DVDFab DVD Copy Review

Full review

DVDFab DVD Copy has evolved from previous products DVD to DVD and Platinum. We wanted to see how things have improved and what the evolution has created.

Setup

DVDFab DVD Copy requires Windows 11, 10, 8 or 7. The initial install was very quick but then requested a system reboot. After reboot, and upon opening the program for the first time, the install completed before then checking online for updates.

Once installed there are settings options available via the tick top right of the program. This will suit more advanced users who like to control options like Codec selection, Burning Engine and Write Speed. You can also control the log files to help with diagnosis of any issues.

Copy features

DVDFab DVD Copy offers 8 DVD copy modes:

Full Disc – copies the entire DVD

Main Movie – copies the longest title on the disc (this is pre-selected but you can easily change the selection if for any reasons it’s wrong)

Split – copies a DVD-9 across to two DVD-5 discs with quality loss

Clone – offers 1:1 bit-to-bit copy so an exact copy of the source disc

Customize – lets you to select what you want from the source DVD to burn to the target. For instance you can change the default audio, removing unnecessary content, change the order of the titles or only copy some of the chapters.

Customize Split – basically a combination of Split and Customize, so if you have a lot of Custom content from the source disc you’d like to copy you can split it over two DVD-5 discs

Merge – combines several titles from several sources onto one DVD, really useful for making compilations.

Write Data – burns content from your hard drive (e.g. an existing DVD folder or ISO image file) to a new disc. This function can also convert a DVD folder to an ISO disc image file if required.

Each option gives you a number of settings so more advanced users can really control exactly what is copied.

You can burn to a blank DVD disc with DVD+R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R DL, and DVD-R DL all supported. You can also compress DVD-9 to a single DVD-5 whilst keeping reasonably good quality output. Else you can save your DVD movie to your hard drive for burning later (as a DVD Folder or ISO image).

A feature we especially like is the ability to copy discs that are badly scratched or damaged, with the fall back of being able to take of just the main movie if other content is unreadable. Most VOB read errors can allegedly be recovered (though this wasn’t put to the test).

NTSC and PAL are both supported though you can’t convert between formats (e.g. you cannot convert from NTSC to PAL or PAL to NTSC).

This current version also removes copy protections such as CSS, CPPM, RC, RCE, APS, UOPs, ARccOS and RipGuard, and registered users will get the latest updates to ensure any new copy protections are also catered for.

Speed & quality

DVDFab utilizes multiple CPU’s if available so can offer very fast copy speed, claiming as low as 10mins for a DVD. We couldn’t replicate that kind of speed on our test platform but it was still around 30mins, which is faster than most of the competitors we tried.

Quality was generally very good, especially 1:1 clones and DVD-9 to DVD-9 copies.

Ease of use

The user interface is well designed and looks good. Copy mode is selected on the left, with Source and Target set at the top. The rest of the program window covers the options specific to the mode selected (e.g. selecting chapters when customizing a disc). Everything is pretty intuitive whilst offering a good degree of control.

There is a preview screen which can be popped up bottom left, which allows you to view the selected content (in the correct ratio) before you start the copy process to avoid setup errors.

The progress of each copy is reported in detail so you know where you stand.

Help & support

Clicking the question mark top right of the program window gives you access to the online tutorials. These tutorials cover the whole of the FabDVD suite and aren’t listed by product. There is a search box but that actually searches the whole site and not just the tutorials, so it can be hard to find the tutorial you need. If/when you do the individual tutorials are pretty good with screenshots and often videos. There is also an FAQ on the website (where you can view by product), and good email support options available.

Overall

For core DVD copying DVDFab DVD Copy is hard to beat, offering more copy modes and advanced settings than most competitors. It does inversely lack functionality the competition often includes as standard, such as DVD ripping and Video conversion which many users would expect.

DVDFab does offers all of this functionality in separate programs (such as DVD Ripper) which are available separately or all together as part of the DVDFab All-in-one suite. Blu-ray Copy is also available.