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Duplicate DVD's in MacOS X
The ease with which you can create professional looking DVD's using iDVD is one of the great advantages of using a Mac. In this tutorial. I'll show you how to duplicated DVD's that you have created using iDVD or DVD Studio Pro.
The ease with which you can create professional looking DVD's using iDVD is one of the great advantages of using a Mac. The only downside is that your DVD's will look so good that members of your family are going to want their own copies. In this tutorial I will show you how to create a master copy of your DVD projects created in iDVD and DVD Studio Pro.
We'll start with a DVD that you have created. 
In this example I am going to be using a project called 'THE_ROCK'. This is a DVD that I created to chronicle my dads experience at the Buck Baker racing school in Rockingham, NC.First, insert your DVD. Once it mounts on the desktop, open up the Disk Utility [which can be found on your hard drive in Applications - Utilities - see icon right].Next, select your DVD from the list of drives in Disk Utility (see image right).Now, click on the Images menu and select new and then image from YOUR_PROJECT_HERE (see image below).
The Convert Image dialog box will open (see image below). Here, you will name the image (I gave mine the same name) and select the location to save it in. VERY IMPORTANT: You must also select the Image Format type. Select DVD/CD master from this drop down menu.
You computer will then begin the process of converting (or duplicating) the image. The time it takes will vary depending on how much you have on the DVD.Once completed, you should now have a master DVD that can be used to burn multiple copies of any DVD that you have created.To burn a copy of your DVD, go back to Disk Utility and select the master copy that you created. It will be listed in the drive section (see image right).Finally, click on the burn icon in the Disk Utility tool bar, insert a blank DVD when prompted and burn away!
| I'm sure the next question is, "Can I use it to copy a DVD that I bought?" Disk Utility will copy the DVD. The only problem seems to be that movies are ~ 8GB. Standard DVD-R that you would burn it on to are only ~ 4GB. |
Comments
Thank you, it was exactly the info I needed.
Posted by: DougK | April 24, 2005 02:51 AM
Does this work on DVD's not made with iDVD? I can't get it to work. It starts ok. but then I get an error message.
Posted by: Bill | June 8, 2005 09:31 PM
Thank you SO much for this tutorial on duplicating DVDs. I had a family video done and wanted to make copies of it and it wasn't working until I found your site. You saved me a LOT of time and money!
Posted by: Randi | November 20, 2005 03:48 PM
Very useful info. What about the encyption setting. Would you leave that off or select it?
Posted by: David O'Brien | December 1, 2005 05:24 PM
Using Tiger and iLife suite and, unless I am missing something, it seems I can do this directly from iDVD, no? There is an option for saving a disc image under the File menu. You can also archive a project and it's bits for editing at some future date. I haven't tried it yet as I am still working on my first movie but if I am right, maybe it's worth an update to this article. Cheers.
Posted by: Perry | January 5, 2006 09:06 AM
I have an update to my previous post. I just finished my first movie and used iDVD to make a disc image for efficiently burning additional copies. The method has worked extremely well but in no way invalidates your method. If you already have the movie on DVD and wish to make a disc image, your way is the way to go. If, on other hand you are currently working on your movie and plan to use iDVD to prepare the final menus and interface (something I highly recommend because the program is absolutely terrific), then you may as well make your disc image from iDVD as the last step of your movie-making process, then save the disc image for subsequent burns (copies).
iDVD also has an archiving feature which I have not tried. This is used to save a working copy so you can go back and re-edit, where as the disc image is only for burning additional copies. There are also some more options under iMovie itself but I won't get into them here. Hope that helps. Cheers, again.
Posted by: Perry | January 10, 2006 10:52 AM