Quick CloneDVD review

home - news

Posted on Thursday 19th of June, 2003 at 11:07 by SirQUK
Source:

Today I got to test drive the new Clone DVD. As there are already some good Clone DVD reviews, i thought i would do a quick run through it for our CDR Zone readers. CloneDVD is a software to transcode a movie or record any DVD Video project on your hard drive to DVD. CloneDVD is not a DVD ripper and cannot bypass CSS encrypted DVDs.

Experience top quality home theatre! CloneDVD extracts, transcodes and writes any orginal DVD title you like to a single recordable DVD. Be impressed by the program speed and the amazing image quality of the movie copy. A special transcoding technology compresses your choice of DVD title with your selected audio and subtitle streams to one DVD Recordable. A Video Preview plays an overview of all selectable DVD titles. CloneDVD is very easy to use. Our unique Film Strip will guide you step by step through all settings - very suitable for beginners!

Install:

Install is nice and simple,using the standard Clone CD Installer.

Usage:

Clone DVD uses a new type of interface, using a rolling film display rather than the usual wizard style interface. On the CloneDVD mainscreen you will have 3 choices:

COPY DVD TITLES:

This allows you to add one or more titles from a DVD to your DVD Backup, Including either preserving or removing the origial menus if so required by the user.

CLONEDVD:

The main CloneDVD mode, here you clone a dvd from your harddrive and make it fit onto a standard DVD 5 disc.You also have the option to select which audio and subtitle streams to keep on your backup DVD.
Once you have decided which titles/audio, and subtitles you wish to keep, then you come to the DVD burning screen. Here you can choose not to delete the created DV files after burning. This is very handy if indeed you widh to edit these files l8er to bypass trailers at the beginning of a film and go straight to the main menu. Clone DVD does not include this fuction.

WRITE EXISTING FILES:

This screen allows the user to write to DVD, either a set of Vob/Ifo files or a sISO/UDF image to DVD. This is handy if you have already created an ISO with a DVD ripping software such as DVDDecrypter of ImG Tools, and for some reason, that software does not write properly. You can also choose a volume label here too.

This is only quick review, but i would like to take a few moments to point out the pros and cons of CloneDVD.To me a perfect DVD software would have:

The ability to rip CSS encrypted DVDs

Give you choice of compression ratios or be able to hit the desired size perfectly by itself

Give preview of titles on DVD, so that you may decide what you do and dont want to keep

Be user friendly

Have the option of either Full DVD backup, or movie only CloneDVD does not let you Rip encrypted DVDS to your Hard drive, which DVDShrink and DVDXCopy will.This is only a small problem though, as there are alot of great software that will let the user Rip CSS encrypted DVDs. CloneDVD also does not let the user decide what compression ratios to use, and does it automatically depending on what size the project is - this is a good good thing as it it hits 4.36 GB consistently in my tests. There is a title preview function which is a must have nowadays to let the user see what they can/cannot leave off the DVD.there is also a range of DVD modes the user can call upon like movie only/ full backup/UDF ISO mode, which covers all needed aspects of a DVD backup. The user interface couldnt be more friendly and a big thumbs up must goto Ollie for this part of the software!

Conclusion

The transcoding speed is very quick also, taking just 16 minutes to transcode 7.2 Gb down to 4.36 Gb, including all menus and extra features, and the resulting quality was as good as any DVD software i have tried ( maybe even a little better ).CloneDVD does not incorporate anything new that cannot be found in any other DVD software, but it does put it all in one easy to use and very pleasing interface, and does give very good results.It is not a click and burn software for the novice though, DVDXCopy Express for example take one click of a button to give you a movie only backup to DVD in roughly 22 mins.The resulting DVDR had no problems being played on my Cyberhome 512 and Bush 2523 standalone DVD players.