Multimedia
Blogs
Forum
Affordable HD
Whitepapers
Newsletters
Events
Advertisers
Blogcast
MillimeterIntegrate Review — InterVideo DVD Copy
Sep 1, 2003 12:00 PM, By Frank McMahon
Software copies DVDs out to various formats.
 DVD Copy’s interface is slick and easy to use. Shown here is the program’s feature that allows you to split a DVD across several CDs. |
InterVideo's DVD Copy focuses on only one thing, and that is making perfect digital copies of DVDs in various formats, including DVD, VCD, SVCD, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and DivX. The backing up of DVDs has been a hot-button topic lately, with much pressure from the Motion Picture Association of America to eliminate programs that archive DVD content from commercial discs. At press time 321 Studios, which has one of the most prominent DVD copy programs in DVDXCopy, is in court arguing that consumers do indeed have the right to make a legal backup of any commercial DVD for personal use.
That company is in hot water specifically because its DVDXCopy decrypts CSS copy protection, allowing a commercial DVD movie to be copied. I was interested to see how InterVideo handled this legal minefield, so after I installed the program I popped in Daredevil, the most recent commercial DVD I had purchased.
And … nothing. A message popped up saying that DVD Copy does not support the copying of copy-protected movies. Since that eliminates 90% of commercial DVDs, I thought to myself, this won't be the program I'll use to back up commercial DVDs. For the record I do own DVDXCopy, and it works flawlessly at backing up DVD movies.
I decided to use some of my own DVDs to test InterVideo's software. I had a DVD of one hour of DV footage, transferred to a DVD+R disc via FireWire with the Philips DVDR75 DVD+R/RW set-top unit. The unit is great for recording to DVD, and the best part is the amazing compatibility it ensures once you burn a DVD and bring it to another set-top unit or DVD-ROM drive.
The disc had been finalized in the DVDR75, so now it was ready to be tossed into any DVD drive. I inserted it into my Pioneer DVR-A03 2X DVD-R/RW drive on my Windows XP machine. Don't be thrown by the alternating pluses and minuses: The disc was now an official DVD that could play anywhere since it had been finalized. In fact, it played great using WinDVD Platinum, the DVD software player that InterVideo sent me along with DVD Copy.
InterVideo claims DVD Copy copies discs in only a few clicks, and this is true. Really you just need to choose your source and destination and then your output format. I decided to make a DVD-to-DVD copy. The program moved the ripped DVD to the hard drive, and then I popped out the original and put in a blank. I clicked the burn button and waited. And waited.
 DVD Copy allows you to delete chapters and other elements from your source DVD to save space on your destination DVD. |
In fact, for a program touted as one of the fastest DVD copiers on the market, it was crawling. At this point it was just reading the DVD. Fifteen minutes went by, then a half hour. As I strummed my fingers along my Microsoft keyboard I glanced at the clock. An hour and 20 minutes, which I will never get back, had passed. At this point it looked like it was done reading until it switched to “File 2 of 2” and the status bar went back to 1%. I have the patience of a saint when evaluating programs, but because I was hyped up on Pepsi One and thought this was supposed to be such a fast copy program, I aborted the copy and yanked out the disc.
I explored my movie collection and hunted for DVDs that I assumed would not have copy protection. One was the two-hour pilot of the first season of Twin Peaks, distributed by Republic Pictures. I got this from eBay, as it is not available in the United Stats. Another was a great art-house movie called Kissed, a foreign import that's NTSC Region One.
Twin Peaks copied fine. DVD Copy ripped the movie from disc to hard drive in about 15 minutes — not bad and actually pretty close to, if not slightly faster than, benchmarks I have achieved with 321 Studios DVDXCopy. Writing the disc was another story. Actually burning the movie to DVD took a snail-like 56 minutes. DVDXCopy always burned in half that time — same drive, same media. Kissed copied in about the same amount of time as the Twin Peaks disc. The final output disc was a 2X Pioneer DVD-RW disc. Copies were picture-perfect and looked just like the original.
 This is the online help menu for InterVideo DVD Copy. The program is quite easy to use, and it’s possible to copy DVDs with only a few mouse clicks. |
Along with a nice interface, DVD Copy has a lot of great features worth mentioning. One is direct burn, which allows copying from DVD drive to DVD drive with no hard drive buffering. Many DVD copying programs buffer at least temporary files to the local drive, but DVD Copy skips this process. The quality is picture-perfect with all formats. There is no transcoding, so the original quality is maintained. You can copy DVDs to CDs and split them over several discs. Save DVD mirror images on your hard drive for multiple copies to multiple CDs or DVDs. One really cool feature lets you alter what is copied onto your destination DVD, as far as special features. You can delete subtitles, chapters, audio, and other extras to save space. DVD Copy can also copy dual-layer discs onto two 4.7GB DVDs, as well as export movies to MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 formats.
My tests of producing DivX movies went great. It was certainly cool to move a full DVD movie to a portable 500MB DivX file that could fit on a CD. If you are looking for a program to convert DVDs to formats such as MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and DivX, DVD Copy does a great job. However, if you are looking for anything beyond that, the program is too slow and limited. 321 Studios DVDXCopy does a faster and better job of copying any DVD, but that program puts a “Back-Up” title screen at the beginning of every copy — not an option for discs going out to clients.
DVD Copy does not, but from my tests it runs quite a bit more slowly. Aside from the nifty interface and great ease of use, I can't highly recommend DVD Copy because of speed and compatibility issues.
Frank McMahon is a media artist specializing in directing, editing, animation, and graphic design. He can be reached via his media company at www.fmstudio.com or via Portland Media Artists at www.mediaartist.com.
BOTTOM LINE
Company: InterVideo
Fremont, Calif.; (510) 651-0888
www.intervideo.com
Product: DVD Copy
Assets: Easy-to-use interface; useful feature “splits” DVDs to copy them across multiple CDs; export to DivX, MPEG-1, and MPEG-2.
Caveats: Too slow.
Demographic: Video pros converting DVDs to MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and DivX files.
Price: $49.95
feedback
To comment on this article, email the Video Systems editorial staff at vsfeedback@primediabusiness.com.
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.