Tong Family

Well, it’s time for my six month review of how to do DVD backups. Super useful to have a backup and also to have a smaller copy for watching ont he airplane. Here’s the latest:
* DVD-copying extravaganza – CNET reviews. In the last six months, there have been a ton of commercial products. I’ve used Gordian Knot for a while and it is definitely for power users. DVD X Copy appears to be the only one that works with commercial DVD movies. It is a straight DVD to DVD copy tool though.
* “Divx and Xvid Conversions”:http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/articles/dvdtodivx.html and “DVD to Xvid Details”:http://nic.dnsalias.com/MPEG-4_XviD_Koepi_24062003-1_Encoder_Guide_ver20030702.pdf. Now that DiVX is a commercial product, some folks are switching to the open source XviD as an alternative. Here’s a ripping guide that uses good old Gordian Knot.
* “Flask MPEG”:http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/articles/dvdtodivx_flaskmpeg.html. It’s apparently easy to use, but is buggy and slow.
* “Gordian Knot”:http://www.divx-digest.com/articles/dvd2divx_gordianknot.html is hard to use, but powerful. Current version is 0.28.6.
* “Gordian Knot Fast 4U”:http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=64266. Currently in alpha test, this is a much simpler version of Gordian Knot.
* “XMPeg”:http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/articles/dvdtodivx_xmpeg.html. This is easier, but won’t with all titles.
I’m going to review Gordian Knot, then try XMPeg then post a review of each.