So, I was digging through some old boxes stacked up in the garage the other weekend. Found a bunch of stuff I’d forgotten about, including this old Sting concert DVD. It was the “All This Time” one, I think. Pretty good show, saw it way back when. The disc looked okay, but you know how these things get over time. Scratches appear out of nowhere, or they just decide to stop working. Decided right then I needed to get this thing backed up onto my hard drive.
Getting Started
First thing, I took the disc out and gave it a good wipe. Had one of those microfiber cloths handy. Looked a bit better afterwards, fewer smudges at least. Then I went to stick it in my computer. Now, my desktop still has a DVD drive, believe it or not. It doesn’t get much use these days, mostly just sits there collecting dust.
Put the disc in. The drive whirred and clicked for a bit, which is normal I guess. Took longer than I expected for the computer to even see it. Windows finally popped up asking what I wanted to do. That was a good sign, at least it was reading something.
The Actual Process
Okay, so my first thought was just to copy the files over. You know, open the drive in File Explorer and just drag the VIDEO_TS folder onto my desktop. Tried that. It started copying, then choked halfway through. Got some error message, probably because of the copy protection stuff they used to put on these things. Annoying, really.
Realized I needed some actual software to handle this properly. I remembered using something ages ago for ripping DVDs to watch on a tablet. Dug around my installed programs, found some ripping tool I must have downloaded years back. Fired it up.
The software interface was pretty basic, thankfully. Here’s roughly what I did:
- Selected the DVD drive as the source. It took a moment to scan the disc content.
- Looked through the titles it found. Usually, the main movie or concert is the longest one. Picked that.
- Chose an output format. Didn’t need anything fancy, just wanted a single video file. Went for MP4, usually works on everything. Kept the quality settings pretty much default. Didn’t want a huge file, but didn’t want it looking terrible either.
- Picked a place to save the file on my hard drive.
- Hit the start button.
And then, I waited. Ripping a full DVD, especially on an older drive, isn’t exactly quick. The estimated time kept jumping around, but it looked like it’d take close to an hour. Seriously, an hour for one disc! Went and made a coffee, came back, still churning away. Watched some YouTube, checked email. The computer fan was humming along.
All Done
Eventually, it finished. Got that little notification pop-up saying the job was complete. Found the MP4 file where I saved it. Double-clicked it to check.
Played perfectly! Video looked decent, audio was fine. Scanned through a few chapters, all seemed okay. Felt pretty good, actually. It’s like saving a little piece of history, or at least a piece of my own nostalgia. That old DVD can go back in its box, but now I’ve got the digital copy safe and sound on my backup drive. Don’t have to worry about the physical disc degrading any further. Job done.
