What is the best way to copy a comercial dvd?
I have a older generation dvd burner, that just burns the usual 4.7 GB dvds. +,- but not RAM.

I normally use nero6 to make dvd videos(just from files on my computer), and they do work in my dvd player. Can i somehow import video from a dvd and then just nero to burn it?

Or are there any free programs, or other programs I can obtain... that would eaisly burn dvds. I willl probably need a program that can compress the dvd a little so it fits on my 4.7 GB. I would get a dual layer burner, but I have never really need to make a copy untill now, so its just not worth it.

dvd shrink and/or dvd decrypter

And at times you may want to throw in AnyDVD

so i have to make a image of the dvd first, using dvd shrink? or does it just converit it right to thoes video and audio files that i drag into the video TS folder in nero.

Easiest way to copy DVDs is to use AnyDVD and CloneDVD. Download them at Slysoft.com. Launch AnyDVD and let it run in the background. Now start CloneDVD and instruct it to copy from the VIDEO_TS folder on the source DVD. Select the appropriate movie title and sound.

(As long as you own it and it's not being made for re-sale)

click the dvd shrink link in my sig

Opinions vary as to which is the best but several do the job fine. If you have nero6 then you can use it too. Use dvd decryptor (free) and copy the dvd to your hard drive (it will remove copy guard). Click the copy entire dvd-video option in start smart. click import and find the folder dvd decryptor copied to. Here is a guide on what to do from their.
http://www.dvd-guides.com/content/view/17/59/
dvd shrink, nero and clone dvd seem to be among the most popular (nero is the most expensive but you already have it).
Like Sportfish said, you may also want to consider anydvd. It runs in the background and takes care of copy protection, region restrictions, user restricted functions etc. If you were to run anydvd, you could skip using dvd decryptor with nero. You can just put the disk in the drive and import the disk directlly. Any dvd will work with nero or clone dvd or dvd shrink or whatever program you want to use.

thanks for all the info. For now im just using dvd shrink. It seems to work pretty well. It copied a dvd to my comp as a ISO and kept the menu intact, although the quality had to be reduced some. I burned it normally with nero and it worked fine. Ill have to try these other progys later

Many people like using dvd decryptor and shrink and they are free. Most of the others have a free trial so you can see if you like them enough to buy them.

Hey ripit Brother.......

This one's for the books. This has to be the all time shortest response I've ever seen from you. No cocktails tonight??

I say both. Use DVD Decrypter => rip then DVD Shrink to shrink it and save as ISO then burn with DVD Decrypter. Do yourself a favor don't use Nero kick it to the curb, you'll have a lot less compatibility problems.

Nero does have it's problems. Luckilly I have not ran into any issues with recode so it has been very easy to use and gives great results. It's pretty fast too. Nero is a buggy suite though. I have had more that my share of problems with nero vision express. My experience has been when it works it works great but when it doesn't work, it can be quite the headache (and I know bugs in various versions of the program cause some of those headaches). Considering how many things it can do, the ease, speed and quality of the output, I think nero is defanatlly worth a try if you already have it. As far as buying it, I was rather pissed that I paid for a program that could transcode and it couldn't, but still, I personally think it is worth having for my uses. Shrink and decryptor wouldn't be so popular if they were not good but nero has it's place too.

I must have been preocupied (or had a stroke or something). I'll try harder to make my next post 3 pages long as usual
As far as the coctails, I only drink once a week at the most (only when I have the next day off) but reading some of my posts I can see how everybody would think that I am always drunk!!!!

Try burning the ISO with DVD Decrypter. I don't know why but I get better results that way than by using Nero