UPLOAD

The Incredible

Shrinking DVD

Back up multiple
movies on a single
disc.
By Richard Kadrey

I own a lot of DVDs, and like all expensive pieces of software, I like to back them up. Even though copyright law allows you to create a backup for personal use, movie companies don’t want you to do this, which forces you to sneak in through the back door. Here are a few ways to get started, if you own a Mac.

To do anything with your DVD, you have to get the data onto your hard drive. Since most DVDs are copy-protected, you’ll need software that can read all of the disk’s content. Mac TheRipper is incredibly good at doing just that. Not only can it copy most disks, but it can also remove such pesky roadblocks as region codes and Macrovision, old-school copy-protection code.

In the rare case when a disk’s copy protection is too complex, try FairMount. This clever piece of software tricks your computer into seeing a DVD as an external drive and allows you to copy the contents of that “drive” to your machine. FairMount is slow, so you’ll

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want to try Mac TheRipper first.

Now that your DVD is on your hard drive, there are several things you can do with it. The first and simplest is to copy the data back onto a recordable DVD. You can also convert the movie portion of your disk into an iPod format or an .avi file, playable on almost any computer. Converting formats is a nice option since it can take an 8GB DVD and reduce the movie portion (but not the extras) to around 700MB and still leave it perfectly watchable. If you’re traveling and don’t want to carry a pile of discs, at 700MB, you can burn several movies onto a single data-formatted DVD.

Illustration by PARS/E design