November 24, 2008

Backing up your DVDs

If, like me, you own some DVDs and if, like me, you have small children around who can make the survival of such discs problematic, you might be inclined to create playable backups of your discs. There a variety of ways that you can go about it:

1) Buy a second copy. Not really sensible from a a financial standpoint, but doable. You've now a got a backup without actually having to make one.

2) Use DVD Shrink to extract the main movie only. Remove all of the subtitles-unless you need them, of course- and all of the foreign language audio tracks. Then, if you're feeling adventurous, trim the credits at the beginning and end. This will reduce the compression considerably. Then hit the "Backup" button and you're on your way.

Sure, you can copy the entire disc without removing diddly, but you'll get around a 50% compression ratio. Not that bad on standard definition TV, but certainly not good on an HD set.

Note: You will need some burning software, such as Nero to burn the resulting image file. Lots of free software out there, so have at it.

3) Use AnyDVD or DVD43 (you can't use both, because AnyDVD bitches about the presence of DVD43 during installation) to remove the region encryption and then use IMGBurn, which replaced DVD Decrypter. I actually think DVD Decrypter is great, but all work on it has ceased, so you're better off with the newer IMGBurn, which is why you need AnyDVD or DVD43, because IMGBurn will not make an image for you of an encrypted DVD without at least one of them running in the background.

Anyway. Let's suppose that you've got AnyDVD running, and you've inserted your copy of the last Indiana Jones movie. Click on the Create Image from Disc button, or click on the Mode/Read pulldown menu choice. Voila! IMGBurn creates an ISO image of your DVD on your hard drive. Onto the last part.

Now it's time to burn that ISO to a disc. Since you're making a backup of a commercial disc, you'll need to have purchased some DL discs, which have an 8.5 Gb capacity, the same as standard commercial DVDs; I will ignore HD discs, which aren't really available yet.

Note: Do not skimp on funds and buy crap Memorex discs. Spend the extra cash and buy VERBATIM DL discs. They work great. The Memorex discs are turds. Sure, they cost less per disc, but you'll spend more because you'll end up throwing lots of poorly burned discs into the trash.

Already, click on the Write Image to Disc button. When the screen appears, set the burn speed to 2.4x. Any faster and you're just asking for trouble. Then click "Burn" and walk away until the music sounds, which signifies that your disc is ready.

So that's it. Easy as pie. Have at it, and don't forget to label your newly created DVDs. Just an FYI.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 05:36 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 500 words, total size 3 kb.

November 03, 2008

Watch at your leisure

If you want to record your favorite TV shows and movies without commercials, you don't have to pay a monthly fee. Simply download and install Ted. Excerpt:


ted makes downloading TV shows easy!

We are two TV addicts. The internet is great to provide us with our favorite TV shows free, early and watchable on demand. We always had to spend lots of time to keep up to date with the newest episodes. Until we created ted, our torrent episode downloader.

ted can find episodes of any TV show you like to watch. Just add your favorite shows to ted and he will search for the newest episodes and downloads them for you. ted uses bittorrent and RSS technology to get you the newest episodes as fast as possible!

Besides Ted, you will need to download and install a bittorrent client. I use Bitlord, but there are tons out there that you might like better. Be aware that the default setting for most bittorrent clients is to prompt you before downloading begins. You will want to disable that option to make good use of Ted. Anyway, here's how you do it:

1) Download and install your bittorrent client of choice and set the "do not prompt before downloading" option.

2) Download and install Ted. You will be shown various options that you can change, but I'd suggest using the default ones, especially this one:

ted config1.JPG


3) Add the shows that you want to download, usually up to several weeks in advance. The default list is quite extensive. Once you've selected a show, you will see several possible downloads, and when they'll be available. Click on the image below to expand it:


ted config3.JPG

4) Suppose that you're looking for something that isn't on the list like, say, the Legend of the Seeker? Simply click on Add a custom show, enter the title and search for an episode. You can select a specific season/episode or select from available episodes, which works well if some episodes have already aired:

5) Ted will search for an uncompressed file with some minimum number of seeds and begin downloading.

You can watch the AVIs on your computer or convert/burn them to DVDs and watch them on your television. If you do so, I recommend using some DVD-RW discs so that you can save some money. However, if you plan to keep the episodes forever, go ahead and use the -R or +R discs. Be aware that you can stuff lots of episodes onto a single disc.

Good watching.


Posted by: Physics Geek at 10:53 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 428 words, total size 3 kb.

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