HD Online Player (download Intervideo Dvd Copy Platinu)
Riley Boylan
So many video formats -- discs and files, video and audio, set-top and PC andportable, high-res HDV to TV-quality MPEG to tiny portable screens. How can youmake sense of them all, figure out the right format for a particular purpose,and then get your clips converted properly? For discs there's DVD -- R and RW,dash and plus, single and double layer, and even VR. And for files there'sWindows Media Video (WMV), the MPEG-1 and -2 standards, and now MPEG-4, plus AVCand 3GPP versions. Arrg!
One way to deal with all this is to use one of the latest consumer editingtools like Adobe Premiere Elements 3 (www.adobe.com/products/premiereel)that can import clips in all the common video formats (or extracted from DVD),edit them together, and then export the resulting movie in many formats(including to DVD).
But sometimes you don't want to edit video and discs, you just want toassemble, copy, and convert them. This calls for a dedicated tool like the new InterVideoDVD Copy 5 for Windows, which can grab video from discs and/or files,convert among a zillion formats, and deliver the results by burning discs orcreating new movie files (www.intervideo.com).
- Copy DVD - Extract and copy from a DVD, to DVD, otherdiscs, or files
- Merge DVD - Extract and merge contents from multiple DVDs
- File to DVD - Combine multiple files into a single DVD ormovie
- Copy to Go - Convert and transfer directly to portabledevices
The corresponding task screens then have three basic steps:
- Select the Source - Disc drive or file on hard disk
- Select the Target - Drive or disk directory
- Select the Format - Disc or media file, with associatedvideo and audio compression
The more straightforward task with DVDs is to make copies. In InterVideo DVDCopy, use the first Copy DVD button both for straightforward 1:1 copies,and for more interesting options for extracting portions of a disc.
The first question is whether the source disc is a commercial disc with copyprotection -- in which case you cannot use DVD Copy (or similar applications) tocopy it. These consumer copying tools are for unprotected discs, whetherrecordable discs burned on a DVD drive, or pre-recorded discs (read-only ROM)manufactured ("replicated") without the CSS copy protection. Thisability to copy and extract from burned discs is especially useful for homevideo DVDs that you want to share with friends or extract segments from tore-use.
Next, you'll need to insert your target disc, and think about its recordabledisc type (R/RW). As with CD recordable media, you may want to burn a permanentcopy on write-once recordable media (R), or a possibly temporary copy usingerasable re-writable (RW) media for a disc you plan to re-use later on.
And does your burner support the dash and/or plus recordable DVD formats?Most of today's burners support all four such possible formats -- calledDVD-/+R/RW (DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, and DVD+RW) -- much like CD burners aredescribed as CD-R/RW (CD-R and CD-RW). There's also another format, DVD-RAM,which is accessible more like a hard disk, and also is used for DVD camcordersand computer backup.
Plus, there's one more wrinkle in copying DVDs. If the DVD was created on aset-top DVD recorder, then it is probably is actually in VR (Video Recording)format -- with the contents organized to allow a set-top recorder to add (anddelete) additional clips. VR discs have a simple main menu to access theindividually-recorded clips (the DVD-VR is simpler than the DVD+VR format).
Most set-top DVD players and PC player software can play these formats, andsome DVD authoring tools can burn in these formats so you can burn and thenre-edit a disc on either the PC or a set-top recorder. However, DVD Copy cantranscode VR discs into true full DVD Video format, for the highestcompatibility with players.
Then check the source disc size (4.7 GB single-layer or 8.5 GB dual-layer).Look on the disc label, or check its size in Windows Explorer. Is it asingle-layer disc, with up to 4.7 GB of data (as typically created on a homeburner), or is it a dual-layer disc, with up to 8.5 GB (i.e., a commercialmanufactured disc, or burned on new dual-layer burners)?
If your source disc is bigger then the destination media -- i.e., you have a8.5 GB dual-layer original disc but only a single-layer drive and media, thenDVD Copy provides several choices. You can copy each layer to its own 4.7 GBsingle-layer disc, which may work for some discs, but may be a problem when themain movie is split across the two layers.
You also can have DVD Copy re-compress the DVD video to "Fit to OneDisc" -- squeezing the video down to the available size on the smallerdisc. This will be lower quality, but does get the whole contents on a singledisc, which may be fine for a test copy or for playback on a small portabledevice.
To really squeeze you productions, you can also copy and convert to Video CDformat to play back on a 650 MB CD. The original Video CD (VCD) format ispopular in Asia as an inexpensive way to distribute short-form videos, usinglower-resolution MPEG-1 format. Super Video CD (SVCD) uses MPEG-2 closer to DVDquality. Most set-top DVD players (as well as PC software) can play VCDs, butfewer support SVCD.
Besides compressing more aggressively, another method for squeezing a largeDVD onto a smaller disc is to extract only a portion of the material. Forexample, you may only be interested in a couple highlight segments from yourone-hour recording of a game. Or, for a more professionally authored disc, youmay be interested only in the main presentation, and not the extras or alternatelanguages.
For this reason, InterVideo DVD Copy provides the ability to select the copymode -- to copy the Entire Disc, or just the Main Movie, or to Customize byextracting specific chapters, audio language tracks, and subtitle tracks.
After you select your source and destination formats, you then can have DVDCopy extract, convert, and re-compress the original DVD, and burn the result tooptical disc. But you don't always want the copy on a physical disc -- it canalso be convenient to have it on hard disk. DVD Copy therefore can copy back andforth between physical discs, a Folder on hard disk, or a Disc Image file.
A DVD Folder contains all the files that you would see on the physicaldisc (i.e., the contents of the VIDEO_TS folder on a DVD). You then can play thedisc's contents directly from hard disk using PC player software (likeInterVideo WinDVD) to preview and check it.
A Disc Image file is a single large file with a packed version of thedisc's contents. These are particularly convenient for storing a copy of a discso that you can burn multiple copies when needed. DVD Copy also includes aVirtual Drive tool that can mount a disc image as a virtual disk under Windows,which is handy for checking and extracting its contents, and also forsimultaneously mounting a group of discs, i.e. for a multi-CD game.
Once you have this ability to extract selected contents from a DVD and thenre-compress them as needed to fit a target disc size, the natural next step isto combine the contents from multiple DVDs. DVD Copy does this with the MergeDVD option.
Specify a temporary storage location on hard disk, and then specify differentsegments to extract from multiple sources -- discs, folders, or images -- DVD,VR, or VCD -- entire disc, main move, or custom. DVD Copy accumulates all ofthem, and then burns then to a single compilation disc (and format).
DVD Copy also can extract just the audio tracks from DVDs. You can burn theresult to Audio CD, or save to audio file formats including WAV (Windows rawWave), compressed MP3, and compressed WMA (Windows Media Audio).
And why go to all this effort to crack open a disc and then only create morediscs? It's also handy to be able to extract segments from DVDs as video fileson hard disk, so they can be re-used in a video editor or to include in adifferent DVD.
The InterVideo DVD Copy option for Copy DVD then offers not only all thedifferent target DVD formats, but also a variety of common and new video fileformats. You can choose presets for common formats, or again customize withspecific compression options.
- Use WMV-HD to extract in Windows Media Video format, including HighDefinition resolutions. With the arrival of high-definition video in (high-end)consumer camcorders, DVD Copy can import high-def files up to 1920x1080resolution, and can import video from Sony HDV camcorders.
- Use MPEG-2 to extract video in its native DVD-compatible format,using the MPEG-2 standard also widely used for digital television. Or selectMPEG-1 to extract in the older standard used for VCD or older players.
Since portable devices are becoming so popular, InterVideo DVD Copy providesthe dedicated Copy to Go option to format video files for specificportable media players, including the Apple iPod, Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP).It then can transfer directly from a physical DVD disc to a supported player.
And with all these options for copying between discs and to video files,InterVideo DVD Copy also offers the reverse direction: Use the File to DVDoption to assemble a collection of video files into a movie, to then burn todisc (or save as video files).
Since copying, converting, re-compressing, burning of the contents of anentire DVD can take a while even on a fast machine, InterVideo DVD Copy now addsa CopyLater option to schedule batch conversion tasks to run while yourmachine is not busy.
Just load up a list of source files, each with a list of multiple targetformats, and then schedule the time for the processing to begin. You can fire upthe jobs late a night, and even shut down the machine when you are done.
DVD Copy has handy presets for the common sizes and formats, and the abilityto customize from a list of resolutions and range of data rates. However, itdoes not provide access to the kind of full range of compression options like,for example, Adobe Premiere Elements (such as low resolutions for Windows Mobileand Pocket PC devices). And it does not support the common DV, Windows AVI, andApple QuickTime video formats for PC-based editing.
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