Steps to Burn a DVD Movie Copy on a Mac

Getting Started Burning a DVD Movie

In the Parallels application:

1. Open AnyDVD to run it in the background.
2. Insert the DVD movie you want to copy (wait a few moments to let AnyDVD scan the disc.)
3. Open DVD Shrink.
4. Use the 'open disc' option in DVD Shrink (analyzing will take about 1-3 minutes).
5. Look at the audio languages and video streams. Do they look normal? (If you're not sure, see my previous post How to Tell if AnyDVD Will Handle Your DVD's Copy Protection. If the audio/subtitle tracks look weird, you'll need to use DVDFab to rip the full disc.) See my instructions further down for a DVDFab walk through.
   
6. If they look normal, remove the extra audio tracks you don't need.
7. Open the 'extras' folder on the DVD by clicking on the little plus icon next to it.
8. Remove all the previews by selecting a clip and choosing 'still image' from the dropdown menu on the right. (Don't worry about clips that are less than around 20MB, the size is small enough that it's not really going to affect the quality of the copy, unless there are many of them.)
9. After removing the extra languages, preview, and any special feature clips you don't need, click on the 'Backup' button. (To check the quality of the main movie copy, click on the main movie folder to check the quality percent. Anything over 70% will be pretty good, anything aboe 80% is usually hard to tell from the original disc.)
   
10. When the window appears, make sure the backup target is set to 'ISO Image File'.
11. Choose to save the ISO to a destination folder on your mac, since we'll be burning the ISO file on the mac.
    
12. Click 'ok' to begin simultaneous ripping/shrinking. (It takes about 30-35 minutes to rip a movie with an 8x speed drive. It will be faster if there is less compression, meaning a higher quality percent, and if there are less extras to wade through.)

Combining the MDS/01, 02, 03, 04 Files

Normally DVD Shrink will make an ISO file, but since we are using a virtual windows machine and saving the ISO to a mac hard drive, it's going to split the ISO file up into several smaller chunks to ensure that it will work on different hard drive formats.

To recombine the pieces into the ISO, we'll use the mac application MISO-J.

Combining the part files into an ISO should take 5 minutes or less. If it takes longer, MISO-J may be frozen and you might have to try it again.

Remember: Don't run processor intensive stuff (Hulu, games, Parallels) when using MISO-J.


Burning Your ISO File

To burn your ISO file, close Parallels, insert a blank DVD, and open the Disc Utility application on your mac.

In Disc Utility, go to Images > Burn.
Navigate to the ISO file.
Before burning the ISO to a DVD, make sure to select a speed at least a little slower than the maximum speed of the drive. (Burning discs at the maximum speed can cause write errors.)
For an 8x speed drive, I've never had problems burning at 4x speed.
Burn your disc. Go to something else for a while, because the burning and disc verifying will take about 30 minutes.


Using DVDFab for Stubborn DVDs

If DVD Shrink showed bogus video and subtitle streams, close DVD Shrink and follow these instructions for DVDFab.

1. With the DVD movie still in the drive, close AnyDVD.
2. Open DVDFab Decrypter
3. Choose the full movie option
4. You may need to choose the source (disc folder)
5. Choose the destination for the ripped folder and make a folder inside of the Parallels VM (folder icon and folder location at the top of DVDFab window.)
6. Rip the full dvd to the a folder inside the Parallels VM (because you'll be using DVD Shrink to compress these files shortly). Ripping on an 8x speed DVD drive takes about 35-45 minutes, depending on how many files (audio/extras/etc) the disc has on it.
7. After DVDFab says the 'Process completed successfully', close DVDFab and open DVD Shrink.
8. Use the 'Open files' option this time to analyze the full ripped movie folder.
9. You'll need to remember where you told DVDFab to rip the disc). Point DVD Shrink to the VIDEO_TS folder inside the movie folder.
10. After the analyzing is complete (much faster DVD Shrink doesn't have to be slowed down by reading a disc), start from step 6 in the instructions at the top of this post.
    

Things to Remember

While the disc is burning, don't run anything that is processor intensive (Hulu, any games, Parallels, etc.) You can run anything you want after the actual disc burn is done and the disc is just being verified.

Don't forget to delete the full DVD rip folder after you've burned the copy if you used DVDFab. Each full DVD rip will be 6 to 7 GB.

Don't forget to delete the folder with the MDS and part files after burning your ISO to a disc.

After you've burned the ISO file, don't forget to delete this also, as each one will take up 4.5GB of hard drive space. If you think you'll want to make 2nd copy of the same movie soon, keep the ISO to save time and burn it later.