Backing Up DVD's tutorial
I am assuming you want to copy a DVD to your external hard drive. To copy the DVD as it is to another DVD is something we haven't really tried to do before. I did not put any programs to your external which can do that really. If i had to do that, I would use a program called "Alcohol 120%".
Here is a set of instructions for copying a DVD to a hard disk, or you could use this to copy the DVD to a normal CD.
Backing Up DVD's
Step 1:
First, open DVDDecrypter. It should be on the external hard drive and you do not need to install anything. The following button at the bottom left should light up.
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Click it, and it should start copying the DVD to the hard drive. It should copy it in about the same time it takes to watch the movie. It copys the movie to something like "C:\MOVIE_NAME_HERE" by default, but you can choose a destination just above the start button. Depending on the DVD it can take anything up to 7 gigabytes of space.
After this, you will not need the DVD anymore. DVDDecrypter should also remove any region encoding, so you should be able to use a DVD from any region (regardless if the DVD reader is set on a zone). Don't worry if that didn't make any sense, it's not important.
The DVD is essentialy copied at this point. If you just want to keep the DVD you can leave it like this. Using a DVD player on the computer you should be able to watch the DVD files you just copied. You can bring these files back and Stephen and I can do the second step or you can try yourself.
Step 2:
This step can take a little while and the quality and size of the movie afterwards depends on the settings you use.
Install Vidomi. When you open the program, you may need to click a little button next to the title in order to get to the Encoder section.
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When you have the Encoder section up, press the "+" button on the right. Browse for the files you got from DVDDecrypter. You can either find an ".ifo" file or add ALL of the ".vob" files.
Once you have done that you will have to click options and look for any settings you think might have to change. Under one of the video options, there will be a place where you can choose which codec you want to use. xvid is probably a good bet to use. I do not have any files to test with so I cant recommend any other settings. In output size options, you might want to set it to 700mb (or 700mb chunks) if you want to put the DVD onto a CD.
Good luck and I cant wait till you both get back!
Love Mark.