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3 out of 3 people found this review helpful
3.0 stars
"Good for what it does..."
Pros: Simple interface, fast ripping speed
Cons: small, inflexible feature set
Summary: Intervideo's DVDCopy, unlike its bloatware DVD viewer, WinDVD, is simple, elegant and easy to use. The downside of this, is, of course, that it has far too few features and its interface is extremely basic and will satisfy only the newbie or technophobe.
When making perfectly legal back up copies of DVDs you own, after removing rights destruction technology, this program is very fast. At least as fast as Nero or vso-soft's Copy2DVD. (The decision in the 321 case makes it clear that the archive copies are, in themselves, completely legal under the "fair use" provisions of Federal law.)
The one really nice feature IDVD boasts that no other burning software has, is the ability to make 2:1 copies of DVD that preserve the complete menu, chapter selection, and audio set up funtionality.
This works to perfection with movies. With boxed sets of TV series, it doesn't do such a good job. It copies the episodes in a seemingly random fashion leaving the user to figure out which disk has which episode since episodes which are NOT a on Disk 1 (but are on Disk 2), for example, are not grayed out. I have a 5 disk changer, so I was able to switch between discs to find which episode was on which disk; but the process was time-consuming an frustrating. So much so, that I popped the originals in and just sat through the usual c*** to get to the episode(s) I wished to watch. -->> IDVD gets a failing grade on copying "episodic" disks.
This is also true of making perfectly legal copies of DVD movies that you own. IDVD arbitrarily decides where to split the movie (for example, if a film is 1:55, IDVD will fill the first disk to capacity and then put the remainder of the film and extras on to Disk 2; so Disk 1 may well contain 1 hour 10 minutes and Disk 2 only 30 minutes of the film. Again: there's no feature set that allows users to tweak what goes where.)
As pointed out in the CNet review, the prog does allow you to convert DVDs to various video forms (this can be quite handy if one your kiddie's disks is has less than 44 mins of video content, you can easily rip the video to a CD, creating a DVD quality SVCD (Super Video CD for newbies; almost all set-top dvd players can play these disks). You can even create a DIVX format disks (not to be confused with the long defunct "Divx" service that died a much deserved death in the earliest days of DVD-dom), an increasingly popular format due to its extremly small size and high picture quality. More and more set-top dvd players are supporting this format.
The one other nice feature this program sports is the ability to create what it calls "M-DVD"s or multiple DVDs on one disk. For example, I was able to put two of my child's favorite videos onto one disk. IDVD creates a simple menu with the name of each DVD on the disk that allows one to choose which to play. Even very young children--who can't read--can be taught to use this feature.
Bottom line: if you're a newbie/technophobic this product is probably a good place for you to start.
Even for advanced/power users, IDVD comes in handly when you need to quickly burn a 1:1 copy or if you need to convert a TV episode or a cartoon to an SVCD. While the speed on my old 4x Pioneer 106 and 8x Pioneer 107 (under a Memorex rebrand) is/was very slow, on my 26x Plextor 716A, it is indeed "blazing fast." So the "official" C-Net reviewer is not being entirely accurate to describe it thusly. AND, the speed is very much hardware dependent. And those with such older, slower burners will find burning to be very S-L-O-W. Owners of 16x burners, such as my Plex, will find it very fast indeed.
Note: conversion from one format to another is still a time consuming process, regardless of burner type/speed or system config. E.g., it took 20+ minutes to convert an 11 minute cartoon from DVD-Video to mpeg format.
WARNING: in the "settings" window, make sure to change the "label" of the disk EVERY time you burn a disk or every disk you make will have the label of "XYZ". Not a big deal since it doesn't alter the content, but it can be confusing if you're looking at it with a computer!
With all of the pluses and minuses included, this prog rates a 7. Highly recommended for newbies and, if money's no real object, for advanced users as another tool in your arsenal for protecting YOUR expensive investment in "Hollywood's" "content."
