Our DVD's are in trouble. Madelynn started to take an interest in them just a little while after we moved. I don't know what all of a sudden made them so attractive. They have been on the same bookshelf for her entire little life, but it was not until recently that our shelves full of DVD's seem to call to her, beckoning her to pull them of the shelf and then do unspeakable things to them. Those unspeakable things include throwing them, desperately trying to open the case and get the disc out, scooting them across the room under one hand as she crawls across the room, and my absolute favorites, putting them in unkempt piles and then sitting or standing on them.
Then I started brainstorming contraptions I could make that would make it so that we could access the DVD's whenever we wanted, but would not allow Madelynn to get them. I started thinking about using tension rods and bungee cords and drilling holes in various places... all of those ideas fell flat. So, I decided, what the heck. I will let Madelynn keep wreaking havoc on our DVD's and just make digital copies of them all. That way when she breaks a disc I can just go burn a new one and put it back in the case.
After doing tons of online research about copying and burning DVD's and getting past the copyright encryption I found a couple of programs that are free that are working for me. I downloaded DVD Shrink and IMG burn and they have been working wonderfully for me. There have only been two Movies so far that they couldn't copy. Sadly, those two movies are ones I really cared about copying, so I found another program that I got a free trial of called Magic DVD Ripper that was able to copy them. I only have 3 trial uses left on that program and we may just end up buying it, but I am cheap and won't do that until I absolutely have too.
I have now delved into the realm of backing up DVD's and I am already a little tired of it. I don't know if I will ever really get through all of our discs before I get super bored. We have over 250 DVDs and I have copied 28. Seriously, I have a lot to go. Also, we will run out of storage space before I can copy them all. Oh well I will do what I can to help my poor endangered DVDs.
2 comments:
Lindsay, take all the DVDs out of their case and put them in a giant CD container thingy. Then she can play with the DVD cases, you can put all the DVDs somewhere she can't get to but that you can, and everyone's happy. :) That's what we've done because I don't have time to back all ours up. I actually have the CD container where they can reach it and they don't bother it, but when they start I can put it in our bedroom without any trouble and shut the door. It's also nice because when we go on vacation to my parents' time share to relax, we can bring all our movies without a problem and don't have to sift through which ones we might feel like watching. Good luck! She's a cutie. :)
Did you try HandBrake? I have used it a bit and found it worked well. There are even options for the image quality for the result file you want to make.
The idea about a cd wallet works too but then you might as well just throw away the cases.
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