Is there a Legal way to digitize Physical media? (1 Viewer)

[ManW_TheUncool]

Incidentally, that $3.6K I quoted for "modest" RAID NAS hardware cost for ripping 1800 BDs + 150 4K discs (w/out transcoding) would be pretty close to the $2/title that Vudu charges for their D2D program to buy HD digital copies of BDs owned... although many titles don't qualify.

Of course, the quality will generally be higher done this way along w/ other pros and cons...

Anyway, if (a tad under) 1TB is all the OP needs for the complete Dallas series w/out transcoding and that's all he wants, that's not too expensive (hardware-wise) to do. Could probably even consider putting the entire series on a portable SSD, if portability (on top of likely much better durability) is desirable.

BUT OTOH, maybe just waiting for a sale on iTunes makes more sense. They're currently charging $100 for the complete series, but will likely eventually be a fair bit cheaper.

OR maybe one can find the DVD set deeply discounted at some points to just buy a 2nd set...

_Man_

 

[Robert Harris]

I don’t believe there’s anything illegal (nor immoral) re your idea. Afaik, if you’ve purchased a licensed copy of media, you’re permitted to make a protection copy - only for your own personal use.

 

[John Dirk]

I don’t believe there’s anything illegal (nor immoral) re your idea. Afaik, if you’ve purchased a licensed copy of media, you’re permitted to make a protection copy - only for your own personal use.

That's the way it should be but most studios do no cooperate and have created or purchased elaborate copy protection software to thwart the duplication of their content. The most insidious of these is Cinavia.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Technically, there are two laws in conflict with each other on the topic. Fair Use says you’re entitled to make personal backup copies of media you own. The newer DMCA makes the act of breaking the encryption illegal for any reason, even legitimate ones like legally permissible backups. I doubt that provision would survive a protracted court challenge but it doesn’t seem anyone is too enthused about dying on that hill, nor does anyone seem terribly concerned with enforcing it.

 

[jcroy]

In terms of past precedents, dmca type laws have been ineffective at removing dvd ripping programs from existence.

The first widely documented case was DVD Decrypter in 2005, where macrovision largely intimidated the developer into ceasing development. He/she simply didn't think it was worth fighting in a court of law, and signed away the rights + code to settle.

Nevertheless, the final version of DVD Decrypter is still easily available over the past 15 years. It still works fine on probably 99% of dvd discs ever released.

 

[jcroy]

For historical context, these are some articles circa 2005 about this ^

AfterDawn: News (11 / 2005)

News archive (11 / 2005)

www.afterdawn.com

DVD Decrypter Forced to Cease | CdrInfo.com

www.cdrinfo.com

 

[quantumsnoga]

If one goes this route, you have to ask the question - how much is quality worth?

If your average Blu Ray runs 40 GB and the equivalent DVD runs 8 GB, how much money and drive space are you willing to pay for, per disk? Bul-Ray run around 5 times the space of DVD, UHD runs around 10 times. That means you have to purchase (and keep) that much more drive space for the same entertainment. Is the greater quality worth it? (As discs, the space is the same on a shelf, but not if they are ripped on a hard drive.)

Plus if you are going to do all the ripping and labeling, you'd want to make a backup of the hard drives, preferably off-site. (There could always be a fire. Think of it as insurance.) That increases the cost 2 fold or 3 fold.

OTOH, it would be neat just to spin through the movies or shows on the screen and select what you want.

 

[jcroy]

If one goes this route, you have to ask the question - how much is quality worth?

If your average Blu Ray runs 40 GB and the equivalent DVD runs 8 GB, how much money and drive space are you willing to pay for, per disk? Bul-Ray run around 5 times the space of DVD, UHD runs around 10 times. That means you have to purchase (and keep) that much more drive space for the same entertainment. Is the greater quality worth it? (As discs, the space is the same on a shelf, but not if they are ripped on a hard drive.)

This is the primary reason why this road is only really for the hardcore movie/tech/nerdy/geeky types. The much harder road.

For Joe Sixpack and/or Jane Q Public, they are better off just subscribing to flat-rate streaming services.

 

[Thomas Newton]

Technically, there are two laws in conflict with each other on the topic. Fair Use says you’re entitled to make personal backup copies of media you own. The newer DMCA makes the act of breaking the encryption illegal for any reason, even legitimate ones like legally permissible backups. I doubt that provision would survive a protracted court challenge but it doesn’t seem anyone is too enthused about dying on that hill, nor does anyone seem terribly concerned with enforcing it.

In the music world, companies fought bitterly against First Sale and Fair Use for a long time. Then Apple proved that people would pay to buy non-DRMed downloads, if you made that convenient enough. Now Apple and Amazon do a brisk business in CD/download sales and also in all-you-can eat subscriptions. Personal music players (e.g. iPods and smart phones) are major factors in driving demand for these products and services. The very same media players that the music industry so once feared.

I'm sure that there are a few Duke Weaseltons around, but they don't seem to be having too much impact on the music business in the First World.

 

[aard]

The world is quickly changing and collecting personal on-prem libraries of any media is becoming less and less mainstream (and less necessary). With gigabit fibre connections the future has to be streaming services. HDD have a lifespan and so costs will be ongoing with a NAS. Still early days to get hi-res movies from streaming services but it is the future.

Binned my Bluray player and all discs earlier this year as part of moving houses (so hope i'm not wrong)

 

[Frankie_A]

The college uses DVDfab to make protection copies to a NAS server in the event a DVD or BRD is damaged. DVDfab makes identical copies in two ways -- a direct copy of the directory structure and all the files on the disc or an ISO. Is there an advantage one over the other? The tech says the full copy (or I assume that is what most people call a clone) is better than the ISO, I assume because if those files are simply burned to a disc, the disc would be playable and any player would see it as if it were the original. The tech said, if you burned the ISO file to a disc, you would have to have software to play it. I am not sure why? And there is also a question of which one is perhaps "more legal" than the other -- you can certainly claim you are making a backup copy if you just copy every thing on the dvd or brd, but when you make an ISO file, aren't you manipulating the data on the disc? Same as if you transcoded it to, say and MP4.

 

[Museum Pieces]

I haven't read this entire thread, but I ripped about 2000 discs over two years, and I will tell you this. I have four 8-Tb drives and two back ups of it all. One backup in my house and one off-site at my wife's office. If it sounds redundant, maybe it is. But if it's worth ripping, it's worth backing up, and if one drive can fail, so can two. Just advice from someone who spent a lot of his time ripping, doesn't regret it, but is also determined not to lose all those files. And BTW, spin your backups up every six months or so. Every year at least. Good luck.

P.S. Drives are cheap. Don't try to conserve space. Rip at good quality. Just because it looks great on your laptop doesn't mean you'll be happy with your rip when you get that 60-inch you always dreamed of. The last thing you want is to have to rip everything again because you skimped the first time. Maintain good housekeeping and label everything before you make your backups. Of course this all sounds obvious but you'd be surprised how things can get when you rip in large quantity. Whatever you do, don't upload anything you rip for anyone to download, not even a friend through a private drop box.

 

[DaveF]

The college uses DVDfab to make protection copies to a NAS server in the event a DVD or BRD is damaged. DVDfab makes identical copies in two ways -- a direct copy of the directory structure and all the files on the disc or an ISO. Is there an advantage one over the other? The tech says the full copy (or I assume that is what most people call a clone) is better than the ISO, I assume because if those files are simply burned to a disc, the disc would be playable and any player would see it as if it were the original. The tech said, if you burned the ISO file to a disc, you would have to have software to play it. I am not sure why? And there is also a question of which one is perhaps "more legal" than the other -- you can certainly claim you are making a backup copy if you just copy every thing on the dvd or brd, but when you make an ISO file, aren't you manipulating the data on the disc? Same as if you transcoded it to, say and MP4.

An ISO should be an exact clone of the original disc, possibly with encryption removed. It can be burned back to a physical disc and played in normal player just like the original. It can also be played by any software DVD player that reads ISOs, like PowerDVD.

Copying to a folder structure means you can’t trivially clone it back to a disc to make a playable copy. But it gives a format that’s readable and playable by a lot of software players. It also reveals the individual files that can be played directly by software like VLC.

Which is better depends on your needs and goals.

Personally, I don’t use either of those approaches.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

The college uses DVDfab to make protection copies to a NAS server in the event a DVD or BRD is damaged. DVDfab makes identical copies in two ways -- a direct copy of the directory structure and all the files on the disc or an ISO. Is there an advantage one over the other? The tech says the full copy (or I assume that is what most people call a clone) is better than the ISO, I assume because if those files are simply burned to a disc, the disc would be playable and any player would see it as if it were the original. The tech said, if you burned the ISO file to a disc, you would have to have software to play it. I am not sure why? And there is also a question of which one is perhaps "more legal" than the other -- you can certainly claim you are making a backup copy if you just copy every thing on the dvd or brd, but when you make an ISO file, aren't you manipulating the data on the disc? Same as if you transcoded it to, say and MP4.

Sounds like you have that kinda backwards and/or confused. Read what @DaveF just said above.

_Man_

 

[R. John Dunnill]

Would it be cost or space prohibitive ?

In other words, would I need 100 hard drives to accomplish this?

Not with today's large capacity hard drives. Some of them will hold 20tb.

I have a NAS set up with 4 8tb drives and it has 23tb storage available. That will hold many, many rips.