips onto a DVD. Do it right, and you should even be able to have scene selection.

I believe a good quality DVD player should be able to handle a DVD-R. That's kind of the point of a DVD burner in the first place.

Don't know what to tell you about copying from one to another. Don't know about hardware to do that (depends on the burner and all), but if you're using a comp, all that's going to do anyway is to copy the DVD files to your HDD, burn the copy to DVD, and erase the temp version on the HDD. Might as well do that yourself, so you have more control over what gets copied and what doesn't.

Paul

If you already have the clips, you can just use a program that is used to author DVD's. You can then just drag in your clips and the program will turn them into .vob files.

Nero has one, but there are a number of them on the PC. I personally use DVD Studio Pro 4.0 for the Mac, which is about as professional a program as you can get, which handles AC-3 audio and HDV video to create high definition DVD's, allows you to create professional menus and even creates dual-layer ones.

I recently bought a DVD recorder and according to it's instuction it can do exactly that. You can record off tv (just like a VCR) or record off a VHS tape onto DVD and are supposed to be able to record from another DVD. Unfortunately many newer DVDs are made so they can not be copied. You can also edit out commercials or anything else you'd like on a DVD recorder. You can use these DVDs on most DVD players (depends on whether you buy a recorder that uses DVD-R or DVD + R (or both) and which one your players can play). Most new DVD players can play either one.

Jackie

I have a Panasonic DVD recorder that is connected to the TV. Like Jackie said, I can record from TV or the VCR as the source directly onto the hard drive, edit out any commercials and then dub the finished product onto a DVD-R.

But I cannot copy from any DVD, nor from some commercially-produced videos, because of the copyright protection. I have a DVD player that plays both +R and -R discs, so any discs that I have created play fine in either that machine or my computer (well, the ones with labels on them had problems, but that's a different story...)

Kathy

Thanks, guys (and gals). This is all so helpful. Except some of you have told me exactly what I was afraid of - that copying directly from DVD on to DVD is not an easy thing. If not because of special equipment or software, more so because of copyright protection.

I've wanted for a long time to make some "Best Of" DVDs out of DVDs of some of my favorite shows, but the original DVDs are heavily copyright protected. I'm thinking it might be next to impossible to get past that.

Lynn

Lynn, the best tool to rip commercial DVDs is a program called DVD Decryptor (though I think it might be spelt -er). Unfortunately, the author of the (free) program recently received a cease and desist notice.

Having said that, I'm sure that many people here have it and I'm sure that someone could send it to you or upload it to an FTP site where you can download it.

Having said that, I found this site which appears to offer the program for download still. Good luck!


Wendy

I've used DVD Decrypter myself. It's a good program, very easy to use. I've never tried to copy any commercially-produced DVDs with it, just my own homemade DVDs. BUT it only works for DVDs with less than 4.7GB of data recorded on it. I'm guessing that the L&C DVDs are double-layer, and therefore would have more GB than that.

Also, I've only ever made exact digital copies of my DVDs. There may be a way to extract individual files/clips from episodes, but I don't know how to do it.

Kathy

Ah, but there's a way around that. You just need DVD Shrink . The two programs are designed to work together.


Wendy

I have an LG DVD recorder which records in double layer. I haven't had any problems copying from one DVD to another but haven't tried it on anything copywritten yet. However, my friend rents movies and copies them with his DVD burner all the time and rarely has any problem with copyrights so I know it can be done.

Jackie