As you may know there are a plethora of CD and DVD authoring and burning software programs on the market.  You may have been besieged via spam emails trying to get you to buy some of them. In addition, many of the recent video editing suites also include built-in DVD authoring and burning applications as well.

However, here are a couple of newer Windows software products that offer special DVD burning capabilities not supported in many of these programs.

For making copies of your DVD productions, as well as copyrighted and commercial DVD movies, 321 Studios  provides a program called DVD X Copy ($49 from the web site).  This program is a bit controversial as it enables you to make copies of commercial and copy protected DVD movies. They have a similar program called DVD Copy Plus that enables you to copy DVDs to CDs. It is a very simple process and it works. Install and run the software. By the way, 321Studios has a very rigorous anti-piracy and registration process to protect their software. It is a bit ironic.

Follow the directions. Insert the DVD you want to copy in your DVD player. You can use two separate drives or just one. DVD X Copy first backs up the DVD data on your computer’s hard drive before it burns a new DVD. This means you need at least 8 GB of spare space on your hard drive.  Start the process. When indicated, insert the blank DVD and start the burn process. Now wait.

Isn’t this illegal? Well probably not as DVD X Copy enables you to only make a single copy at a time that itself can not be copied. The 321 Studios web site has a big section regarding legality and first amendment rights.  

Also see Digital Rights & Wrongs - Who Gets to Copy What?

However, in the real world, it is not an effective pirating tool. Yes it breaks the CSS copyright technology but the program works too slowly and is too limited to be of value for professional illegal copying.  It requires two blank DVDs to copy the full contents of a typical dual layer commercial DVD. Each blank may cost you a couple of bucks or more. It takes an hour or more to burn each DVD. What is your time worth? The way I figure it, it’s probably less expensive to go out and buy used copies of DVD movies than to use these kinds of products to make personal copies of commercial DVDs.  

for the best prices on DVD burners and recorders

Another cool product is the new Pinnacle InstantCopy ($49.95 list) to make perfect copies of your personal or business videos, video games, computer games or software DVDs or non-copy protected video DVDs to either a DVD or a series of VCDS or CDs. InstantCopy is not an authoring application – just a copying program.

InstantCopy can copy an entire dual layer DVD to a single blank DVD and keep its menus, navigational structures, subtitles and extra features intact, all without noticeable loss of quality.  You can squeeze an entire dual layer DVD disk onto a single 4.7 GB recordable DVD and keep all the extra languages, special features, menu guides, etc. InstantCopy essentially compresses the video a bit in order to squeeze the entire DVD’s content into less space.

Unlike, DVD X Copy, InstantCopy does not break CSS copyright protection and you can’t use it to copy most Hollywood DVDs.  However, for other types of copy protection, InstantCopy transfers that along with the disk’s info. Of course, if you have games or personal videos or data on a DVD disk, you can copy and squeeze those.

Once installed, using InstantCopy is pretty simple. Pick your source – this can be a CD, DVD or even material on your hard drive. Then choose where you want to copy the material to. You can copy to either CD or DVD burners. If you have two burners, you may be even be able to copy on the fly, without having to back-up the material on your hard drive. This can save a lot of time. If you want to copy a DVD but don’t have a DVD burner, InstantCopy enables you to copy the DVD to series of VCDs or SVCDs.  If you have multiple burners attached to your computer, InstantCopy will let you make up to 16 multiple copies simultaneously.