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Thanks Nachovx.......
The VideoLan software looks very useful for "backing up" hard to copy DVD's

Could you help me again as I can't work out how to copy/burn the film from the laptop to a DVD?. Progress so far is.-

"Half way there....It copied into the laptop (my downloads folder) in colour--great. I named the file as xxx.m2p and kept enc meth. as Mpeg-TS.
However can not work out how to copy it back to a DVD. Tried to reverse the steps with nothing appearing on the DVD+RW in .
No activity light either. So thought I would play the file in Windows media player vers. 10...36.46 and from there burn it to DVD. But Windows Media Player doesn't recognise the file type.
I think you can tell I haven't done this before.....but I am enjoying it..... just need to get the scene back out of the lap top onto DVD......then hopefully I can then put it in the Personal Video Recorder dub it down to the HDD and combine it with its sister scene.

I tried the wizard but didn't go to my drive so used the wizard to change the code to mpeg1 and copy back into the Downloads folder as a test. At present I am still looking for where that went !!!!! {bit worried as it is my wife's laptop}. "

Thank you

PC

The files play in Media Player on my PC, but that could be as a bi-product of other software that installed some mpeg encoders and a lot of codecs, so I'm not sure why they won't play on yours - but I isually only play them back in VLC.

VLC can't write to DVD, so you'll need to use something like Nero pr Roxio. I use Nero 6 and just write them as data to a multisession disc ... the advantage of this is you can write 4.5GB in under 10 minutes, but don't need to do it all at once.

This format plays on the PC (in VLC), but won't play in a standard DVD player. If I want to play it on the TV, I would use the TV-Out from the PC.

Thanks again.

I'll look into the TV-Out route. If it is compatible I have the red, white and yellow RCA cables and a Scart adapter to take these. It would be soooo good if all I have to do is stream it into the PVR to it's HDD.

Cheers

PC

Two other useful pieces of free sodtware are:

Fab DVS Decrypter ... this will read any dvd to your hard drive and remove any protection in about 20 mnutes.

Since most commercial dvd's are dual layer, you need to shrink them t under 4.7GB to fit back onto a single DVD-R ... for this you can use FVD Shrink

If you write the resulting file using Nero, it gives you a backup and it will play in stand alone players or on a PC.

You can read more about dvd sgrink at

There are lots of other sodtware tools and lots of help pages.

Thanks for the additional info. I have put the URL's in my favourites for use in the future.

My copying to "back up" a disc that wouldn't copy..... worked.

VideoLan copied it in to Laptop and using S-video connection to my PVR I streamed it to the HDD, Where I eddited and dubbed it up to the PVR's DVD.

Thanks again

PC