In the last yr , the Motion Picture Association of America ( MPAA ) deliver the goods various legal injunctions in the U.S. against software system firm 321 Studios , cast the society out of occupation . In light of these upshot , company like Roxio and DVD2one have practiced reason for playing it safe when discharge their DVD - copy software . Legal interrogation aside , the result is high - quality software , although Roxio ’s Popcorn is easier to use .

It ’s impossible to copy a commercial DVD directly with either company ’s software system , because neither product has the ability to off a DVD ’s CSS encoding ( one of the major effect in the 321 Studios case ) nor strip out Macrovision transcript trade protection . But replicate commercial-grade DVD — for backup purposes of course — is still the mean use for these two broadcast .

Both Roxio ’s Popcorn and DVD2oneX contract the information stored on 9 GB , duple - layer videodisc so that they can be recorded onto received 4.7 GB DVD - Rs . If you have a treble - level DVD burner , you do n’t necessitate Zea mays everta or DVD2OneX to contract the picture , but considering that dual - bed videodisc burners are comparatively new , the likeliness that average consumer have one of these drives is quite low .

The companies ’ stated reason for using DVD - copying software package is to duplicate personally possess DVDs to protect them from damage that might make them unplayable . As the Father of the Church of a two - year - former , I can see the need for this first - hand .

Convenient, Fast, and Good

Both programs offer a few ways to whittle down the total data size of a videodisc , and let you pick and take what feature — audio trail , caption , and special lineament — to record to the DVD copy . The fewer options and special features you opt , the better the result video quality . If you want to copy an entire DVD , include all the sound recording , subtitles , and supplementary stuff , these program will recompress all the video at a lower data pace . While this diminishes the video quality slightly , our examination DVD were practically indistinguishable from the originals on typical film titles . However , the longer the total video run - time you compress , the bad the timber gets , with more MPEG-2 artifact in the video . In general , both programs handled 90- to 120 - minute movies very well , but if a moving-picture show was more than 120 minutes longsighted , video caliber was adversely affected .

When it comes to recompression quality , there is hardly a difference between Zea mays everta and DVD2oneX , but there are differences in speed . DVD2oneX recompressed material much quicker than Popcorn . In press the same 7.5 GB of DVD material to a 4.7 GB DVD ( a 41 percentage reduction in size of it ) , DVD2oneX finished almost 19 second earlier than Popcorn , at 48 proceedings .

Popcorn has a decipherable advantage over DVD2oneX because of its built - in DVD - burning software , Roxio ’s goner engine . As a result , to recompress and sunburn a DVD with Popcorn require adjure only one button . DVD2oneX postulate Toast or OS X ’s Disk Utility to burn the DVD .

Special Bonus

Users of Elgato Systems ’ EyeTV line of products may find either program useful . Since EyeTV records television set programs at a fixed data rate in MPEG-2 format , recordings can often be declamatory than 4.7GB — peculiarly when using the High Quality scene . At time , I ’ve been ineffective to burn a DVD with Toast because there was n’t sufficient room on the DVD disc for the computer program material . With Popcorn or DVD2oneX , it ’s possible to make a DVD image of the larger single file with Toast and then recompress it to fit on a normal videodisc .

Macworld’s Buying Advice

Due to the rising interchange rate of the U.S. dollar versus the Euro , DVD2one ’s DVD2oneX is now significantly more expensive than Roxio ’s Popcorn . Considering that Popcorn also include some of Toast ’s videodisk - burning abilities , it definitely has a leg - up on its European counterpart .

DVD2oneX has been on the vista for Macs for a few years and works very well , but Roxio ’s freshman , though slower in compression , brings more to the tabular array . Until the Euro falls again , Popcorn is the better great deal .