DCS - Direct Copy Suite Review by CDR-Zone

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Posted on Thursday 26th of June, 2003 at 14:03 by SirQUK
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Its test drive time again, this is the first review of the DVD Copy suite from SAD.This software is new on the market and is promising loads of good things. So, did it pass all expectations, was it on the right lines, or is it worthy of the CDR bin?!!

Read on to find out what we of CDR-Zone thought of this software:

DCS is the complete package for best quality in copying: Your remedy for frumpy Video-CDs, for your daily frustration with conversions and plain stereo audio. Copy your DVDs in DVD or near-DVD quality, faster than you ever ripped them to MPEG-1 (VCD) and with all the audio tracks you want.

Installation:

The installation is in wizard style and is very straight forward, even the users with not to much knowledge can install the program without any problems.

Usage:

Backup DVD Video:

This option enables the user to make a backup of their original DVD or images that are stored on the harddrive. DCS achieves this in several ways, depending on the size of the original DVD or image file:

Backup main movie only:

If this is enabled, all extras of the DVD-Video will be removed. (This option is only available if the options Create DVD Image and Compress DVD are disabled.) If it is still too large, it can only be stored in a harddisk folder or an image file.

Create DVD image:

Copies the whole content of a DVD-Video 1:1 into an image file on your harddisk which then can be mounted into a virtual drive and used like a normal DVD. Images loaded in a virtual drive can be compressed and copied again. If your filesystem is not NTFS, the image file will be split automatically, if necessary. In this case, the image cannot be written back to a DVD-recordable!

Compress DVD:

If the sole main movie is still too large for recording, you can decide to compress the original in part or as a whole. This results in a (usually minor) loss of picture quality.

Splitting:

If you enable none of the reduction methods and decide to create no image, you can split the content of the original DVD into two parts which fit on DVD-recordables (or you can have DCS do the splitting) by clicking on Next. The DVD content will be stored on two DVD-recordables.

Additional options:

Do not delete temporary files: All files created by DCS during the process will remain in the temporary harddisk folder.

Extract Chapters:

This option enables the user to extract chapters directly from the DVD-Video to harddisk for when you might want to watch them with DVD player software such as Power DVD or Win DVD.

Note:

Single chapters can only be copied with one audio track. All other languages are discarded. You can play the extracted chapters with any DVD player software on your computer.

This option is also very useful if you want to extract all but your last chapter from the DVD if the last chapter only containd credits and therefore give the user more space for quality on there finished DVD backup.

Backup DVD Data:

This option is self explanatory and works very well. I was able to back up a mixed bag of MP3 folders and text files etc with no problems at all.

Results:

Quality:

The movie only option achieved excellent results with my backup test, but there was expected quality loss if i chose to keep all titles and extras. The resulting quality was still very exceptable and very close to other DVD transcoding software.

Ease of use:

The good thing with this option was that DCS automatically picked the best options for the backup depending on the size of the original DVD, so that it would fit on the DVD media used . The user of course can choose to use his/her own options if desired.

The title compression screen that followed also had a choose of automatic resize, custom resize or manual resize, though the automatic settings are very good and used during the test.

If some files are left in the destination directory,DCS will prompt the user to remove them or not if so desired.

Speed:

The transcoding took a little over 45 minutes to transcode on my setup, which is about the same as DVD2one takes in VBR mode and the same as DVDShrink took to do a full backup of the same DVD, though SAD promise us faster compression times in future updates and a improvement in quality.

Compatibility:

After the transcoding was completed the user will be prompted to write to DVD, but for the test this was skipped so that the transcoded movie could be previewed before burning on the DVD and the quality could be checked firstly.

The result was a 4.36 GB movie which will use the total size of a DVD-R, DVD+R, etc., meaning you will get most benefit from the space available on the DVD-R, DVD+R, etc.

Unfortunally it seems to been impossible to preview the ifo files with Power DVD(Only the .VOB files could be previewed), or open it in any other program to preview quality except for IFO Edit, so it seems there still is some work left to do on the filesystem, which is promised to be solved in future updates.

System Requirements:

Windows 98/ME,
Windows 2000,
Windows XP,
Pentium(R) or 100% compatible CPU with MMX technology,
DVD drive,
DVD recorder,
sufficient free harddisk space (depending on the DVD, up to 10 GB).

Price:

39.95 Euro

Pros And Cons:

Pros:

14 day fully functional trial! - always welcome
Fast
Easy User Interface
Gives accurate filesize
Good quality in movie only mode
Can rip individual chapters
Plenty of options
Very good and easy to understand help file, built into GUI
Rips Encrypted DVD

Cons:

Some transcodings fail to preview in media players
File system issues need to be fixed asap
Full movie backup quality could be improved

Conclusion:

Good speed, nice quality, easy to use and gives you exactly what you want - the maximum amount possible of DVD usage, but there are still problems with compatibilty. Maybe the DVD would have worked if it was recorded to DVD-R, DVD+R, etc., but it is better to preview the film quality in a media player first before you burn it otherwise you might waste a DVD-R, DVD+R, etc.

Tested on: