copying several DVD's on to one DVD

[JMackenzie]

Hi,

I am frequently asked to copy 3 or 4 Educational , short (20mins) DVD's onto one DVD, then make several copies of the combined one for 9 or 10 members of teaching staff.

I cant find a program that will do this. I have both Nero and Roxio programs for DVD and CD replication.

What I have to do at the moment is use A DVD player hooked up to a domestic type DVD recorder, and record them in real time, either pausing or stopping record between each set of material. This works to an extent, but apart from taking a long time, and having to physically be there when its copying, the resultant DVD does not have functional menus like the originals do.

When I copy single DVD's with Nero, the copy behaves just like the original.

I am sure there must be a way of doing this multiple disk copying on a computer?

Hope you have some bright ideas.

[timtheenchanteruk]

the way I do it, providing copywrite will let you (legal standpoint) is to rip them into the PC as an avi or similar, then use convert X to DVD or similar program to create the compilation, with or without menus. (I believe I-Movies can also do the last bit if you have MAC access.

[Stuart91]

(I believe I-Movies can also do the last bit if you have MAC access.

 

iDVD is part of the iLife suite, along with iMovie and others. iMovie lets you edit video footage, and iDVD puts it together onto a disc. It's a reasonably easy way to do things if you're a novice at this kind of stuff.

[KevinE]

Won't Roxio DVD builder do this? You say you have Roxio Suite?

[sleah]

I use Ulead DVD Movie Factory to create DVDs. It will allow you to import from a DVD (or HD files) so would allow you to create a single disc.

[Blaize110]

I use Xilisoft DVD Ripper to rip my DVDs to AVI files. These could then be compiled into a DVD by software such as Nero.

[Mr_Jules]

There's no way that you can do this (that I know of) without first ripping each DVD into its component parts and then reconstructing them into a single DVD. You'd have to rewrite the menu (Nero can do this). If you're lucky, you might be able to just pull the VOB files from each DVD and then rename them as MPG files, but this doesn't always work, depending on the level of copy protection.

[KevinE]

Have you tried DVD-Shrink? Its freeware and you get to choose the compression level.

[Russ83]

Try Nero Vision, it's very easy to use and included in nero version 7 and later.

 

Make DVD Video -> Import Disc -> (repeat as needed) -> Cut down tracks (if needed) and name -> Select menu layout -> Burn to image

 

If you run out of space on the DVD it will reduce the quality of your last imported to fit.

[JamieR]

I did it last week with some promo stuff for the theatre where I work. I used Auto Gordian Knot to convert the VOB I needed into a straight AVI and then demux the audio from it in MP3 format (otherwise Premiere throws an error about unsupported audio compression). Once I had all the AVI files and counterpart MP3 audio files I needed I then put them all in the timeline in Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 and burnt the DVD with Adobe Encore.

 

If you need the chapters you can create custom chapters in Encore CS3. All this is professional grade software though.