Save It and Save Yourself: DVDs

Until recently, CDs and DVDs were assumed to be a lot more reliable than information on tape because there wasn't any chance of it getting tangled up in the machine or mysteriously wiped after spending two months baking in storage. Well, disks can be just as tricky, whether it's a tiny scratch that makes the whole movie freeze or new time effects known as "CD rot."

Ripping and copying CDs has become a common method of backing up music and data, but doing the same for DVDs is more difficult. I am not encouraging you to rent movies from Netflix and make a library for yourself! But why should you have to buy a new DVD every time your old one gets a scratch from a dodgy player?



Or even more ridiculous--why should you have to buy or bring a Region 1 DVD player to Russia or set one of your computers to only play Region 1 disks just so you can watch movies from America over there? If Pixar had released Ratatouille in America with Russian subtitles or a Region 5 coding, I wouldn't have had to buy it in Russia to get what wanted out of it! (In fact, it's a much better deal in Russia, even buying from legal vendors like Mega Video, because I got both versions of the movie for the price of one!)

Okay, so the DVD industry has really restricted us teachers with all this copyright nonsense, but fear not! There is a safe and legal way to back up your classes' favorite DVDs and take the region coding off of them, too!

Some quick notes:
-With a VHS -> DVD recorder, you can back up tapes, but the cheapest of these is in the $150 range, and may not copy protected material like Disneys.

-One Step DVD Duplicators also may not copy protected material, and they are in the $300+ range.

-DVDShrink is able to decode most protection encryption to allow you to copy your DVDs and also removes the region code, so you can play it worldwide. This sounds very illegal, and it can be used to do illegal copying, I'm sure. But if you own material, there's no reason you shouldn't be allowed to protect your investment.

DVDShrink:

DVD Shrink is a program that copies DVDs into a digital format. If this works for you, and you have the classroom technology necessary to hook up your computer to a projector, then this is all you need!

It is 100% free, but it isn't the most user friendly program, but the YouTube tutorials are so good, that giving instructions here would just confuse you!

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If you want to burn a copy of the disc, DVDShrink won't be enough. Firstly, you will need DVD burning hardware inside your computer. A CD-RW (read / write) does not mean you can write DVDs, and neither does DVD-R! You need a DVD-RW. If your computer didn't come with this built in, then exterior ones are available in the $50 range.

Secondly, you will need DVD burning software. These programs range in the thousands at least, but DVDShrink is set up to work with Nero. You used to be able to find used versions of Nero pretty cheap on e-Bay, but now it's easier and cheaper to use a program called Image Burn.

To use Image Burn, in DVDShrink, you can click "Back up," then select "Create an ISO document with Image Burn. Save the file where you can find it, then go to the Image Burn program and click "Write to Disc."

If this becomes too tedious, however, you can also follow this guide to download a version of DVDShrink already integrated with Image Burn. This is only practical, though, if you have more than one DVD drive on your computer tower. It also costs about $12. Depending on your computer's speed, the entire process takes 15 - 30 minutes using them separately, and for $12, you're really only shaving off a few seconds.