DVD Backup For Dummies (That would be me.)

[BogeyTMF]

My first post here, so please be gentle. I've been reading everything I can get my hands on to try and learn how to backup my dvd's to dvd-r but I'm still really confused.

Can anyone point me to a newbie guide that actually walks you through the process of copying to DVD-R? I understand ripping and encoding, etc. But, every "how-to" guide that I've read has either made assumptions about my brainpower, or just been incomplete.

With all due respect to the owners of this forum (it rocks), even the newbie guide here doesn't really explain DVD copying in easy to understand terms. It starts out doing a nice job of explaining the specs you need on your system, but then immediately jumps head first into all sorts of utilities that don't make sense if you're new to all of this.

So, does someone have a good link that can help me understand it all? I've even tried to rip, encode, and copy to a DVD-R, but to no avail. Here is what I've got:

P4 2.2Ghz, 1024 RDRAM, DVD-Ram/R 4.7gb, 120GB hard drive, Radeon 8500, SB Live.

I've downloaded and played around with SmartRipper, a few bitrate calcs, the trial version of DVDIt, and ReMPEG. I started with Gordion Knot because Doom9 made it sound so complete, but then it didn't have any info about how to copy to just a single DVD-R. It focused more on CD-Rs.

So, here's what has me confused. I can rip successfully. I have stripped out everything but the English ACS and the actual movie itself. (Using Mystery Alaska for this example.)

The next thing I did was convert the ACS file to Wave, and then to .mpa. I then encoded the actual video into MPEG2 which took FOREVER :). What I don't get whether I'm supposed to encode them both in the same time or not? Can/should they be done separately? Then, when I put them in DVDIt SE, the audio didn't sync with the video and the page I was using to try and explain this all to me:

http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/articles/DVD2DVD-R_4500_more/index.html

did a great job all the way up to the point where I had to merge the files together? (You DO merge them together, right?)

Anyway, I feel like I'm halfway there, but still pretty messed up.

HELP!

Thanks,

David

[BogeyTMF]

Wow, this is kind of a drag. I was hoping that someone could have pointed me in the right direction from my previous post. I saw that 128 people read the post. Nobody can help me?

[aleksander]

Did you try posting at the digital-digest forum???
Also, there is a forum here about dvd authoring and ifoedit. Try posting in one of them....(or I can move your post to any of it). There are some people reading only specified forums, so there might be someone able to help you.

aleksander

[BogeyTMF]

<<Did you try posting at the digital-digest forum??? >>

No. I'm new to all of this, so I posted to the newbie forum. It seemed to make sense at the time, but what do I know. :) Aside from my specific problem, I still can't find any newbie guides for DVD Ripping and burning to DVD-R that uses layman's language so the average dude can understand it.

David

[cofferscuffs]

http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvdripping.htm ;)

About half-way down the page is links to DVD to DVD ripping methods.. hope it helps.