How do I copy home movie DVDs?

Q I had a family videotape transferred professionally to DVD. I would like to make copies of this DVD to give away.

I have tried copying the contents of the DVD to my Windows 7 computer and then dragging and dropping the contents onto a new disc but without success – the new DVD will not play.

What do I need to do in order to copy this DVD successfully?
Ron East

A Windows 7 can save files to DVD and even create movie DVDs from your own video clips (using the supplied Windows DVD Maker application) but it cannot copy a DVD-Video disc – even if the disc is a home-made one that lacks any of the copy-protection methods usually applied to commercial movie discs.

Fortunately, there are plenty of free applications that can do this job, assuming the disc wasn’t copy protected by the company that produced it for you.

We should also say that, even though the movies on the disc itself are yours, the company that produced it may retain copyright on the particular production (the menu layouts and so on that contribute to the DVD-Video disc they made for you). So, you may need to seek the company’s permission to make copies.

Then, install a tool such as Imgburn. Use the program’s ‘Create image file from disc’ feature to make a copy of your DVD-Video disc on your PC’s hard disk as an ISO file.

This will be the ‘master’ file. Now use Imgburn’s ‘Write image file to disc’ option to burn copies of the master file to as many blank DVDs as you need.