k3b

Copying CDs og DVDs

Media now and then bring reports about pirate copying of music and movies. Teenagers are demanded to pay thousand of dollars for copying music, and the record industy (represented by IFPI, RIAA and local copyright agencies) threaten to sue citizens, if they make illegal copies.

Ordinary citizens have a hard time trying to figure out when they legally may copy a CD or a DVD. For this reason many people refrain completely from copying, while others just copy what they want. In many countries, not even legislators can give a clear answer to what may be copied and when.

Of course, the record and movie industry wants you to think that you may not copy anything at all, and have to buy several copies of the same CDorDVD. Many DVD's even falsely claim that you are not allowed to copy them at all. However, this is not decided by the DVD authors, but by the legislation in your country.

In this international version of this text, we cannot describe laws in every country in the world, so it is up to you to find out which rules apply in your country.

In most countries, though, it is perfectly legal to make a copy of your own CD or DVD for your own, personal use (e.g. as a back-up, or for having something to play in your car). But how can you copy a CD or DVD?

Burn a DVD or CD

Right now, your DVD/CD drive contains the Polippix CD. So right now, you cannot use that drive to make copies. In order to make a copy, you need at least two CD/DVD drives in your computer. (This is of course not the case if you install our CD or another Linux on your hard drive, but that is a completely different story.)

The bottom line is that if you have a free CD-ROM writing drive, it is very easy to copy a CD. Simply start the "k3b" program and choose "Copy CD".

DVD's are a bit morecomplicated: A normal video DVD contains up to 9 GB, but most DVD writing drives can only write DVD's containing up to 4.7 GB. So if you do not want to split the DVD to two discs, you will have to compress it to make it take up less space:

Put a video DVD in your free DVD drive and start the "k9copy" program.
Choose File -> Open. The program will then examine the DVD.
Under the tab "DVD" you will now get a DVDVOLUME containg the titles that is found on the DVD. You can choose all of them by checking the box next to DVDVOLUME, or you can just choose the titles you want.
Now, click on the "Settings" tab and tell where on your hard drive you want to store your temporary DVD image. You must have at least 10GB free space.
Click on the "Action" menu and choose "copy".
After a long while you will ½be prompted for where to save an ISO file.
When you have done so, you wi½ll have a folder (called "dvd") and an ISO file. They basically contains the same in two different formats, and they both take up approx. 4.5 GB of disk space.
The folder can be used if you want to keep a copy of your DVD on your hard drive instead of on a DVD disc.
The ISO file can be used to burn a DVD. To do that, put a DVD in your DVD writing drive and start the "k3b" program.
Then, choose "Burn ISO DVD image".
Find your ISO image made in the steps above and click "Burn" and then "Start".
After a long while, you will have a video DVD that you can put in your DVD player.

Since your DVD has been compressed to fit on at DVD disc with lesser capacity, there will be a certain degradation of quality. However, it is so little that you probably will not notice it if you put your DVD copy in an ordinary DVD player and watch it on an ordinary television set.

If you want to preserve the original quality from the DVD, you will have to copy it this way instead of the above:

When you put your DVD in your free DVD drive, a box will pop up. Choose to open the DVD in a new window.
The new window will show an audio_ts folder and a video_ts folder. Copy both folders to a suitable space on your hard drive.
Start a command window and write
mencoder dvd://0-8 -ovc xvid -xvidencopts pass=1 -alang en -oac copy -o /dev/null
mencoder dvd://0-8 -ovc xvid -xvidencopts pass=2 -alang en -oac mp3lame -lameopts vbr=3 -o MYVIDEO.avi
MYVIDEO.avi must be the place on your hard drive where you want to put your copy. dvd://0-8 assumes that there are nine .VOB files in the video_ts folder, ennumerated from 0 to 8. If there is another number of files, you need to use that instead-
Delete the audio_ts and video_ts folders from your hard drive - you do not need them anymore.
Now, you have a copy of your DVD video as an AVI file on your hard drive. You can play this using most media players. Unfortunately, as mentioned before, this file is usually too big to burn on a normal DVD disc.

Please note that if you have a video DVD that you cannot play in your ordinary DVD player because of region codes, either of the methods mentioned above will allow you see the DVD anyway, as the copies are not region coded. Of course, you can always watch the DVD on a region-free DVD player, or on your computer using a program like mPlayer.