I found myself facing an interesting question today regarding DVD duplication on Mac OSX (I’m using Tiger). I have created many DVD’s using iDVD but I had yet to need to do this.
Is there an easy way to duplicate an existing DVD on Mac OSX?
The short answer is yes. The best part of this is that everything you need to be able to do this is built right into Mac OSX.
The first thing you need to do is put the DVD you wish to duplicate into your drive. It will probably try to open and play the DVD so make sure you exit out of the DVD Player application.
Create A Local Image Of The DVD
Open up the Disk Utility application. This can be found in your Applications/Utilties folder.
When this first opens, you’ll see the DVD drive list on the left side. Select the appropriate DVD drive for the source list and click the “New Image” button.
Enter the file name for the image and select the location you want to save it to. For the settings, select the follow:
- Image Format: DVD/CD master
- Encryption: none
Click the Save button and it will create an image of the DVD on your local hard drive.
Burn The DVD Image
Now that you have an image of the DVD on your hard drive, you can create as many copies of this disc as you need.
You should see the disc image file (.cdr) listed on the left side of the Disk Utility application. Select the image you would like to burn and click the “Burn” button.
Insert a blank DVD disk into the drive and click the “Burn” button.
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank you so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So simple, even a banker could figure it out!
I have a different twist: I tried this with Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival (II), for the sole purpose of ripping an audio CD from the soundtrack*, and Disk Utility program DENIED it (copying, that is; and I don’t have the exact message here, sorry). I thought it strange but,
could the disk be protected in some way? (Typically they’re not, right?).
*My intentions are solely honorable; I just the love the soundtrack, the guest artist’s versions of their covers (plus, of course, EC’s accompaniment, and I’d like to burn it to play at home and in my car. (Plus, no one foresees this coming out as a separate CD version because of all the b.s. licensing agreements that would have to be arbitrated ’til doomsday.)
Can this be done on OX X Tiger? (iDVD, GarageBand, etc.?)
oh. my. god. THANK YOU LIKE BUNCHES AND BUNCHES!!!! i had been trying to figure this out for like months. youre a total lifesaver….
Yes Dan it can be done on OSX Tiger and even Leopard.
I found detailed step by step guide on Duplicating DVD’s on a mac.
http://www.machoe.com/1371/duplicate-dvd-on-a-mac.html
Thanks for the tip, I remembered there was something on my mac but i couldn’t remember what it was called.
I have a related question: I’m trying to burn the dvd onto my computer bc it’s a dvd that I made and that I want to send to people I know to show off. Is there a way I can do this? Or is it just for copying?
@alex
I think what you are asking about is ripping the DVD to your computer. This will give you the video from the DVD in a file format that can be uploaded to Youtube or emailed to a friend (assuming it isn’t too big).
I would recommend using Handbrake for this. It is as easy as selecting the DVD drive as the source and using one of the preset settings to get the video quality you are looking for.
Thanks so much for the instructions but can I encrypt the copy to prevent others from copying it!
wow! you are totally a mac maniac…
Thanx a bunch. Been looking for apps that do exactly this. How come Mac is so usable for 95%, except when it comes to this kind of (almost hidden) tools?
Tried to burn but received an error “not enough room”
Are there larger blank DVD’s I can buy
nice. very nice.
I’ve done this process with four different DVD titles and every time I try to play the duplicate copy on my DVD player I get a message that says “format unsupported.” Is there a way around this?
Thanks beforehand.
I spent at least 2 hours trying to understand Apple’s instructions; unfortunately I don’t understand “Apple”.
These instructions were clear and concise. I had 3 copies of the DVD that I needed within 15 minutes. Thank you very much. I appreciated your posting.
good job ! thanks for sharing.
Problem: my new copied DVD generates an error in DVD Player: could not verify copy protection, disc could not be played, error -70025.
Help?
I’ve tried duping a dvd of a slideshow created in iDVD using the disk utility as you described but after burning the disk and reinserting it into my laptop os 10.6.4 it does not auto start or even play. I’m hoping to give this dvd to someone with a dvd duping machine for 100 dupes but now wondering if it’s even possible. I don’t want to make 100 using iDVD as this would take at least a couple of days. Ant ideas??? Thanks.
David