With this guide you can create region-free copies of your DVD movies, by cloning them entirely or with selected contents to your hard disk or DVD recordable discs.

This guide is intended for personal backup only. Please do not copy copyrighted materials without the proper permission. DivXLand.org does not support copying of copyrighted media.

Before using this guide, make sure you are familiarized with the different DVD formats. Please refer to the introduction to DVD formats provided by DivXLand.org.

  Required Software

 name and description

site

download

Elby CloneDVD 2

DVD cloning tool

DVD Idle Pro

Utility for region and CSS removal

  Step 1: Run DVD Idle Pro

After downloading and installing the required software, run DVD Idle Pro to ensure your DVD drive will be able to read the disc without the need to change its current zone, and remove additional obstacles that could avoid the created DVD from being playable on certain drives.

This tool also helps you to extend the lifetime of your DVD drive by using a read-ahead cache, saving DVD data which will be played soon onto the hard disk cache or RAM cache, and then feeding it to the player. This allows the DVD drive to rest.

  Step 2: Initialize CloneDVD

CloneDVD startups displaying three main options:

• The first option copies the DVD and allows to discard the navigation menus.

• The second option copies the DVD including the menus.

• The third option burns a DVD or creates an image file from files in the local hard drive.

We'll be using the second option to include the navigation menus. In the next screen, select the location of your DVD's VIDEO_TS folder from the drop down list and wait a few seconds.

The right list shows a complete index of the DVD titles. Based on the indicated item play time, select those you wish to copy and deselect those to be discarded.

Be sure to select your target DVD format from the drop down list. CloneDVD will compress the media to fit the selected DVD size always, but the quality may be reduced if you are copying a lot of additional features from a DVD-9 to a DVD-5 for example.

If the quality indicator is in the red area, you should remove some bonus materials, but notice you can remove audio and subtitle streams in the next step to increase quality even more.

Once you have selected the titles from the DVD to be copied, advance to the next screen.

  Step 3: Audio and Subtitle Streams

In this screen you have a list of the DVD titles at the top-left area, and another list with the selected audio streams (languages) and subtitles for the selected title.

You should deselect unnecessary audio streams from the right list in case the quality indicator is below the green area. Once you have configured these settings, click the Next button to proceed.

  Step 4: Output Settings

CloneDVD can save the proper files for the output DVD either as files in the hard disk drive, with the same DVD structure, or a single DVD image file in ISO/UDF format, or directly burn the output into a DVD writable disc using a DVD burner.

The most secure choice is to create an ISO/UDF Image file in the hard disk, which will require plenty of disk space. For a DVD-5 output disc, you will need near 5 GB of disk space.

After selecting the folders for the output image file and the temporary directory, click the Start button to begin the image creation process. This can take up to 20 minutes on most drives.

  Step 5: Burning the DVD Image

You can use any DVD writing tool such as Nero to burn the created image file to a recordable DVD disc. Start Nero Burning Rom and choose Burn Image from the Recorder menu. Then select the image file you have just created with CloneDVD.

Make sure to select DVD from the drop-down list. Here you can select the writing method and speed, accordingly to your drive. After burning this DVD, it will be playable in any drive since it's a region free DVD.

If you no longer need the image file after burning the DVD, delete it from the hard disk to recover an important amount of disk space.

  Questions? Comments?

If you have any questions or need support regarding this guide or article, don't hesitate to ask at the DivXLand.org forum personally.