The DVDFab copy software from Fengtao Software Inc. is a well-known DVD backup software application among the DVD movie lovers for more than 13 years. Recently, the company introduced the 10th generation of DVDFab, bringing the biggest changes to this already mature software in its history. Below is our review based of our hands-on experience with the redesigned DVD copy software .
Compared with the competitors on the market, DVDFab DVD Copy is the most versatile and powerful DVD backup solution I ever met so far. The software gives DVD lovers a dozen of different options on how to backup a legally owned DVD disc for home use purpose. There are 6 backup modules available to choose from, depending on the actual situation, users can have different choices at different times.
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The Full Disc Module
Literally, the Full Disc copy module copies the all the contents on a DVD movie disc to another blank DVD disc, be it a single layer DVD-5 or double layer DVD-9 blank disc in any format including DVD±R and DVD+RW. However, with the popularity and constant price decrease of the HDDs, people who still copy DVDs to blank media are becoming rare; instead, they are more likely to backup their large DVD collections to a home computer that might serve as the multimedia hub at home. In this regard, this DVD copy software allows users to copy DVDs off the original discs and then save them on computer HDDs as DVD image files with a file extension as .iso, or DVD movie folders. Both of these files can be played via most software player applications. Fengtao Software also has a media player software for this.
As a side note: the wrench icon behind the movie title leads to the Advanced Settings panel, where users are allowed to do some custom settings, such as changing the output size between DVD-5 and DVD-9, renaming the output volume label. Be caution that the “Copy DVD-Video (VIDEO_TS folder)” option is activated by default, and users have to make sure that option stays that way, otherwise, there will be nothing copied in the final result.
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The Main Movie Module
The main movie refers to the feature-length movie title on a disc, which usually is the one with the longest runtime, containing the most chapters, audio tracks and subtitle streams. The great advantage of copying only the main movie title is that it saves a lot of time in the process, and in the meantime saves room on the blank media or the hard drive. Suppose you have hundreds of DVDs to be copied, choosing this module will definitely your best option. Note that sometimes, there might be more than one main movie title on a DVD disc, such as an entire season of a TV Show on one DVD disc. In that case, users will have to manually pick up the episode to make the backup.
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The Clone/Burn Module
The Clone/Burn copy module is made for those who cannot stand any quality loss and always like to make 1:1 bit to bit copy of the original DVD disc. In this case, this copy module is the best shot they can take. But bear in mind that this mode has its limitations, if users want to clone an original DVD disc, they can set the target destination either as the optical drive or a location from the computer hard drive, meaning that they can either burn to another blank disc or output an DVD image file; however, if the source is an ISO image file from the hard drive, the only option to clone/burn is to burn the resulting file to blank media.
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The Merge Module
The Merge module works in the event when users want to put more DVD titles onto one single disc. Usually, this kind of need seldom happens, but when it does, this copy module from DVDFab DVD Copy can be a lot of help. It helps users put the main movie title from two or more DVDs into one. That said, do bear in mind that if you put more titles on to one disc, you might need to compress the contents a little bit, but don’t worry, there won’t be any noticeable quality downgrade.
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The Split Module
Contrary to the Merge module, the Split module helps to split a DVD-9 movie disc or a seasonal DVD disc onto two blank DVD-5 discs, without any quality loss. Users are given the freedom to distribute the contents onto Disc 1 and Disc 2, for example, putting the episode 1 to 10 of Arrow Season 4 onto Disc 1 and the rest episodes onto Disc 2.
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The Customize Module
The last copy module is the Customize module. As implied, this copy module lets users make all the decision on what content from the given DVD disc to copy, they can choose whatever they want, and ditch the unwanted contents. Unlike the Main Movie module which only copies one title at a time, the Customize module can copy more than two titles at one time. So, the real choice is on users! This can be very helpful when users want to pick out several episodes from a seasonal DVD to back up, for example, copy the episode 1, 5, 7, 15, and 20 of Arrow Season 4.
What surprised me a lot is that when the installation wizards finished, I saw two shortcut icons appeared on my desktop, one is normally named as DVDFab 10 as it supposed to be, while the other is dubbed as DVDFab Mini. With the strong curiosity, I clicked the icon for the mini version, and instead of the normal version, what came up after the flash screen is totally a different face. I then went to DVDFab’s official website and did find something there. DVDFab Mini is designed for users to get the copy and conversion jobs finished without any complex settings like users do in the full version. I found this extremely interesting and can’t help giving it a try immediately.
I picked up one DVD from my personal collections, after kicking it in the optical drive, then I found there are only two copy modules available, namely the Full Disc and Main Movie modules, and users still have three options to save the copied DVDs, one is to save them as ISO image files on HDDs and the other option is to save them as DVD folders, also on the HDDs, and the 3rd choice is to burn to blank media.
Another interesting thing I’ve noticed is that this DVDFab Mini does not run at all if you’ve already started up the DVDFab 10 full version. After confirming with the service staff, I got to know that this is exactly what has been planned, the two versions are not allowed to work side by side at the same time.
Fengtao Software entered the market and then established its reputation with its DVD copy software and DVD ripper software 13 years ago. With so many years’ evolvements and improvements, it has built a very solid fan base across the entire planet and its product portfolio has now grown into a multiple solution package, including Blu-ray related product, Cinavia removal solution, authoring solution, data care solution and media playback solution as well. Among all those products, DVD copy software is still the very best option on the market, and it has become the must-have tool to every DVD movie lover out there. To order this product or any other relevant products that may interest you, their official website can be found here at www.dvdfab.cn
