Under Suggestions: "Please provide multiple speeds for recording so that more than one movie, etc. can be placed on a DVD. Make editing your DVD for dummies."
What you need I think are 2 separate types of software, one to copy the content to your hard drive, and another to create your new DVD. Roxio, Nero, Sony Creative Software, & others sell some pretty easy to use software for authoring [creating] your new DVD layout, but they will not do anything about any DRM. There are free alternatives, AFAIK all using the open source DVD Author, but none of them quite as easy as the apps you have to pay for -- you can very often find the Nero & Sony apps on sale & even free after MIR.
Why not have one app that does it all? DVDFab is trying to be that app, with the addition of DVD authoring capabilities, & a few others are starting to move in that same direction. Companies like Sony & Nero have been doing the DVD Authoring bit for years, so they have quite the head start when it comes to ease of use, but a few of the Chinese DVD authoring apps are getting pretty good in that department. Roxio, Nero, & Sony have the edge on encoding quality, licensing the MainConcept mpg2 encoder -- so far Wondershare is the only Chinese company I've seen licensing MainConcept code.
At any rate, once you have your audio/video content on your hard drive, then at its simplest you just drag/drop those files onto a menu page in the DVD authoring app. When you're done you render your new DVD, which includes automatically re-encoding the video so everything fits. Caution though -- you don't want to go beyond 2 hours worth of video on a single layer DVD... if you need more than that encode the video to AVC/H.264, either putting the files on a data disc or in Blu-Ray format [if you still want/need to use DVD discs]...
Blu-Ray spec includes both DVD discs & DVD video frame sizes, the biggest difference being you'd be able to use the Much more efficient AVC rather than the decades old mpg2 -- a typical DVD video file encoded to AVC at the same frame size & about the same quality level is only about 1/4 the size. When you encode AVC you can usually either set the bit rate or the quality level -- lower bit rate &/or lower quality level = more video compression = smaller file size. Depending on how you set those values you could fit 2 - 4 full movies on a single layer DVD. The biggest downside to this approach I think is there's just less software available for doing anything Blu-Ray, and out of the software that is available, some of it will only do HD. While I've got Sony's DVDA 6 [their latest from late 2012], I've kept v. 5 installed [from early 2009] because unlike newer versions it includes Blu-Ray on single & double layer DVDs.
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#37: "Must I uninstall my current version before installing the new one? I don’t want to end up with nothing if the program considers the new version to be an upgrade which may then render my current version inoperable."
WinX DVD Ripper Platinum [& most all of these sort of apps] stores its registration info or data in the same place regardless the version. That means that if/when you install a newer version your old registration info is going to be overwritten. That's why all the cautions about updating a GOTD.
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#39: "(In Poland it is legitimate to make a copy of a DVD you have purchased for home use in order to protect yourself against damage of the original disc.) It is legal to do the same thing in the United States!"
#62: "#39 NO, It is not legal!!"
#50: "DVDFab’s issues relate to Bluray protections which is irrelevant as far as any comparisons to the current GOTD is concerned."
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I can only speak to the US, but there has been a court case that's been written about on-line & in the media quite a bit. There's something in the US (C) regs called Fair Use, & while it's been curtailed a lot with the newer laws & regs, it's still there. That court decision has been widely interpreted in the media to mean that you can do some limited copying of the content on a disc you've bought. However, since there's just the one court case AFAIK it's still a matter [IMHO] of what you feel that you can get away with without risking legal action.
Copyright *essentially* means that you can't make money by copying the work of someone else. There's no way to work with the DRM on protected video DVD & Blu-Ray discs without reverse engineering, to some extent copying the work done by the people & companies that developed that protection, and they hold not just the (C) for their work but I'm sure patents too. Reverse engineering is very common, prosecution under the law is not automatic, but it can be sufficient grounds to start legal proceedings.
IMHO & all that, not being a lawyer, the recent court action against Fengtao [DVDFab] was brought about by the people that own the (C) for a protection commonly used on video Blu-Ray discs, it would seem for using their intellectual property without permission [licensing]. The court action could just as easily have been brought by whatever parties hold the (C) & patents on the DVD spec & whatever protections they use, or by some other company or individual that owns one of the other DRM technologies used on either type of discs. It's important to remember that no legal verdict was issued -- Fengtao simply didn't have a representative present in court, so the judge issued the court order that he was asked to issue, wiping Fengtao off the Internet, as much as it's possible for the US to do that sort of thing. Future legal action may change that, may focus more on video DVDs, may question whether the judge had the authority to issue the court order as it was written, and so on -- nothing at all was really decided.
Long story short there's plenty of room for some lawyer(s) to argue that you're breaking the law by using software that in their view violates the (C) &/or patents on whatever methods of DRM. There's also plenty of room for them to argue in court that the prior court ruling that I mentioned was wrong, or does not apply in your case. And none of that has anything to do with law enforcement, as various departments & agencies have done plenty of things that would *seem* to clearly violate one or more laws, but it's only illegal when/if someone takes them to court on it, wins, & that verdict is upheld as it works its way up through the courts to the highest levels. A recent case in point, one gentleman was forcefully removed by federal law enforcement from a movie theater, held, & interrogated for hours because he forgot to remove his Google Glass with prescription lenses [Google Glass devices are capable of video recording]. That would seem to violate several laws, if not the US Constitution, but it would take a high court ruling to make that sort of thing actually illegal. Making the issues even more murky, the US gov has taken the view that (C) is a matter of national security, which suspends many individual rights under the law, which also is being argued about legally & in Congress. So... Depending on whatever lawyer(s) you're right if you say it's illegal to backup your DVDs, & you're right if you say it's legal, in my honest but legally unschooled opinion of course. ;)
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#60: "I believe I read something recently about some limitations with DVDFab HD Decrypter FREE"
Shareware, DVDFab has 3 methods of limiting functions until you purchase a license... 1st is the 30 day trial period, 2nd is some functions are crippled, 3rd is the always free functions won't work with every disc, usually the most recent, but there may be some discs the free HD Decrypter never works with. DVDFab is actually a package with several separately licensed apps that do different things, e.g. one copies a DVD disc, one transcodes DVDs, one copies Blu-Ray discs, and so on. HD Decryptor is one of those separate apps, & comes into use once the trial of the full version(s) expires.