You are a lover of cinema and also an avid collector of physical media. In your living room you have an entire bookcase used as a showcase in which you jealously display and keep DVDs. Your friends are well aware of this passion of yours and that is why the evenings at the cinema have now turned into evenings on the sofa in your home. “This film is beautiful, will you let me see it again?” – it will be the tenth time they ask you to watch it within three days – “Uff … okay, but if you use the DVD you will buy it for me, okay?” – who knows how many times you will have experienced a similar scene.
Well, if that’s the case, it must be said that you are a bit too precise and fussy. I can understand that you care a lot about your physical media, but there is absolutely no need to miss out on an evening with friends for fear that the DVD will wear out from too much use. In any case, the solution that I want to provide you in this guide is related to the procedures to be carried out to copy a DVD to your PC , an operation that is exactly for you, to make you sleep peacefully.
How do you say? The topic is of interest to you but, since you are not very experienced with the use of the PC, are you afraid of not succeeding? But no, come on, it’s impossible! Follow the instructions below and you will see that in a flash you will be able to do everything. So, sit comfortably and take a few minutes of free time to calmly read the instructions on what to do and put them into practice. Ok? Yup? Very good! Then ban the chatter and proceed.
Index
- Preliminary operations
- How to copy a DVD to PC
- Copy a DVD to PC with VLC
- How to copy DVD to PC with CDBurnerXP
- Copy a DVD to the PC with Nero
- How to copy a DVD on Mac
Preliminary operations
Before getting to the heart of the tutorial, going to explain what steps to take to be able to copy a DVD to your PC , there are some preliminary operations you need to perform to make sure that everything goes in the right way.
What I am referring to, to be precise, is that you have to make sure that the PC you use has a burner . Most recent computers, both stationary and portable, do not have one. So, if this is also your case, to be able to carry out the procedure described in this guide you will necessarily have to get an external burner to be connected to the computer (if, of course, you have not already done so).
In this regard, if it can help you, I invite you to consult my buying guide dedicated to external burners : inside you will find many tips about brands, models, prices and compatibility that can be convenient for you to determine which category product to buy.
How to copy a DVD to PC
At this point, I would say that we are there: we can finally take action and find out how to copy a DVD to PC in practice. Below you will find indicated which tools to use on Windows and the relative instructions for use. You will see, it is much simpler and faster than you might think.
Copy a DVD to PC with VLC
The first tool that I recommend you to consider to copy a DVD on a PC with Windows 10 or with any other version of the operating system from Microsoft is VLC . It is a renowned multimedia player, free and open source, thanks to which it is possible to play practically any kind of audio and video file without resorting to external codecs. It also includes functions to “rip” CDs and DVDs, which is why I chose to tell you about them in this guide of mine.
To download VLC to your computer, visit the program’s website and click the Download VLC button .
When the download is complete, open the EXE file obtained and, in the window you see appear on the desktop, click the Yes and OK buttons . Then, click on the Next (three consecutive times) and Install buttons , then complete the setup by clicking on the Finish button .
Now that you see the program window on the desktop, in order to copy a DVD to the PC with VLC , insert the disk you want to act on in the burner, click on the Media menu located at the top left, select the item from the latter Convert / Save and choose the Disc tab from the further proposed window, then click on the Browse button next to Disc Device and select the DVD to copy to your computer.
After completing the above steps, click on the button with the bulleted list located in correspondence with the heading Profile , choose the output format you prefer from the Encapsulation tab in the further window that is shown to you and adjust the other options relating to encoding video, audio and subtitles, by selecting the relevant panels, then enter the name you want to assign to the profile in the Profile name field and press the Save button .
In conclusion, indicate the location where you want to save the final file by clicking on the Browse button next to the wording Destination file and press the Start button to start the copy process.
How to copy DVD to PC with CDBurnerXP
Another software you can consider turning to to copy a DVD to PC is CDBurnerXP . It was one of the first free burning programs to be made available and despite the passage of time it continues to be highly efficient and, therefore, to be very successful. It is easy to use and allows you to burn and copy DVDs with any type of file. There is also a portable variant.
To download CDBurnerXP to your PC, visit its website and click the Free Download button . In the new page displayed, proceed with the download of the portable version of CDBurnerXP by clicking on the CDBurnerXP 64-bit Windows Portable (ZIP) link (if you are using 64 -bit Windows ) or on the CDBurnerXP 32-bit Windows Portable (ZIP) link (if you’re using 32-bit Windows).
Once the download is complete, extract the ZIP archive obtained in a location of your choice and start the EXE file inside it. In the window that is shown on the desktop, choose Italian from the drop-down menu for selecting the language for the interface and click on the OK button .
Once the main screen of the software is displayed, in order to copy a DVD to a PC with CDBurnerXP , insert the disk you want to act on in the burner connected to the PC, then select the Copy disc option and click on the OK button .
In the new window that will open, make sure that your burner is selected in the Device drop-down menu at the top (otherwise you will do it), then select the Hard disk option at the bottom and press the button (…) next to the File Name entry to indicate the output location of the file and the name you want to assign it.
Finally, choose the ISO (single track) option from the File type menu , in order to generate an ISO file , and press the Copy disc button to start the procedure. Et voila !
Copy a DVD to the PC with Nero
Now let’s see how to copy a DVD to PC with Nero . If you’ve never heard of it, know that Nero is a historic and renowned burning suite designed specifically for Windows operating systems . It is paid (it has prices starting from 49.95 euros, depending on the edition chosen), but a free trial version is available that works without limitations for a few days.
To download the Nero Burning ROM trial (which is the version of the program that contains the tool to be able to rip DVDs), go to the Nero website and click on the FREE Trial Version link next to the software name . Then enter your e-mail address in the text field that appears and click the Download button , then start the EXE file obtained to perform the installation. For more details, I refer you to the consultation of my tutorial on how to download Nero for free .
Once the above steps have been completed and the main program window is displayed on the desktop, select the Nero Burning ROM button , check the box relating to acceptance of the license terms and conditions , click the OK button and close the new one screen displayed regarding the use of the trial version.
At this point, insert the DVD you intend to copy on the computer into the reader / burner connected to the computer, then click on the Extras menu located at the top left and choose the item Save data track present in it. Then check that your burner is selected in the drop-down menu below (otherwise you can do it yourself) and press the Save track button to proceed.
Finally, indicate the location where you want to save the output file, select the ISO format from the Save as drop-down menu , type the name you want to assign to the final file in the File name field and press the Save button . In a few minutes you will get your image file ready to be archived, or burned to another medium.
How to copy a DVD on Mac
Do you own an Apple-branded computer instead of a Windows PC and, therefore, would you like to know if there is a way to copy a DVD to the Mac ? The answer is yes. To do this, just take advantage of Disk Utility , the default macOS application for managing disks and partitions.
To use it, first of all insert the disk you want to act on in the burner connected to the Mac. Then, open Disk Utility , by clicking on the Go menu that you find in the upper left part of the desktop, choosing the Utility item from the latter and then double clicking on the tool icon (the one with the hard disk and the stethoscope ) present in the window that appears on the screen.
Once the application screen is displayed, select the DVD name from the sidebar (if you do not see it, to solve it, click on the View button in the upper left and choose the Show Sidebar option from the proposed menu), then expand the File menu , click on the New Image option and on that Image from [CD title] .
In the further window shown, set the Master DVD / CD option from the Format drop-down menu , select the folder in which to save the image file via the Located in menu and proceed with copying the data by pressing the Save button . You will then be returned to a file in CDR format that you can use as a common ISO file .
If you want to transform the CDR file into a real file in ISO format, you can do it by opening the Terminal , selecting the relative icon (the one with the black window and the line of code ) that you can always find in the Go> Utility menu and entering the following command followed by pressing the Enter key on the keyboard.
sudo hdiutil makehybrid -iso -joliet -o [percorso ISO] [percorso CDR], where instead of [percorso ISO]and [percorso CDR]you have to enter the full path of the image file you want to obtain and of the source file.
In case Disk Utility does not satisfy you, you can consider resorting to the use of other third-party solutions useful for the purpose, such as those I told you about in my guide on how to duplicate a DVD with Mac .