Make Exact Backup Copies of Your Home-made DVDs

Is Backup Copies legal or illegal?

The MPAA and most media companies argue that you can't legally copy or convert commercial DVDs for any reason. I (and others) think that, if you own a DVD, you should be able to override its copy protection to make a Backup Copy or to convert its content for viewing on other devices. Currently, the law isn't entirely clear one way or the other. So my advice is: If you don't own it, don't do it. If you do own it, think before you rip.

Why need Backup Copies?

If you want to make copies of that DVD your cousin sent you of her son's bar mitzvah (or any other unprotected DVD), the process is relatively simple. Insert the DVD into your Mac's optical drive and launch OS X's built-in Disk Utility app (found in the Applications/Utilities).

How to Backup Copies?

Click the New Image button at the top, select the DVD in the dialog box that appears, and in the Image Format pop-up menu choose DVD/CD Master. Pick a name and destination, and click Save. After a while, you'll have an image file with a cdr extension. That disc image contains an exact copy of your DVD, which you can backup on an external hard drive for later use.

To burn that image as a DVD that you can watch in a standard DVD player, launch Disk Utility and you should see the image listed on the lefthand side. If so, click the image name, and then click the Burn button at the top. If you don't see it listed, click the Burn button first, then navigate to the image's location, select it, and click Burn.

In either case, Disk Utility will then prompt you to insert a blank DVD (if the original was a dual-layer DVD, you'll need a dual-layer blank DVD for it to work). If you want to adjust any of the options (including what Disk Utility should do when it's done burning) click the blue triangle button to expose those options. When you're set, click the Burn button. When it's done, the disc should play on your computer on set-top DVD player. (A note on DVD media: I've found DVD-R discs to work well for single layer movies, and DVD+R good for dual-layer movies, when it comes to DVD player compatibility. But it's always best to test your burned DVD afterwards to make sure it plays as expected.)

Tips: If you are a movie lovers, you can use Free DVD Player to play your favourite DVDs.