Copying a DVD

[igirl]

Hello, and thanks in advance for your thoughts on this.

I'm new to OSX but a long time Mac user...even would have considered myself above average techie until I got OSX which I find as obtuse as Windows. I've never burned a DVD before, but in O/S 10.4.5 new out of the box it seems no where as elegant as burning a CD in Toast on OS9 - drag and drop files, click "burn".

Now there is all this .dmg nonsense, iDVD doesn't burn anything unless it's input from a videocam and constructed from within the app, disk utility is devoid of any features or logical interface in the sense of drag and drop...then I do some searches and I read that I have to jump through all kinds of hoops just to do a simple copy of something.

Here's the scenario. I have a non-copyrighted movie DVD that i would like to make a copy of. (It even has a VIDEO_TS folder on it, but for sake of this discussion let's say maybe it didn't - is that now different somehow?) I can copy the contents of this DVD to a folder on my HD no problem, but I can see no way how to then copy/burn this data to another DVD. What's up with this?

If I bought Toast or Popcorn would things then work as elegantly as I expect them to for a Mac? Is the iMac G5 DVD burning capability stripped down to nearly nothing out of the box? Comments would be appreciated...

[MnM]

You can use Disk Utility for this.

1) Insert the DVD into your optical drive. When DVD player starts to play the movie, quit DVD player and proceed to open Disk Utility.

2) Select the dvd from the list of other disks.

3) Next choose File > New > "Disk Image from (name of disc)."

4) Then choose a destination, name the file, and I usually leave mine at compressed with no encryption and hit save.

5) After the image is made, eject the orginal dvd out of your computer.

6) Select the disk image, which should now be in disk utility's list, and click burn.

7) It will prompt you to insert a blank dvd. After doing so hit burn, give it some time and presto!

This and more can be found by opening up Disk Utility, clicking "Help" from the top and choosing "Disk Utility Help". In there search for "duplicating a CD or DVD".

[igirl]

I had also since found a doc here -
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=42724

Although the instructions are a little wrong as far as the names of some things, I was able to parse out what was needed for the current new OS disk utility. That did the trick.

From what I have read online though at some point I will likely need Toast or other full function burning software for more advanced projects...

[Mikuro]

Yeah, Toast is great. If you have a VIDEO_TS folder, you can burn a video DVD of it in Toast by just dragging it into a new disc, and burning it in UDF format.

YuBurner and FireStarter FX are too free burning apps that are useful, although neither is geared towards DVD creation. (Search www.macupdate.com to find them.)