Making a copy of an old home DVD

muffler

Guys I want to make a copy of an old family DVD but having tried a couple of free programmes (??) I downloaded I cant get the bloody thing to copy. I burned a copy directly using Ashampoo burning studio but when I put it in the DVD player it wouldnt work. When I put the original disc in the player it just shows "Files" and not dvd.

I copied it to the PC and when I open the folder there are 5 VOB files (1 very short), 2 IFO files and a single BUP file. I honestly have no idea what they files are. Im trying to convert these files to AVI (I think that's the right format for a DVD) but one programme wouldn't copy the audio files which wasn't much use.

Can anyone advice what I'm doing wrong or recommend a free programme that will convert the files or is there any way I can just burn them direct to a DVD.

muffler

Anyone?

tmull

Muffler, If all else fails I can copy from one of my blu-ray recorders,one to the other,if you want to contact me. Do not worry about postage as I myself have had great help on this site. Tmull

muffler

tmull, thank you very much for the kind offer and I may even take you up on that if its not too much bother. A friend of mine took the dvd with him a couple of days ago to see if he could copy it and hopefully he'll be in touch with me in the next day or two.

Neither of us know very much about these things but he's "fairly sure" he can do it but we will know for sure in the next day or so.

If he cant get it copied I will PM you and thanks again for the kind offer

TroutMask

Try HandBrake - it will read your DVD and convert to a number of formats.

muffler

Thanks TroutMask.

If my mate doesn't get it done I'll give that a go.

TroutMask

http://en.flossmanuals.net/handbrake/

the manual, if you need it

muffler

Just a wee update on this. My mate was round earlier and he got the DVD copied. Cant remember now what programme he used (if he mentioned it at all) but it turned out well.

But what a great little thread this turned into though. First of all tmull was very generous in offering to copy it for me and then TroutMask posted the name of software to use. Thanks lads, very much appreciated.

Just out of curiosity and for future reference I downloaded and installed HandBrake. Tried it there about an hour ago and it worked a treat. Pity I didnt know about it a few weeks ago but at least I have it now.

TroutMask

Handbrake is great - makes really nice files that are pretty much as good as the DVDs - use it all the time to make files when I retire DVDs. Even makes 5.1 surround audio rips.