As many computer users know, there are several programs to copy DVDs to PC, really great for saving backup copies on your computer and burning them to other DVDs. Difficulties begin when the DVD is copy protected (in most cases DVD Video) and we want to make one copy of a DVD using a normal burner. Although this practice has significantly decreased over the years (due to the great diffusion of streaming), users who decide to copy protected DVDs are still confused about the procedure to follow and the programs to use to copy the contents of the optical disc quickly.In this guide, we have collected the definitive method to be able to copy-protected DVDs, so as to make a hard disk copy or burn the content to a standard size DVD (4.7GB) or any other type of compatible disc.READ ALSO -> How to Create a DVD of Video to Watch on TV
How to copy protected DVD or Blu-ray
The procedure for copying protected DVDs is also valid for Blu-ray videos, but in the latter case, a Blu-ray burner is required to be able to copy the content and possibly re-copy it on a blank disc. We remind you that the personal copy of the backup devices is always allowed, but the sharing or re-marketing of the copies made is not allowed.
How to remove all disc protections (DVD and Blu-ray)
Before thinking about how to extract the contents of protected disks we must deal with the encryption systems that make it impossible to copy the disk to the computer. The simplest and most immediate program to immediately remove the encryption of protected DVDs is AnyDVD HD, available for download from the official website.
To remove the protection of DVDs and Blu-rays, start the program and make sure it is active in the system bar at the bottom right; with the program active in memory we insert the optical disc into the reader and into the burner, so as to remove on the fly (without pressing on anything) all the protections present on the DVD or Blu-ray. Now we are ready to copy, rip or compress the contents of the disc without fear of errors while copying.
Unfortunately, AnyDVD HD is only available for a fee, but we can use all its functions free of charge for 14 days.
A totally free program is DVD43 (also for Windows 10) which allows you to copy the contents of a protected DVD to the hard disk of the PC. When the installation finishes you are prompted to restart your PC. DVD43 starts in the background and is noted with an icon next to the clock. Insert the DVD to be copied into the player and DVD43 begins to search for encryption or protection keys (the system tray icon will appear as a smiley face). When the icon turns green, browse the DVD directory e copy the VIDEO_TS folder from the DVD to the hard disk of your computer. There may be other directories such as AUDIO_TS, but they are files that you can also ignore.
Once the copy to the hard drive is finished, you can watch the movie on your PC from the VLC media player by going to the menu Media -> Open folder – choose the VIDEO_TS folder. The video will be complete with extra menus and features.
How to copy the entire disc to PC (1: 1 copy)
The simplest copy we can make is the 1: 1 disc copy, that is to save all the contents of the disc in a single digital file of the same size as the disc; to understand better, let’s take for example a disk containing files that occupy 20GB and, with the programs that we will show you shortly, we can generate a file on the PC of precise 20GB.
The first program that we can use for a 1: 1 copy of the disc is AnyDVD Ripper, a small tool integrated into the AnyDVD program that we talked about in the previous chapter.
To use it, press the right button on the AnyDVD icon (in the system tray), press on the item Create an image file, make sure you have selected as the source the burner or the player where the disc to be copied is present, choose a path to save the copy, uncheck the item Maintain protections then we press down on Disc copy.
Alternatively, we can copy the entire disc to PC using the program ImgBurn, available for free download from the official website.
To proceed make sure that AnyDVD is always active in memory then open ImgBurn, press on Create image from Disc, make sure that the player or burner with the disc to be copied is selected, choose a destination for the file (in the section Destination) then press on Copy to perform 1: 1 copy of the disc.
How to rip DVD9 to DVD5 or video file
If, on the other hand, we need to rip DVD9 to DVD5 or want to rip the optical disc to an MP4 or MKV video file, we can use the program DVDFab DVD Copy, available for download from the official website.
With this program, we can quickly remove all the anti-copy protections of the disc (without having to use AnyDVD) and rip the DVD9 to make it fit into a DVD5 or convert the content of the disc (the film) into a file video MP4, so you can see it everywhere.
To use the full potential of this program we activate the trial version, insert the DVD or Blu-ray to be copied into the player or burner, let’s go to Copy, we press on Clone / Burn or we press on the menu Rippa, taking care to select MP4 as the video output. Selecting the content and pressing Start we will immediately have our DVD without protection, copied on a simple DVD, or saved on your computer hard drive!
This program is also not free but allows you to test all the features for free for 15 days.
Another totally free program that we can use to rip DVD videos is HandBrake, available for download from the official website.
To use it, we first start AnyDVD to remove the anti-copy protections, insert the disc in the reader or burner, open HandBrake, press on Open Disc, we select the longest video track in the menu Title (which certainly contains the film), we choose one of the conversion profiles present in the menu Presets (for DVDs we recommend HQ 576p25 Surround and Bly-ray recommend Super HQ 1080p30 Surround), we choose as a container MP4 The MKV then we press on Start Encode to start converting to video files.
Conclusions
With the methods seen above, we do not have to look for other guides to copy protected DVDs and compress them for 4.7GB DVDs: following the advice of How2do we will have everything you need to be able to save our original DVDs by creating 1: 1 copies of the discs or ripping the content to a video file, so you can always keep a copy of the original disc and protect it from wear. Some of the programs are paid but if we are a fan of cinema and DVD or Blu-ray collections AnyDVD is worth all the money spent.
To learn more, we recommend that you read our guides Convert Video, to MP4 to DVD and to DVD to MP4 e Convert video with VLC on Windows PC.