DVD Slim Free is a free software for Windows to create covers for a variety of different box formats. The software supports standard and mini DVD covers, VHS and Blu-Ray covers as well as a variety of other cover formats.

The program uses a somewhat atypical layout. You begin to design your cover by selecting one of the available cover types from the pulldown menu in the main application interface.

You can then use the cover search to find a specific cover on the Internet, or create a custom cover with the help of the program. Supported are images that can be loaded on to a blank cover and text that can be added to the title on front and the title edge.

Strangely enough there does not seem to be an option to add text to both the DVD front and back.

The format of the font can be customized in the settings. This includes the font type, size, color and other formatting options.

The only additional options available to the user are to change the cover format margins and total width and height in the program options, and the print command to send the newly created DVD cover to the printer.

Windows users can download DVD Slim from the developer website. The DVD covers creator is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system.

DVD Clone Ultimate is a dvd copying and backup software. The program supports all known copy protections which means it works on all types of video DVDs. More interesting and unique to that, is the gpu acceleration that the developers have implemented in the application, which can greatly improve the copying speed.

When you start the program for the first time, you will notice options to do a full dvd disc backup or a dvd title backup at the top.

DVD video information are automatically displayed whenever you enter a DVD into the dvd drive of the computer. Information about the DVD, including cover art, name, studio, director and performers are displayed in the interface automatically. In the best case, all you need to do do copy the dvd movie is to press the run button. The program takes care of the rest for you.

Having said that, some users might want to customize the selection before they start the process.

The default option is set to copy the selected title, usually the main movie, as a single mpeg2 file to the computer. All audio streams and subtitles will be automatically included in that rip. It is possible to change to a different dvd title. Even though there are checkboxes under audio streams and subtitles, it appears that it is not possible to uncheck select ones.

It is on the other hand possible to switch from copying the selected data to a single mpeg2, to copying DVD chapters, extracting the video or the audio only.

The display changes depending in the selection. If you select to copy DVD chapters for instance, you see all available chapter IDs of the selected title with options to select one, some or all chapters for extraction.

A switch to Full DVD Disc Backup displays the second option the program provides. Here it is possible to clone a video DVD to blank DVD, ISO or Video_TS folder.

Options are available to remove the source DVD’s region code, CSS encryption, UOPs and Disney’s fake. It is again super easy to clone the DVD. In best case, all you need to do is to click the run button. If you want to copy the video DVD directly to another DVD, you need to have two DVD drives to do that, obviously.

The processing speed depends largely on the speed of the DVD drive or drives, the processor, computer memory and whether the video card can be used for gpu acceleration.

Verdict

BDlot DVD Clone Ultimate is super easy to use, even for computer users who are not tech savvy. A click on Run is all they have to do in the best case possible, regardless of operation. The available options are easy to understand. All operations that one would expect from a program like this are available and easily configurable.

If there is something to criticize it is the inability to uncheck audio streams and subtitles before ripping a DVD title and that destination directories and burners are not saved before the program is closed.

Giveaway

We have an unlimited number of DVD Clone Ultimate licenses. Just download the program from the developer website, and enter the license code BU-UPTTUXZZ-IXFXRX after installation to register it. The license can be used to register the DVD ripper before August 1.

Yesterday I wrote on our sister website Windows7News about a tool called ei.cfg Removal Utility.  This is an excellent tool for removing from a Windows ISO the file that locks it to a specific edition.  By running this tool you can easily create a disc that will allow the installation of any edition.  The downside with this is you still need separate installation DVDs for the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the OS.

So what do you do if you want just an installation DVD the contains every edition of Windows 7 in both x86 and x64 versions, is this even possible?  The good news here is yes it is, though it’s more complicated than just running a program.  I’d like to thank fellow MVP Alexis Zhang for providing the instructions on how to do it.

 What You’ll need

1. Installation ISOs for Windows 7 x86 and x64 (any edition)
2. ISO creation / editing software such as UltraISO
3. Windows 7 Automated Installation Kit

How to Create the Intergated ISO

1. Using UltraISO, extract the \ SOURCES \ INSTALL.WIM files from both the x86 and x64 ISO files.  If you do not have ISO files you can create them from your DVDs
2. Rename these INSTALL.WIM files as x86.WIM and x64.WIM
3. With the Windows 7 AIK installed on your computer run the Deployment Tools Command Prompt
4. Type the following commands in the Command Prompt window adding any folder destinations as necessary…
   1. IMAGEX /EXPORT x86.WIM 5 INSTALL.WIM “Windows 7 Ultimate x86″
   2. IMAGEX /EXPORT x64.WIM 4 INSTALL.WIM “Windows 7 Ultimate x64″
   3. IMAGEX /EXPORT x86.WIM 4 INSTALL.WIM “Windows 7 Professional x86″
   4. IMAGEX /EXPORT x64.WIM 3 INSTALL.WIM “Windows 7 Professional x64″
   5. IMAGEX /EXPORT x86.WIM 3 INSTALL.WIM “Windows 7 Home Premium x86″
   6. IMAGEX /EXPORT x64.WIM 2 INSTALL.WIM “Windows 7 Home Premium x64″
   7. IMAGEX /EXPORT x86.WIM 2 INSTALL.WIM “Windows 7 Home Basic x86″
   8. IMAGEX /EXPORT x64.WIM 1 INSTALL.WIM “Windows 7 Home Basic x64″
   9. IMAGEX /EXPORT x86.WIM 1 INSTALL.WIM “Windows 7 Starter x86″
5. This will integrate all the contents from the various version WIM files into a single INSTALL.WIM file
6. Using UltraISO, copy this new INSTALL.WIM into the SOURCES folder in your Windows 7 x86 ISO file
7. From the SOURCES folder delete the file EI.CFG from the same ISO file
8. Save the ISO file

It can take a bit of time but using this method you can create a single installer for every edition and version of Windows 7.  This is especially for people who want to be able to run the installer from a USB Pen Drive (which I also wrote about about in my article yesterday).

So in this article I am going to discus how to install the necessary codecs to get these media types running in both Fedora 13 and Ubuntu 10.04.

A necessary proclamation

Unfortunately Linux is hindered by licensing issues. This is why you will be hard-pressed to find a major distribution that ships with pre-rolled in MP3 support. It’s frustrating, but it’s a reality when dealing with licenses. Does that mean you have to go without listening to MP3′s and other file formats? No. You can still enjoy them, you just have to install support for those tools yourself (or allow the system to install them).

Auto-install

This is especially true for Ubuntu 10.04. When you try to use a new media type in one of the players (such as Rhythmbox or Banshee), Ubuntu will attempt to install the necessary files, applications,. and/or codecs in order allow that media player to work with said multi-media file. This works most of the time. It’s only during those occasions which it doesn’t work that will have you frustrated because you can’t use that multi-media. Fear  not.

Figure 1

Fedora 13

There is a very simple tool, called AutoX (by Dangermous – no relation to the famous cartoon character), that you can use to install nearly any codec for Fedora 12 and 13 in both 32 and 64 bit versions. You can install it with the commands:

su

rpm -Uvh http://dnmouse.org/autoten-4.7-2.fc13.noarch.rpm

After you install, you run this with the command autoten as the root user. If you do not have all of the necessary dependencies, it will install them at first run. Once running you click on the button for the codec you want and it will install (see Figure 1). Very simple.

Ubuntu 10.04

With Ubuntu 10.04 you will have to issue a few commands to get your codecs installed. Before you run those commands you need to add repositories to apt. The command to add those repositories is:

sudo wget –output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/$(lsb_release -cs).list

Now issue the command:

sudo apt-get –quiet update

Finally the next two commands will finish up the job:

sudo apt-get –yes –quiet –allow-unauthenticated install medibuntu-keyring

sudo apt-get –quiet update

You are ready to install the codecs. I will just list them out for you.

Non-free codecs: sudo apt-get install non-free-codecs

DVD support: sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2 libxine1-ffmpeg gxine mencoder

Hopefully, after running the commands above, you should the codec you need installed OR now Ubuntu 10.04 should be able to auto-install any codec you need.

Final thoughts

Thanks to licensing issues it’s not a perfect world for Linux and multi-media, but it is getting close. With tools like you have above, getting your distribution up and running with multi-media isn’t all that challenging.

The new discs will come as either triple-layer 100Gb re-writable, write-once or whopping 128Gb quad-layer write-once discs.

In their press release, published today on Engadget, they state…

“The BDA worked diligently to create an extension of the Blu-ray Discâ„¢ format that leverages the physical structure of the design of the disc to create even more storage capacity,” said Victor Matsuda, Blu-ray Disc Association Global Promotions Committee chair. “By using the existing Blu-rayâ„¢ technologies, we have created a long-term and stable solution for archiving large amounts of sensitive data, video and graphic images. We expect further growth of the Blu-ray Discâ„¢ market as the introduction of 100GB/128GB discs will expand the application of Blu-ray Discâ„¢ technologies.”

The sad news is that this enormous storage, enough for even the largest photo or music library on a single disc, will not work with existing drives, so we’d all better start saving up for the new drives.

This does call into question the validity of any optical disc backup solution for Macs and PCs as technology is moving so quickly now in this area, and the prices of external hard disks and SSDs now falling so rapidly, that there’s a real danger BDXL might not be picked up at all by the bulk of users who will either fear that it will simply be obsolete before it’s paid for itself, or that other solutions might work out more cost-effective for them.

It’s definitely a push further in HD video and 3D markets though and we ought to expect so see the first players supporting the new standard appearing on the high street in a year or two.

Software players such as PowerDVD or WinDVD impose the same restrictions as standalone players. Some standalone players can be manipulated with codes so that they become region free (see Enable region free mode on your DVD player for more information about that)

Software players on the other hand can be manipulated with unlock or reset software.

DVDFab Region Reset is one of the tools that can be used to unlock the DVD and Blu-Ray regions in popular software players.

region reset

The program will automatically recognize supported software video players and display instructions on how to reset or unlock the region code. The supported video players are PowerDVD 10, 9 and 8, PowerDVD 7.3, WinDVD 10 and 9 as well as the TMT video player 2 and 3.

The instructions differ depending on the installed video player. The region code limit of PowerDVD 10 can for instance be reset to 5 regardless of the actual limit. A new region can be selected in the same menu.

WinDVD on the other hand can only be manipulated in safe mode which means that the computer has to be restarted into safe mode where the DVDFab Region Reset software needs to be executed again to make the changes to the region code.

DVDFab Region Reset can be downloaded directly from the DVDFab homepage. Blu-Ray users can look at Blu-Ray Region Code Remover for an alternative.

DVDFab Passkey is a beta software that runs as a Windows driver in the background. It will automatically remove protections from DVDs and Blu-Rays so that these discs can be copied and played regardless of their protection or regional restrictions.

This approach ensures that all programs can access the contents on the DVDs and Blu-Rays.

Here are the core features and benefits of DVDFab Passkey:

1. Removes all DVD copy protections, like CSS, CPPM, RC, RCE, APS, UOPs, ARccOS, RipGuard, FluxDVD, CORE X2, etc.
2. Removes all Blu-ray known AACS and BD+ copy protections, Region Code, BD-Live and UOPs.
3. Allows you to watch any region DVD on your region specific DVD drive and player software.
4. Allows you to watch Blu-ray disc without HDCP-compliant graphics card and without HDCP-compliant display.
5. Allows you to use any software to access unencrypted DVD and Blu-ray disc content.

DVDFab Passkey is currently offered as a free beta version. The final version of the program will be commercial. The software program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of most Microsoft operating systems including Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.

The developers of the free version were also offering a commercial version on their website called WinX DVD Ripper Platinum. The commercial version provides access to additional features and advanced settings making it worthwhile for some users. The free version could for instance not rip a DVD straight into a format supported by Apple’s iPhone or iPod. Users who wanted that functionality had to use a video converter to do that which usually meant double the work and time.

Why are we writing all this? Because the developers have decided to offer WinX DVD Ripper Platinum for free in September. You can head right over to their website and download the commercial version of this excellent DVD ripping software for free. A quick chat with one of the representatives of the company revealed that minor updates will be available for free as well while major updates, e.g. a version bump to 6, would not be free but could be purchased for a small amount of money. Updates are not mandatory on the other hand which means that users can work with the version of the DVD ripper for as long as they like.

WinX DVD Ripper Platinum will automatically recognize video DVDs. The structure of the DVD is automatically displayed in the program’s interface with the main movie selected by default. The interface looks pretty much like the one used in WinX DVD Ripper with the exception of a few additions. Options to convert the DVD to various formats that are supported by devices like iPods, Apple TVs, PDA or Zune are displayed next to the general format options known from the free version of the software program.

Next to the additional devices that are supported by the platinum version of WinX DVD Ripper are the inclusion of a high definition encoding engine which promises a superior audio and video quality over its free version of the software.

The DVD ripper can rip copy protected DVDs and supports all other features of the free version. Users who are looking for a reliable and easy to use DVD ripping software might want to download this program and install it for a test ride. The offer to download the premium version of WinX DVD Ripper for free lasts until the end of September.

DVD rippers come in many forms and sizes. Three aspects are more important than others when evaluation DVD rippers.

• The DVD ripper should be able to handle copy-protected DVDs
• The DVD ripper should offer popular output formats and settings
• The DVD ripper should be free

There are obviously other criteria that should be analyzed like the ease of use or the impact on the computer system. WinX DVD Ripper is a free DVD ripper that meets most of these criteria. It can rip most (if not all) DVDs as it supports ripping copy-protected DVDs (like CSS protection or Sony ArccOS) out of the box. It supports all region codes and offers to rip the DVD movies into various popular formats including avi, mp4, flv or mpeg.

It actually takes only a few clicks to rip a DVD with WinX DVD Ripper. All it actually takes is to click on the DVD Disc button to pick a DVD Movie from one of the computer’s DVD drives. The DVD ripper will automatically display all tracks of the DVD in its interface with the first track being automatically selected for the ripping process. A click on Start would initiate the process.

The user can make changes to the configuration. It is for example possible to switch the output format, resolution, audio settings and quality or output folder. Everything can be managed from the same window which makes the application feel less complicated to the user.

The DVD ripping process takes time, it can generally be said that it takes between 0.5 to 1 second to rip one second of the DVD movie to the computer system. This figures can vary depending on the speed of the computer system.

WinX DVD Ripper can be downloaded from the developer’s website. It supports most Microsoft operating systems including Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP.

via DotTech

DVD Print is a small program for the Windows operating system. It is a portable software program that will ask for a registration code upon start. This can be skipped however and there are no information on the website or in the application about the registration process (and what could happen if the registration is skipped continuously).

CD and DVD covers can be loaded in the application. A built in search can be used to find appropriate covers. The covers are however not downloaded directly in the software as they redirect the user to the website the cover was found on. It is then the user’s task to download the cover and import it into the DVD printing application.

Various cover presets are available ranging from DVD box covers over audio CD front inserts to Playstation 1 double sleeves. There is also the option to create a new preset in case the existing ones are not suitable for the media.

There is also the option to add image effects to the cover which include the creation of a double-feature cover (for two movies on one DVD), music track overlays or flipping and rotating images around. DVD Print is a portable application that can be downloaded directly from the developer’s website.

While Avi2DVD is capable of turning aforementioned video formats into DVD with just a few clicks it does have a few limitations that might turn of users. The first is a rather “messy” interface with tabs and dozens of configuration settings in each tab. Experienced users might like the amount of options while beginners might feel lost and probably even desperate in the beginning. Avi2DVD makes up for this by offering solid standard settings that do not need to be changed most of the time.

The more problematic limitation is the one video file per DVD limit. It seems that Avi2DVD can only turn one video file into a DVD which is extremely frustrating for users who want to put multiple smaller videos, e.g. from a television series, on the DVD. The only possible solution would be to merge the video files before adding the merged file to the software program.

Some of the advanced configuration options include the addition of up to three audio streams and subtitles, a selection of encoders and their advanced parameters, automatic chapter creation, disk size selection and the creation of DVD menus.

It may seem like a timely process, but software can quickly hasten the process and if you’re willing to pay $10-$20, you can buy hardware which will further minimise the needed time.

You must initially decide how you will input your possessions into whatever software you choose to own. Naturally, you can input the product’s details but this can be timely. Other options are to buy an inexpensive barcode scanner or some software even allows you to utilise your webcam as a barcode scanner.

With regards to software, there are options for every platform.

The de facto official cataloguing software for OS X has to be Delicious Library. Delicious Library allows you to search Amazon for items, through keywords, barcodes, titles, authors, directors etc., and then import the data, including the current price used versions sell there, straight into the software. Items can then be displayed in a number of ways, including an aesthetically appealing ‘shelf’ mode which shows the picture of each item on a shelf and is at the item’s size. One can also rate items inside the software. Supported input modes are typing, scanning barcodes with the iSight camera (to varied degrees of success) or using their Bluetooth barcode scanner (which costs over $100!). It also allows libraries to be shared over a local network. It costs $40.

MediaMan is similar software for Windows. It too grabs data off Amazon, displays it in a ‘shelf’-like view. It supports USB barcode scanners and webcams too. It works on XP and Vista, and also costs $40! Basically, it’s like Delicious Library for Windows!

GCStar is free and open-source cataloguing software, for Linux, BSD, OS X and Windows. The software can grab data from a host of sources.

I use a CueCat Barcode Scanner, which when modified works with all of the above software. It simply converts barcodes into keystrokes. You can pick one of these up for around €10, but ensure it’s modified or it won’t work.

Acidrip works with mp3lame and Mencoder for the ripping process and uses lsdvd to be able to which reads and prints the contents of the dvd to the terminal. The process is very simple:

• Insert DVD
• Open up Acidrip
• Press the Load button
• Press the Start button
• Wait

Of course the process of ripping a DVD isn’t quick. And you’re going to need some space on your machine to hold the temporary file (which can get large). Depending upon your system, you might notice a slowdown as the application does it’s thing. On an AMD Sempron with 1 Gig of RAM I noticed a moderate hit on my system (though not to the point the system was unusable.)

Although the process is not quick the quality of video that is ripped is quite good. In fact I have yet to notice any drop in quality from the original to the copy. Acidrip is that good.

Once feature of the tool that I especially like is the preview window. The preview window shows an embedded preview of the DVD contents before the ripping process begins.

Acidrip Main Window

When you start Acidrip the the main (and only) window opens allowing you to set up the process of ripping. As you can see (in the image to the left) I am ripping the Rush Snakes and Arrows Live DVD. The only information I had to enter was in the Info dropdown list. You can select various bits of information to add to the file. Other than that it’s just a matter of clicking the Load button and then clicking the Start button.

During the ripping process you can switch to the Compact view by clicking the Compact button.

Final Thoughts

If you have ever had any doubts that Linux was primed and ready for the desktop, doubt no more. Applications like Acidrip make tasks that were once considered “expert-only” on Linux so user-friendly your grandparents and your four year old sister could handle. If you have any DVD ripping needs turn to Acidrip, you will find it one of the most user-friendly DVD rippers around.

The Windows operating system – at least Windows XP – is not offering name editing for DVD drives. At least not the easy way. You might know that it is possible to change the drive letter of a hard drive in Windows by right-clicking its icon and selecting Properties. The very same option is grayed out for DVD drives and probably other drive types as well.

Some solutions are floating around on the Internet that involve Registry editing which is something that most inexperienced users do not want to do. A far better solution is a small program called Drive Namer which has been requested and completed at the Donation Coder forum a long time ago.

Drive Namer is a small portable application for the Windows operating system that can change the name of any drive letter easily. It has been primarily designed to work with DVD drives and other drive types with locked name editing. The program requires the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0 to run but does not have any other requirements.

It will display the small form upon startup that provides a pull down menu for all drive letters of the computer system including those not in use. Changing the drive letter of a DVD drive would simply involve selecting the correct drive letter of the DVD drive from the menu and entering a name in the form next to it. A click on the SET button will enable the name on the system which can be checked in Windows Explorer.

Windows Explorer Before

Windows Explorer After

The names can be reset by selecting a drive letter and pressing the Reset button in the software program. The software does not have to be running after the names of the DVD drives have been edited.

The original location of Drive Namer is no longer providing the file download for the application. You can download it below right from the Ghacks server. The download has a size of 10 Kilobytes. There is also a download link at the Donation Coder website pointing to a file host. Could go down in the future which is why we provide the download mirror as well.

drive namer

Clone DVD 2 can copy a full movie DVD or only parts of it. This is divided up in the main interface into the entries Copy DVD Titles and Clone DVD. Cloning describes the process of copying all data on the movie DVD to the computer system or burning them directly to a DVD writer while the first gives the user choices to uncheck items before the process that he does not need. This can be subtitles, additional audio or bonus contents.

There is also a third option which we will explorer later which can be used to write DVD files and ISO / UDF images to disk. The process has been streamlined to give users with little to no experience the same chance of copying a DVD movie than experienced users. Clone DVD 2 will not throw technical terms at the user on every screen. It is quite frankly possible to work with the software even if you never heard about bitrates and video codecs before in your life.

There is one restriction which should be mentioned right in the beginning. Clone DVD 2 does not process copy protected movie DVDs. It does give some suggestions on how to handle them if it is legal in your country.

Cloning and copying movie DVDs works basically the same with the difference that the latter will give the user the option to remove data from the movie DVD. This can be subtitles, audio streams or other contents. The benefit of removing that data is that the quality of the newly created video contents might be higher depending on the format chosen.

The program gives the user several output format options. It is possible to select formats like DVD-5, mini DVD or a custom format where the user can define the output size of the movie. Every additional audio or data stream will reduce the amount of Megabytes to be used for the main movie. It is therefor a natural process to only select those streams that are needed to view the movie.

The process of copying a DVD movie to the hard drive can be described as blazing fast. It took a little bit more than 3 minutes to copy a full movie to the hard drive including converting it to a custom format that is using 1400 Megabytes on the computer’s hard drive.

The third option that is provided by Clone DVD 2 is the option to write already existing ISO or UDF images using a DVD writer. That’s handy if you have time to copy the DVD movie but not the time to burn it directly. Can also be used to burn movies from other sources obviously.

If you want a license for Clone DVD 2 you should let me know in the comments. Make sure you email is included as this is needed to contact you.

Some DVD burning software programs come with so called cover designers that can be used to design custom covers for the burned disks. Many users on the other hand prefer the original covers for their backups and this is what Undercover XP is all about

Undercover XP is a cover printing software that can turn images into DVD covers. It is best used with a website offering those covers for download. Some websites that are recommended by the developers of Undercover XP are Free Covers or CD Covers.

The process has been streamlined and involves only a few steps in the best case scenario. You start by downloading a cover from the Internet or by scanning a cover from the original disk. You usually get one image that contains both the front and back or two images depicting the front and back. These images can then be added to Undercover XP and printed from within the program interface.

Undercover XP supports a wide variety of cover formats from various DVD or CD Box cover formats to covers for games for the Playstation 3, Wii or Playstation Portable or high definition covers for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD movies.

The software will try to automatically detect the format of the loaded image and correct the orientation as well. It will also position the cover correctly in the printable area so that all of the image will be printed on the printer.

A cover image can simply be loaded by clicking on the left or right image placeholders. This opens a browse computer dialog to load an image. It is furthermore possible to change the format in a pulldown menu in case the program got or you have decided to print it in a different format. The image will be automatically adjusted to the new cover format.

Once the image has been adjusted and the right cover format has been selected it can be printed on a connected printer. It is possible to print everything on a single page to save paper.

Undercover XP comes with a cover format editor. The format editor can be used to edit, add or delete cover formats to the software program.

This can be very helpful if you want to print covers that are not in a default format that ship with the software. Everything from position to paper tray sizes, printer media types and paper sources can be defined in the format editor.

Undercover XP ships with 25 different languages. It is compatible not only to Windows XP but also to Windows Vista and Windows 2000.

DVD Identifier is a software program that can identify and display the information that is recorded on the blank media. The main interface of DVD Identifier will display various information about the default writer – be it DVD, HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. Some of the information provided include the write capabilities of the drive which gives the user an understanding of the support media types.

The Identify button becomes active after putting a blank disk into the drive. A click on the button will start the identification which consults a manufacturer database that gets updated regularly.

Information provided include the manufacturer name, ID and the blank disk capacity. DVD Identifier is also providing in depth information about the drive capabilities on the disk inserted and the media code block.

Virtual CloneDrive is a free application from the makers of AnyDvd and CloneDvd. It supports a maximum of eight virtual dvd drives that can be used to mount various image formats such as iso, bin and img. The main design concept of the software was simplicity. The user can select to assign the formats with the application which might interfere with dvd burning software installed.

The only other way to mount images is to right-click one of the virtual dvd drives and pick one of the supported image formats from the hard drive.

It acts as a normal dvd drive afterwards with the added bonus that the speed is usually much higher and less error prone.

The main argument for using DeVeDe is the ease if use of this application. It just takes a minute to add the videos to the application and start the creation of the DVD which does not require user input at all. The program keeps the advanced parameters like audio and video bitrates in configuration dialogs that a normal user does not need to bother to look into.

One nice feature of the video to DVD software is the ability to automatically adjust the size and the quality of the videos that are added to the application so that all movies fit on the selected medium. The medium that is created can have a size between 185 Megabytes and 8.5 Gigabytes which can be selected from templates.

The user can specify the output format of each video file that he adds, select an audio track if multiple are available and add subtitles from the computer. Advanced users can take a look at detailed information and settings and change settings like the aspect ratio, the scaling mode or several quality settings.

The title menu of the DVD can be configured extensively. A user who just wants to play the videos one after the other can keep the default settings. Users who want to define font size, background image and sounds can do that as well.

If the computer uses more than one cpu core then users should enable the optimization for multi-core cpus in the advanced options of the main menu. The video to DVD software saves the new DVD in iso format on the hard drive which can then be burned to a blank DVD. Other options include the creation of a video_ts folder.

DeVeDe is an excellent video to DVD program for Windows and Linux.

Those three are probably the most common uses other than playing movie DVDs on the computer which can be done with virtually any program.

The tools listed below have been tested extensively and completely free, most are Open Source. If you know of a tool that is not in the list but should be let me know and I add it after evaluating it.

Play movie DVDs on the computer:

I rarely play movie DVDs on the computer, heck I dislike watching movies on the computer and prefer to watch them on the big TV screen. My video player of choice, SMPlayer, can play movie DVDs.

It does not offer a menu driven interface but different chapters, subtitles and titles can be selected from the menu. No need for additional specialized software in most cases.

Rip movie DVDs in DVD format to the computer:

Tools in this section:

DVD Smith Movie Backup
DVD Fab HD Decrypter
DVD Shrink

Here we have to distinguish between applications that rip the movie but retain DVD quality and those that rip the movie into a compressed format like avi or a portable format so that it can be played on a mobile phone or iPod.

DVD Smith Movie Backup can backup a DVD to the computer with little user interaction. It can deal with copy protections so that all movies can be copied with ease.

An alternative to that is DVD Fab HD Decrypter which offers all the features of DVD Smith Movie Backup plus the option to make the movie region code free.

Both store the movie in a Video_TS folder on the hard drive which has approximately the same size as the DVD.

The third tool is DVD Shrink which can reduce the size of the ripped movie which comes in handy if you have a DVD-9 movie and want to burn the backup on a DVD-5. DVD Shrink handles all copy protection as well.

Rip movie DVDs in compressed format to the computer:

Tools in this section:

Auto Gordian Knot
Bitripper
Handbrake

Converting movie DVDs into a compressed format has many advantages. One is the ability to store multiple movies in the place that one full DVD rip would take on the hard drive. A general size of around 700 Megabytes for a compressed movie would mean that about six movies fit into the place of one full DVD backup.

Another example where it does make sense is mobile computing. If you want to store movies on your iPhone, mobile phone, netbook or UMPC you have to take size into consideration because they usually come with hard drive or flash drive sizes of 20 Gigabytes or less.

Auto Gordian Knot can convert movie DVDs into avis. Minimal user interaction is required for the process. The only limitation of the program is that it cannot handle copy protected movies. To overcome this users could first backup the movie to hard disk with one of the applications mentioned above and rip it from there.

Handbrake is another tool which can handle basic CSS protection and convert the movie into additional formats like mkv, mp4 and ogm.

Bitripper finally handles DVD copy protection with ease and requires minimal user input to rip the DVD to the computer. The main benefit of Bitripper is its ease of use, no technical knowledge is required to rip the DVDs.

Convert Videos to DVD Format:

Tools in this section:

AVStoDVD
DVD Flick

DVD Flick supports a wide variety of formats which is its greatest strength, a total of 60 video and 45 audio codecs are supported by the application. It supports subtitles, PAL and NTSC DVDs and can burn the created DVD right after the creation has finished.

The biggest advantage of AVStoDVD is the ease of use. Just add videos to the program interface and it will automatically calculate the correct size to fit all the videos on a DVD-5 or DVD-9 depending on the users selection. Everything is created automatically and it can also burn the DVD after the DVD creation process.