I have a pioneer ao4 dvd-r drive and have been making backups using Smart Ripper, Rempeg2, spruce up demo, and prassi primo dvd. since spruce up is the demo version, and no longer available to purchase, i'm unable to make dolby 5.1 backups, only 2 channel stereo.

I was wondering if anyone else out there is doing this, and what techniques and software they are using.

thanks

ever considered cracking spruce up? Heres a link to the crack i warn you about annoying popup banners and porno ads, but its the small price to pay for free software, and since they arnt selling it anymore your option are sumwhat limited.

http://www.wtcracks.com/d/?n=33769

I've been using DVD Decrypter, This will make an ISO of the dvd and allows you to burn it with the latest version of nero. This will produce an exact copy of the dvd. The only draw back, is being limited to a single layered single sided dvd. A buddy of mine samples down the video bit rates a bit and strips out all the extra bonus junk to get longer movies to fit on 1 dvd. I've got a couple links around to some good step by step guides, i'll try and dig them up, but no promises.

http://www.dvddecrypter.com/

'IFOEdit' looks like a great tool to burn oversized DVDs on standard DVD-Rs and -RWs...
You can just strip out unnecessary languages/aspects, make the copy region-free and I don't know what else. So it doesn't touch the quality of the video- or audio-streams...

DVDDecrypter up there seems to be even cooler, though...