Sometimes there are no means to watch a movie from a DVD disc. For example, it happens, when you want to watch a movie on an old VCD player or PC with CD drive only. In this case a possible solution is to convert DVD movie to MPEG movie using a PC with DVD drive, and then write it to CDs. For this purpose software developer Videosoft offers to use its product DVDCopy. Let's examine what this program can actually do.

First thing that you see whenever you start the program is a strange message box without any words on it:

This message appears regardless of the DVD drive status (with DVD inserted or not). Ok, at least we can simply click OK button.

Then Save As dialog appears to save a file as an .mpg or .avi file. But wait a moment, I did not ask to do it yet! Well, so far the program operates very oddly. Ok, I choose name and location of the file. Hurrah! Finally, the program window appears!

To finish guessing at the program's actions, I open Help by clicking a Help button at the bottom of the window. In this Help it is stated, that the program is supposed to do the following: to backup a DVD to VCD/SVCD, to backup a DVD to image/MPG files and to burn an image/MPG files to a CD-R/RW. It is also said, that the only limitation of the trial version of the program is that the only first 1/4 of a DVD movie can be converted to VCD/SVCD.

As a whole, I find this Help not very detailed, and there are only brief descriptions of the modes. But there is also rather big FAQ section, although judging from a list of problems you may face to using DVDCopy, this program is not an easy one to use.

There are two fields (Source and Target) in the program window intended for choosing a mode. In the Source field one of two options can be selected: available DVD drive or Image. When selecting Image, a message “Can not decode!” appears, and no dialog to set name and location of an image is displayed. There is only one option in the Target field – Image, and selecting this option causes the same “Can not decode!” message. Below the Target field there is a string with full path and name of the AVI or MPEG file chosen in Save As dialog at start of the program. Thus, as I understand, that Save As dialog is the only way to tell the program where to store converted files. It also means that the program works only in Backup a DVD to MPG file mode, and no other modes can be used.

There are also Copy button to start conversion and Option button at the bottom of the window. When the Option button pressed, additional part of the program window with various settings for output VCD/SVCD movies appears. Here you may choose a quality of the output movie, TV standard (NTSC, PAL), Aspect Ratio, Subtitle, Sound stream out of those available on a DVD inserted, Size of CD-R disk. Using the last parameter the program decides into how many output files source DVD movie should be divided. All the settings are quite easy to understand without specific knowledge.

Summing up, there is only one mode of the program I managed to use - creation of MPEG movie out of DVD movie. Unfortunately, it is likely to be the only functioning mode. This mode is started by clicking the Copy button, and takes a several hours to complete. The duration of the process greatly depends on the productivity of hardware, because video conversion is a complex task. Output MPEG movies are in agreement with the settings chosen, and can be played on various media-players without problems. The quality of sound is also surprisingly very good.

As to such an odd operation of the program, it is unlikely to be a fault of hardware of my PC, because many other programs, such as Roxio Easy CD Creator, Nero Burning ROM and PowerDVD, experience no problems with it. Besides, DVDCopy did not show any messages concerning problems with hardware.

In conclusion, I would like to tell only one thing. Since DVDCopy still does not perform the most of declared functions on a PC with standard software and hardware, I advise you to think twice before buying this crude product (that has already version 2.4!).

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