When spending money in this type of market, you are wise to spend the extra on good quality DVD Media. This will prevent your backup form degrading and possibly skipping in certain players. Even paper labels that are used to print the DVD name on are a hazzard. Cheap ones aren't weighted evenly and when spun at high speed it will make the DVD skip.
Most DVDs come from a handful of media producing companies. Mitsubishi for instance creates many of the discs. Another thing I found is that sometimes a brand that would normally have quality DVDs (like Memorex) will sometimes outsource their DVD production to a lesser quality company causing an entire batch of DVDs to be bad. I eventually found a site that did tests on all types of DVD media. The conclusion was there was only ONE brand that consistently provided quality DVD media. The brand is called Tayo Yuden which are made in Japan. If you serious about backing up your DVDs I highly recommend getting authentic Tayo Yuden DVDs; however, since this media is so well known for its quality production there are some people trying to imitate the MID code on the media making fake discs. So be careful when purchasing these online.
A burned DVD is not produced in the same way that a genuine DVD is made. In a nut shell the genuine DVD's are pressed by machines when they are made and there will never by errors. When a disc is "burnt" a micro lazer is used to burn foil through a fine layer of plastic and many errors can occur. These are just more reason to ensure you invest in a high quality media. The real DVD's are normally made on what is called a dual layer disc nowadays. This means it holds twice the amount of data to that of a single layer disc. Now when you burn a DVD you have the option of burning it on a dual or single layer disc. The dual layer disc is more expensive than a single layer and if you are backing up alot of discs then this cost will soon add up. Fear not though as you can backup DVD's made on dual layer disc onto single layered discs. To do this you have two option. Number one is to cut away some of the additional features which take up the room, such as subtitles, specail features, foriegn language options etc. Option two means you will have to compres the data down to a smaller size to be able to fit it all on but as a consequnce you loose some of the qulity of the film. The choice is yours.
Which Software to Backup Your DVD's with?
There are many options for this question from free to paid versions and personally I think it's worth spending abit of cash. It's a one time payment thats worth the investment. However if you are looking for free software then trying things like DVD Shrink and DVD Decrypter are your best bets. They can bring a few problems though which is my main reason for not using them. For example DVD's now have different protection methods and DVD Shrink is no longer being produced which means it can only handle older protection methods and is not as successful with newer DVD's. This applies to DVD Decrpter as well. My person preferance is a piece of software called DVD neXt COPY Ultimate. Claimed to be the most "advanced DVD copying software on the market today" I can say it's a good piece of kit. It will also allow you to copy upto 10 normal DVD's onto 1 BlueRay disc which is great news. There is no reason not to at least give it a try becuase they have a 100% refund guarantee. If you fancy it then I've posted the link below.
Click here to try out this software.
