321 Studios' DVD XCopy Platinum, A DVD Backup Tool That Helps You but not Bootleggers
Written: Feb 15 '04 (Updated Aug 22 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Fast, quality backups to one recordable DVD
Cons: No hardcopy manual, no help function built into the software
The Bottom Line: Excels at what it claims to do, backs up your DVD's to one, or optionally two, recordable DVD's in fine fashion, and does it quickly.
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| nc10's Full Review: 321studios DVD X Copy Platinum Full Version OEM fo... |
DVD XCopy Platinum is a software package that makes it possible for DVD owner’s to make backup copies of “copy protected” commercial DVD’s. Anyone with a DVD read/write drive can make high quality back ups of commercial DVD’s, compressing the content to fit on a single recordable DVD with only a very small loss in quality, or to two DVD's with no compression. XCopy quickly compresses commercial DVD’s (typically containing 7-8gb of data) to fit onto recordable DVD’s (which hold 4.7gb of data). I installed DVD XCopy Platinum on a 2.66 ghz Dell 4550 desktop PC with 4X DVD writer and about an hour later had a working backup of the first DVD I tried to copy.
Though most agree that its legal to make backup copies of software, music & video DVD’s, and audio CD’s that you own (“fair use”), circumventing an encryption scheme to make those backups may be in violation of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). Some feel there is a risk of violating patents covering the encryption scheme. 321Studios, on one side, and several movie companies and Macrovision on the other side, are in court arguing over whether or not the different XCopy programs violate the DMCA, and whether or not this software violates Macrovision’s patents. Recently (March, 2004), courts required 321 Studios to stop producing this product, though a few stores have stocked copies that are still being sold. Hopefully DVD XCopy will survive in some form and the courts will eventually decide to allow users to make “fair use” copies of media they own. During the install and use of DVD XCopy, and during playback of copied DVD’s, 321 Studios’ makes it quite clear that the software is to be used only for copying DVD’s that you own. 321 Studios incorporates several “features” in their software and marketing plan that limits its usefulness for pirating DVD’s for resale, while leaving the software fairly easy for home users to be able back up DVD’s that they own. These features (taken from the 321 Studios’ website) include:
- An eight-second video warning, similar to the FBI warning found at the beginning of many DVD movies, alerting viewers of the backup copy that the DVD is not an original and is to be only used for non-commercial, personal use.
- An electronic watermark that can connect any backup copy made with DVDXCOPY back to the original point of purchase, allowing 321 Studios to remotely de-activate the software and prevent further misuse. At some time, its not clear to me how often, DVD X Copy checks with 321 Studios' servers to determine if your license is still valid. If not, you won't be able to make backups. This provides 321Studios a mechanism for limiting the use of DVDXCopy by bootleggers.
- An embedded bit flag that prevents users from making a copy of a copy using DVD X Copy.
- Not allowing users to copy DVD backups to their hard drive (though with the advent of small, faster centrino laptops with large hard drives and long battery life, and with hard drive based stand alone video players being introduced, I expect someone to release software that will do this)
- DVD X Copy also offers a $10M reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of any person using 321 Studios' software to pirate movies.
The 8 second warning added to the beginning of backup DVD’s explains You are viewing an archival backup copy of a DVD, created solely for the private and personal use of the owner of the DVD from which it was made. Federal copyright laws prohibit the unauthorized reporoduction distribution, or exhibition of coyrighted materials, if any, contained in this archival backup copy. The resale, reproduction, distribution, or commercial exploitation of this archival backup copy is stricktly forbidden. We ask you to respect the rights of copyright holders.
UPATE, August, 2004: Most of the recent court decisions have gone against 321 Studios. DVD X Copy is no longer being produced, and, 321 Studios has ceased operation. A few of their products are still available on line, and a few support FAQ's about the product are still available at www.321studios.com
Installation
I received my copy of DVD X Copy Platinum as a download from 321 Studio’s website. I had requested the copy for the purpose of writing this review, and it was supplied at no cost (Thanks!). Installation is straightforward, though at the end of the installation you’ll be prompted to license id and password (included with your purchase), and then be asked to “activate” your copy online or phone. If you reinstall the software, you’ll need to reactivate it. DVD X Copy Platinum can be activated 3 times, though if you need to activate again, you can request another activation via the online forums or phone.
I installed DVD X Copy Platinum on a Dell 4550 desktop with a 2.66ghz Pentium IV cpu, 768mb ram, Dell 4X DVD writer (a rebadged NEC 1100A), a Nvidia graphics card, Soundblaster Live sound card, two hard drives, and a LiteOn 52X cd writer running windows XP.
Using DVD XCopy Platinum
Before using X Copy the first time, many users will need to run the “DRIVE SELECT” utility found in the XCopy program group on your start menu. This utility is used to select which writer on your system will be used to burn dvd’s. I have a cd writer and a dvd writer, and XCopy would not work until I ran this utility and selected the dvd writer.
Installation of X Copy Platinum puts three applications on your system,
- X Copy Express This utility offers one button backups of your DVD’s, automatically compressing content on the originally to fit onto a single 4.7gb recordable DVD. This utility is also called “simple mode”. This mode does offer a few options, whether or not to include subtitles, which audio language to include from the original DVD, or to include all data (using the “entire disk” option) from the original DVD. (This product differs from the original DVD X Copy, which did not compress data to fit onto one DVD.) XCopy Express is also available as a standalone program, for about $60, and should fill the needs of many DVD owners.
- XCopy Advanced – Offers much more control over backups, selecting which parts to backup, how much to compress different parts of a DVD, or whether to copy the original one DVD with compression or two recordable dvd’s without compression.
- DVD X Rescue – a tool to recover movie DVDs, Music CDs, Data discs, and photo discs. Fortunately, I don't have any damaged disks to recover, so I couldn't test this software, but it appears to be easy to use, and recovers data from cd's and dvd's to your hard drive, while video DVD's are restored to recordable DVD's.
A few DVD backups that I made are described below:
X Copy Xpress (Simple Mode)
I used X Copy Express to copy several DVD’s. Once of the first was the first DVD from the two dvd set of the movie Once Upon a Time in the West, Special Collector's Edition (Charles Bronson is the "good guy", Henry Fonda is his nemesis and is truely evil). This DVD contained the movie itself, with several features being included on the second DVD. I copied the DVD to a Verbatim 4X “plus” R recordable DVD, selecting the “entire disc” option, after first telling XPress that the DVD I intended to copy was not borrowed or rented. After hitting the start button, XPress took about 35 minutes to read the DVD, and another 15 minutes to burn it to a recordable DVD disk. The original DVD contained 7.84gb of data, the “backup” was compressed to 4.37gb.
I own two DVD players, an APEX AD-1500, and an APEX AD-2500, both inexpensive models, but also models which would not have any problems reading recordable DVD’s and CD’s. The copied DVD worked perfectly on both players. Even when zoomed in at 2X or 4X on my 25” Panasonic TV, the picture was fine, and it is very difficult to note any quality difference between the copy and the original, even when zoomed at 4X and standing close to the screen (on my 25” TV, at least). The backup DVD also worked as well as the original when I played it back on my computer using PowerDVD.
Another DVD I copied with XPress was a DVD containing 3 episodes from the excellent, but short lived, SciFi series Firefly. Initially, rather than copy the complete DVD, I checked the box to only copy the English audio stream and no subtitles. This appeared to work fine, but when I played back the copied DVD, only the first episode was included on the backup DVD. I tried making a copy again, this time checking the “entire disk” option, and the backup included all three episodes. The quality of the backup was nearly indistinguishable from the original. Time required to make the backup was a little over an hour, and the backup was made to a DVD “plus” RW disk, which worked well in both of my dvd players.
In both cases, X Copy XPress was able to create an excellent backup, despite compressing the data size by over 40% to fit it onto a single recordable DVD. The time required on my system was about 1 hour, including burn time, quite impressive if you've ever spent time encoding video for DVD's.
XCopy Platinum (Advanced Mode)
One of the DVD’s I tried to back up with XCopy Platinum was the first DVD from the six DVD set Babylon 5: No Surrender, No Retreat , the complete 4th season (highly recommended). X Copy Platinum recognized two "titles" on this DVD, one containing all of the first four episodes of season 4, and the second, much smaller, containing previews and a short commentary. XCopy projected that the files would be compressed by 43% from their original size on the backup DVD. X Copy let me adjust the compression ratio of the second title. Lowering or increasing the ratio on the second title correspondingly increased or lowered the ratio on the first title, though the best I could do was raise the ratio on the first title by a couple of percent, since it was so much larger than the second title. I could also choose not to include the second title, providing the best possible copy of the episodes themselves, while still fitting on one DVD.
X Copy Platinum required about 31 minutes to read and compress the DVD, saving the temporary files to my hard drive. Burning the DVD to a 2.4X rated DVD “plus” RW disk required about 22 minutes (a recordable DVD, vs this rewriteable dvd, would have required about 15 minutes to burn). The original 7.9gb of data on the original DVD was compressed to 4.34gb on the copy, indicating it was compressed by about 45%. At this ratio, I couldn’t detect any difference from the original when watching on my TV, though when zoomed to 4X, I thought I could tell video quality was lessened slightly, with the picture being slightly grainy and items were very slightly fuzzy around edges.
I was impressed with how fast X Copy could copy and compress a DVD, and with the resulting quality. Platinum also allows you to copy your favorite DVD's without compression to two DVD's, and set the break point where you want split the video between two DVD's. If you're going to copy to one DVD, X Copy Platinum will allow you to leave out some parts of a DVD, allowing you to make a better copy of the parts that are important.
Support
I’ve seen a few reviews "complaining" that the software has a fairly steep learning curve. Once you’ve made one or two copies with X Copy, its user interface and controls will seem straightforward and easy to use. Unfortunately, there's no help built into the X Copy Platinum software, and only minimal help built into the X Copy XPress software. Combine that with the lack of a hard copy manual, and I think you have a situation where many new users have trouble getting started. There is a very good 150 page pdf manual included with the software, and extensive, very active user forums on the website that provide lots of help for more experienced users. 321Studios provides free updates for the software, and "TDF" files, ie "recipes" for performing optimal backups for many DVD's, on their website. Once you get past backing up your first DVD, you'll find the web support and pdf documentation to be quite good. If you own DVD's and a DVD writer, and want backups, X Copy Platinum provides a quick, high quality solution that also allows you to fine tune your backups to provide the best product.
MFR WEBSITE:
http://www.321studios.com/
http://www.dvdxcopy.com/
DVD XCOPY PLATINUM VERSION 4.0.3.8
Recommended:
Yes
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