What DVD Copy software is good but inexpensive?

[robhamblen]

I am looking for something to make back up copies of my DVD's so I can play them from my hard drive, so the kids can watch there movies and I can load what ever in the DVD-Rom plus so I dont have to load the disk. I have tried a few and they dont seem to want to to copy the movie files and if it does, they wont play right. They are all chopped up like bad satellite feed. I used Magic ISO and Daemon Virtual drive to play them. I made other images from files like an AVI in Magic and they played fine.

Also, I am looking for an AVI to DVD converter. I have MyDVD that came bundled with the DVD burner but large files take 3 hrs or so and they are very poor quality, choppy, stops and starts, freezes up. Would writing speed have anything to do with that? I used 8x DVD-R and last time I made a DVD I used 1x DVD-R and I think my burner writes at 4x. I joined all my little girls home movies together as one AVI and the file ended up being 700mb. I had to split the video in half and make 2 seperate DVD out of it. I cant play it, its too choppy and messed up.

[Hi Ho]

To put DVD's on the hard drive try DVD Shrink. I have used it to put a couple DVD's on my hard drive just to see if it worked and it did. I don't know uch about burning software however.

[reboot]

The odd DVD that DVD Shrink won't work with, can usually be copied by using DVD Decrypter first. Decrypter will also burn for you, and it is also free.
In most cases, I use Shrink to rip the disk, then edit out menus's, extras, foreign language tracks, anything you don't want/need in the finished dvd, then shrink it to fit on a dvdr 5, and use Decrypter to burn (Or Nero).
Links, downloads, and reviews on both apps are available in the Tools section at www.videohelp.com