DVD Backup

excellent
key review info
application features
  • Back up and Protect your DVD movies
  • (4 more, see all...)

We all know that a DVD is an optical disc storage media. The abbreviation stands for ?Digital Versatile Disc? or ?Digital Video Disc?. According to Imdb, the first movie commercially released on DVD was ?Twister? in 1996.

A DVD disc is used for storing data, and movies with high video and sound quality. There are two types of DVD discs up to now: DVD-5 and DVD-9. DVD-5 is the normal 4.7GB disc that stores up to 120 minutes. DVD-9 is the dual-layer disc that stores 8.5GB of data (four hours).

What can you do with DVD CLONER III? Well, not too many things. But if you think of those few things you can use it for you will see its real value. For example, you can use it for saving your favorite movies from accidents, the disc getting old and not being able to be played anymore.

I for one have a friend who is a bit forgetful and loses lots of CDs and DVDs. I?ve recommended him DVD CLONER III in order to create backup for his DVDs. He took my advice and his DVD collection increased significantly.

DVD CLONER III is a DVDCloner shareware software that costs $59,99. To run smoothly the application requires a Pentium II 450 Mhz or faster CPU, 64MB of RAM, 10GB of free space on your hard disc and a DVD Writer.

There are no problems with installing the software. The design of the interface suffered a little surgical intervention and looks just great. The software is practically a toy. In the upper part of the application window there are displayed the softwares that come for free with DVD CLONER III if you decide to use it.

In the lower part, right in the middle, you will have to select the DVD drive containing the DVD and the folder you want to save it in. After you do that, go to the setup menu in the right and select the clone mode.

The options in here are Complete disc copy, Movie only, Split DVD-9 to two DVD-5, Complete DVD-9 copy to a DVD-9, or you can customize the file and choose only some of the chapters and the audio files.

In ?Complete disc copy? the software will compress a DVD-9 movie to a DVD-5 of 4.7GB with no information loss. I must warn you that no video compression is made without losing quality.

The second option, ?Movie only copy? will compress a DVD-9 movie to a DVD-5 one but it will remove the menu, title and info. The resulting file can be played in absolutely any DVD player, so you do not have to worry about compatibility.

If you want superior and audio quality I recommend using option three, ?Split D9 to two D5?. Thus you can split a DVD-9 movie to two 4.7GB DVD+-R/RW disks. The files will have the same quality as the DVD-9. Indeed, it takes a lot of disc space, but if you don't want to give up quality this is the way to do it.

?Complete disc copy to a D-9? is also a great option as this too does not change the quality of the video or audio. Choosing this will allow you to backup a DVD-9 movie to a Dual Layer DVD+-R/RW disc without compression. For this option to work you have to make sure that your DVD writer supports Dual Layer discs.

The last clone mode option is to ?Customized copy?. If you want to save only certain chapters of the DVD movie and not the entire disc, this is where you can do it. Just click on the ?Choose Chapter Window? and select what you want. Use this option to save disc space or to eliminate unnecessary data.

The good thing is that if you do not remember exactly which the chapters you are interested in are, you can always enable the preview function and see what each chapter is about. Needless to say that the selected movies will be copied without a menu.

DVD CLONER III allows its users to customize the audio tracks and subtitles. In order to save some space on your hard-disc you can choose only the audio tracks and subtitles you really need. I for one always choose only the original audio and English subtitle.

In the ?Advanced Setup? menu the user can set the reading and burning speed, the size of the disc you are going to copy the data to, the screen ratio and the temporary folder. Keep in mind that the video and audio quality depends on the output file size. If you compress a DVD-9 to a DVD-5 and keep all the data (menu, chapters, subtitles, audio tracks) the resulting quality will be inferior to the original.

In order to backup your DVD the software needs a temporary folder where to store the data to be copied. You will need about 10GB of free space on your hard disc to perform this action. After backing up the DVD you can enable deleting temporary files so that you free the space. The user can set the screen ratio either for monitor (4:3) or for TV set (16:9).

The Good

The software allows you to make copies of your DVD movies in order to protect them from aging or even from losing them. It supports writing a Dual-Layer disc. The cloning options are amazing, you can even select the chapters, audio tracks and subtitles that you want to save.

The interface is extremely easy to use. The software includes everything you need to save your DVDs. You no longer need additional software to extract the desired audio tracks in order to save space.

The Bad

I could say that the price is one of the flaws, but after a comparison with other softwares' features I came to the conclusion that the money is not too much ($59,99).

The Truth

It is an easy to use software that does a great job. I had no problems with it and no error messages (except when I wanted to use the burning option and I forgot to put a DVD in the DVD writer). I was impressed that for a DVD-9 it took almost 30 minutes; to be honest I was expecting a little more trouble.

At purchasing DVD CLONER III you will also get for free three more softwares: DVD-to-AVI, DVD-to-MPEG and DVD-to-SVCD.

Here are some snapshots of the application in action:

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user interface 5
features 5
ease of use 5
pricing / value 5


final rating 5
Editor's review
excellent
 
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