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I can't really seem to find what I'm looking for. I need a good program for burning 1:1 backups of DVDs onto DL media. I would like high quality burns and no compression at all. I have read mostly about DVD shrink, DVD decryptor, DVD rebuilder (from what I read really good one), and a couple of more. However, I belive they are all solutions to compress backups to fit on one single layer disc which is what I don't need. I would like for the software to be possibly free and not take 10 hours or so. If you could give me a couple of options I would greatly appreciate it.

Well, the problem will still be the copy protection-- you can never do a true 1:1 copy as the protection will throw a bit of a wrench in the plans. RipIt4Me will do the ripping and I think you can stop it before it passes the video on to DVD Shrink and use something like ImgBurn (Both free, use Google) to do the actual burn.

For older DVDs, DVD Decryptor still works to rip and burn. It doesn't do any compression.

IMGBurn will rip and burn but only non-protected DVDs. So you'd need to either pre-rip with another application (like RipIt4Me) or buy a program like AnyDVD to run in the background.

That said, be sure to follow all applicable local copyright laws when doing your research and copying!

With programs like DVD Shrink, you can choose the destination size so instead of a 4.7GB single layer disc, you can tell it you want an 8.5GB DL one.

There is still a problem here because a dual layer DVD-ROM can hold as much as 9.4GB. You may still need to reencode the video a bit and/or remove extras, subtitles, etc so that the main video is as close to the original source as possible.

Ian wrote:There is still a problem here because a dual layer DVD-ROM can hold as much as 9.4GB.

I didn't realize it was that much bigger than a recordable disc. Has anyone seen/got a disc that's close to capacity ie 9.4GB? I'm not making a point of how many are actually that size, but rather I'd like to know of such titles.

For straight DL backups/burns I rip the disc with DVDFab Decrypter (freeware), build an image with IMG Burn (freeware) and then burn the image with IMG Burn.

I've found the best 1:1 DL backup solution to be Slysoft's CloneCD combined with AnyDVD to remove the protection. CloneCD even preserves the original location of the layer break.

The downside is that it's not a free solution.

The latest ImageBurn is free and will do the same 1:1 while preserving the layer break. You still need to have AnyDVD running and that isn't free.

Justin42 wrote:Well, the problem will still be the copy protection-- you can never do a true 1:1 copy as the protection will throw a bit of a wrench in the plans.

Actually, it is possible with some Criterion DVDs that don't have protections and/or even warnings. I've seen quite a few like that. In that case, the best choice we found was CloneCD which - as someone already mentioned - keeps the original layer break. Otherwise, we've found that PgcEdit combined with IMGBurn works for getting a decent layer break. Of course, with a lot of the newer players that won't really matter.