Copying DVDs in Leopard

For the last 2 days I’ve been trying to make a copy of the DVD the funeral home put together of pictures of my grandfather. My Aunt has a DVR hooked up to her TV that can burn DVDs, but that would have required watching and recording the DVD, then making copies. That seemed like a long process.

Realizing that my new iMac had a superdrive in it, I thought it had to be possible to copy DVDs on the mac. Turns out, it’s very simple.

Forget about all that software out there – It all works, but none of it is required. Here’s how you copy a DVD on Leopard:

1. Open up the finder and go to your utilities folder (is it a folder or directory on a mac?)
2. Now click on the Disk Utility icon
3. Put the DVD in and wait for it to load. The DVD player will launch, close it and go back to the disk utility screen
4. Here, you’ll see your hard drive and your DVD drive on the left hand side. Click on the DVD.
5. Now, up at the top you’ll see a New Image icon. Use that to make a new image
6. When the options come up, you’ll want to select a name for the DVD. Then, choose DVD/CD Master for the image format, and none for encryption.
7. Save it somewhere. Make sure you have enough space on whatever drive you’re saving. Some DVDs can get close to 2 gigs in size
8. After it finishes saving (this will take a while) you’ll see your image appear in the left hand side underneath all your disk drives. It should end in .cdr
9. Click on your image, then click the Burn icon at the top and put in a blank DVD-R

That’s it! Follow the simple instructions in that dialog box and you’ve created a copy – without paying $99 for Roxio or Toast or Easy DVD Copy.

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