burning dvd . bluerays to HDD?

[Bsrz]

I have a ton of dvds and blue ray disks that I want to burn to external hard drives to keep everything backed up and neet / easy to acess, and so I can store all the dvds away.

is this legal / can I do it since I own the disks?

if so what software / hardware will I need?

I believe I just have a standard dvd drive not a blue ray one? will this matter?

thanks.

 

[vanthus]

Whether this is legal or not is a bit unclear,but you wont be able to copy blu-ray disks with a standard DVD drive.

 

[Bsrz]

Whether this is legal or not is a bit unclear,but you wont be able to copy blue ray disks with a standard DVD drive.

ah ok I will look for a cheep external blue ray drive. cheers bud.

 

[daveeb]

I have a ton of dvds and blue ray disks that I want to burn to external hard drives to keep everything backed up and neet / easy to acess, and so I can store all the dvds away.

is this legal / can I do it since I own the disks?

if so what software / hardware will I need?

I believe I just have a standard dvd drive not a blue ray one? will this matter?

thanks.

It's a bit of a grey area if you're copying for yourself, tho' I doubt MGM would be hammering on your door demanding recompense. There is software freely available that will backup a blu-ray disc, to dvd-5 or dvd-9 if you like (usually in MP4 or XVID/DIVX format.) (although you'll still need a blu-ray drive to read the blu-ray initially). Have a look over on www.videohelp.com/ there's loads of information there.

 

[Stephen M]

As Daveeb said it is a bit of a grey area but from having talked to legal people it seems that if it only for personal use then it is legal to make a copy, I do it with CDs as well as I have no wish to leave any of my music collection in a car where it may be stolen and do not want to be carying CDs in and out every time I use it. I do not think this will help with Blu-ray but is a useful tool for normal DVDs: http://www.dvddecrypter.org.uk/

 

[mdwh]

Certainly at one time recently, it was copyright infringement to do so even for personal use, same for ripping music CDs, but I believe the UK law was recently changed (or they were planning to do so, anyway...) Even so, it's not like anyone cared, or there were any cases of people being sued for this AFAIK.

The catch is that under US law, programs to circumvent copyright protections are illegal under the DMCA. DVDDecrypter was discontinued several years ago after being threatened with legal action. As a result, it has trouble handling newer DVDs. I haven't tried Blu Rays, but my own experience is that ripping DVDs these days can be difficult, with the software often failing (although I've yet to try Movie Rescuer which videohelp.com recommends). The sad truth is getting hold of them "the other way" is quicker and easier...

 

[mantadog]

I have (or may not have, who knows!) just started a very similar project to this. But I am quickly realising a couple of things, it takes ages and you need some mighty storage capacity if you have a whole collection of DVDs to back up.

How do you plan to watch the movies? I am converting a lot of mine to play on tablets but that again takes plenty of processing power and time.

As far as software goes, I have had similar problems with some dvd's not being recognised etc. My best advice is to grab a couple of different bits of software

 

[Bsrz]

I have (or may not have, who knows!) just started a very similar project to this. But I am quickly realising a couple of things, it takes ages and you need some mighty storage capacity if you have a whole collection of DVDs to back up.

How do you plan to watch the movies? I am converting a lot of mine to play on tablets but that again takes plenty of processing power and time.

As far as software goes, I have had similar problems with some dvd's not being recognised etc. My best advice is to grab a couple of different bits of software

just going to try and burn them to a HDD to be used with vlc media player on pc.

will looks around for software thanks!

 

[mantadog]

I'm using MakeMKV, it manages most things but only spits out MKV format, which I then use handbrake to change into MP4 or whatever I need.

I just glanced over at my 3 boxes of dvd's and I swear they laughed at me, I think I need more HDD space...

 

[SlimCini]

Ahem... Would it be quicker and easier to 'download' the films you want burned rather than actually burning them yourself? If you own the film already then downloading it from somewhere like the bay of pirates should sit easy on your conscience given that's all you're going to end up with anyway. Not condoning piracy of films you don't already own in any way though... :surrender:

 

[SlimCini]

I'm using MakeMKV, it manages most things but only spits out MKV format, which I then use handbrake to change into MP4 or whatever I need.

I just glanced over at my 3 boxes of dvd's and I swear they laughed at me, I think I need more HDD space...

What do you have that doesn't play mkvs that necessitates the change to mp4?

 

[gothate]

I have a ton of dvds and blue ray disks that I want to burn to external hard drives to keep everything backed up and neet / easy to acess, and so I can store all the dvds away.

is this legal / can I do it since I own the disks?

if so what software / hardware will I need?

I believe I just have a standard dvd drive not a blue ray one? will this matter?

thanks.

The Bluray disks I own have all been ripped with AppGeeker (http://www.appgeeker.com) and will do all your decryption from Bluray or DVD to a folder. If you want it will just copy the main movie or the whole disk, or use its encoder to convert the content to .mkv or .mp4. You can pick your resolution but I usually leave it at the highest quality. I've used several programs and it is probably the easiest to learn and use.

I've ripped my entire collection of DVD and Bluray movies and now have over 4Tb of movies and television shows.

 

[Androcles]

yes it is perfectly legal in the UK to copy your blu-rays and dvd's for archival and ease of access as of October last year, there is no longer a grey area.

The UK government announced the most significant reforms to UK copyright law in at least a decade. From October 2013, the number of exceptions to copyright infringement (or permitted acts) on which unlicensed users of copyright works can rely will be substantially increased.

The key new permitted acts are:

1. A private copying exception, allowing copying of any content lawfully owned by an individual to any medium or device owned by that individual, for their own personal use. This will allow, for example, an individual to back-up an MP3 they have lawfully downloaded into private cloud storage.

2. An exception allowing any fair dealing with quotations, which is not limited to quotation for the purposes of criticism, review or news reporting. Sufficient acknowledgement of the author of the quoted work will be needed.

3. A fair dealing exception allowing limited copying for parody, caricature and pastiche.

4. A single non-commercial fair dealing exception for teaching, which will permit the use of copyright works to the extent necessary by way of illustration to teach a subject. 5. Educational establishments will also be able to make limited reprographic copies of all types of copyright work.

6. An exception to allow non-commercial text and data mining: a person who already has a right to access a work will be able to copy the work as part of a technological process of analysis and synthesis of the content of the work for non-commercial research.

There were also more changes made to the copyright laws in June this year that allow even more rights to the consumer in regards to copying material, for the full guidelines check out the guide below...

http://www.scribd.com/doc/215022716/Copyright-Guidance-Consumers

However be aware that if your DVD's/Blu-Rays have to be hacked/ripped using software or hardware to copy them then you may still breaking the law, as you are hacking the DRM/TPM software/hardware which comes under a different set of laws and is still illegal .

 

[mantadog]

What do you have that doesn't play mkvs that necessitates the change to mp4?

Not because things cant play MKV files, more for compression than anything else. Loading onto tablets etc. I suppose I wasn't really clear but what I meant was make MKV has no option to compress anything like some of the other tools I have used in the past.

 

[SlimCini]

Not because things cant play MKV files, more for compression than anything else. Loading onto tablets etc. I suppose I wasn't really clear but what I meant was make MKV has no option to compress anything like some of the other tools I have used in the past.

Ah OK. I have all my mkvs loaded onto a networked hard drive. My tablet can then stream them if I want to watch them anywhere in the house. Then if I want to watch them on my tablet on a flight for example I'll just manually load up a few mkvs onto the tablet. I don't really ever have the need to have them locally on the tablet for anything other than flights.

 

[mantadog]

Ah OK. I have all my mkvs loaded onto a networked hard drive. My tablet can then stream them if I want to watch them anywhere in the house. Then if I want to watch them on my tablet on a flight for example I'll just manually load up a few mkvs onto the tablet. I don't really ever have the need to have them locally on the tablet for anything other than flights.

I'm definitely going to be loading everything onto a NAS after im done. What does scare me is the thought of having to rip Blu-ray disks at some point in the future. I genuinely don't see how anyone could have enough HDD space to actually do that, well within reason anyway. Especially with 4k coming and 128GB Blu-ray disks now available.

 

[XplosiV]

I'm definitely going to be loading everything onto a NAS after im done. What does scare me is the thought of having to rip Blu-ray disks at some point in the future. I genuinely don't see how anyone could have enough HDD space to actually do that, well within reason anyway. Especially with 4k coming and 128GB Blu-ray disks now available.

Bluray's can be done via anydvd & nero but it's a bit of a faff as you also need a couple of small utilities, but, nero will get a Bluray down to anything from 3-10GB depending on resolution and movie length. You only need say, 75GB free to do a rip of a standard Bluray

 

[Outerarm]

I've recently ripped my DVD / BluRay collection to an external HDD, which is now plugged into the back of the living room TV. I used AnyDVD to take a backup of the disks to my PC HD, then Handbrake to encode them. It is a bit of hassle, but you can do a few disks a night and slowly work your way through them. The huge advantage is that your shelves and shelves of optical disks are replaced with a small HDD which sits behind the TV, freeing up huge amounts of space in the room

 

[daveeb]

I've recently ripped my DVD / BluRay collection to an external HDD, which is now plugged into the back of the living room TV. I used AnyDVD to take a backup of the disks to my PC HD, then Handbrake to encode them. It is a bit of hassle, but you can do a few disks a night and slowly work your way through them. The huge advantage is that your shelves and shelves of optical disks are replaced with a small HDD which sits behind the TV, freeing up huge amounts of space in the room

I love the idea of having everything on HD - which i more or less do. Trouble is, you have to keep the disks as backup in case the hard drive rolls a seven (which it will do eventually).

 

[Outerarm]

I love the idea of having everything on HD - which i more or less do. Trouble is, you have to keep the disks as backup in case the hard drive rolls a seven (which it will do eventually).

Indeed - the disks are in a box in the attic... Just in case!