Cheap storage on DVDs?

hbwerner wrote on 7/17/2005, 4:19 AM
I have numerous movies I've made and put on DVDs that I may want to occasionaly duplicate in the future. I'm not interested in any re-editing, this is just for archieving strictly for this purpose. I've been doing it on my hard drives (my Sony Click-to-DVD stores them as mpeg files), but now running out of room. I've tried a program - Cosmui's DVD Ripper - to test copying a DVDs, and didn't notice any deterioration in quality (but the one I tried was poor qualtiy anyway). Archieving this way would be cheap - 40 cents per storage DVD. Has anyone looked into whether copying DVDs leads to qaulity deteriorations?

Comments

ADinelt wrote on 7/17/2005, 2:38 PM
I would think that if the DVD is not being re-rendered or re-compressed, than there should not be any degradation of quality, since it is a digitial medium.

Al
Chienworks wrote on 7/17/2005, 6:53 PM
I use Nero's disc copy function. Of course, it's very fast and easy if you have two DVD drives. If you only have one it will copy the disc to the hard drive first then prompt you to swap in a blank disc. The only loss in quality would be from data transfer errors and you'll be informed if this happens. Generally you'll get a perfect copy in a few minutes. There is no need for ripping or reauthoring.
IanG wrote on 7/18/2005, 2:10 AM
One thing you might want to look at is the shelf life of your DVDs. I haven't had a DVD burner long enough to have seen any problems*, but there are reports of people finding their DVDs unplayable after as little as 3 years. It seems to depend on the manufacturer, so it might be worth doing a bit of research before you get started.

Ian G.

* I have had problems with CDs though - and 3 years seems plausible.
shmulb wrote on 7/18/2005, 4:59 AM
Here is a link to an article on the quality of disks and how to know what is good and not.
http://www.digitalfaq.com/media/dvdmedia.htm
hbwerner wrote on 7/20/2005, 6:21 AM
Chienworks, what is the difference between copying and ripping? While ripping is in the name of the software I have, one function listed is to copy a DVD. I only have one DVD drive, and tried the copy mode - it copied to hard disk fairly fast, but took an hour or more to write the disk (a 2 hour disk). Does that sound like "ripping"
Chienworks wrote on 7/20/2005, 6:51 AM
Ripping implies altering the data in some fashion. The video is stored as .VOB files with (most likely) .AC3 audio embedded. A typical ripping process would leave you with .MPG or .AVI files and decoded audio on the hard drive.

Copying would simply move the same .VOB files unaltered to the hard drive (or to another disc). There would be nothing changed. Since your homemade discs aren't copy protected, this is the best and fastest choice for making duplicates.

An hour seems a bit troublesome. I just burned at full 4.7GB DVD this morning at 2.4x and it only took about 30 minutes including the data verification step at the end. An 8x burner should be able to copy an entire DVD in under 10 minutes.