MaximumPC 2005 12

DECEMBER 2005 MA XIMUMPC 65

Select a Target Format

DVD Copy 4 offers a number of swell exporting options, including

automatic encoding for the Sony PSP and the option to directly

convert the audio track from your DVD into an iPod-friendly MP3

file. Exporting to Divx Avi will create a single AVI file of just the

movie, playable with any hardware or software player that has the

Divx 6 codec, but we prefer the new Divx format instead, which

will give us a Divx Media file with all the menus, audio options, and

subtitle choices.

Note that some codecs give you the option here to split a single,

large video file into many smaller ones based on either file size or

the DVD chapters. And if you chose to output directly to disc, this

is where you can specify the maximum capacity of your disc, and

indicate whether or not you want DVD Copy 4 to compress the

contents to fit on one disc, be it a CD or DVD.

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DVD Copy 4 will encode to tons of different formats. Just

remember that each format has different options available in

the second drop down menu, shown here.

Select a Copy Mode

If you want to compress the entire contents of your DVD,

leave the Entire Disc radio button checked under Mode and

skip ahead to Step 9, but remember that you’ll be including

a lot of content you’ll probably never watch (such as movie

trailers and dreary “featurettes”), which defeats the purpose of

compression, dude.

You can also check Main Movie, which will tell DVD

Copy 4 to take a stab at guessing which title is

the main movie and select it, and all its chapters,

automatically. Usually, this is blindingly obvious; it’s

almost always the title of the longest duration, and

almost always the first title in the list.

Your third option is Customize, which allows you

to select specific titles and chapters within those

titles for compression. Whether you choose Entire

Disc, Main Movie, or Customize, you’ll still be able to

tweeze out content—including subtitles and alternate

audio tracks—you don’t want (we’ll cover that next).

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Copy mode tells DVD Copy 4 whether

you want to begin by selecting the

entire contents of your disc, just the

main movie, or just a few chapters.

DVD Copy 4 allows you to split a Divx video into multiple files

(making it possible for a DVD to be compressed and burned to

two 800MB CDs, for example).