DVD Backup/Burning

I think your easiest bet to back up your DVDs would be to open Disk Utility (in /Applications/Utilities) while your DVD is inserted, and then selecting the DVD in Disk Utility and choosing to create a Disk Image of it (.dmg). This means the iMac makes an exact copy of the DVD onto your hard drive. Then remove the DVD and insert a recordable or rewriteable DVD and burn the disk image onto it.

First, most commercial DVDs are 7G+, so making a .dmg file of a commercial DVD and then trying to burn that to a standard single-layer disc can get a little tricky. In fairness, the intel machine does have the ability to write to a +R dual-layer DVD. Otherwise, you'll need to transcode (compress) the original down to fit the single layer format.

Second, most (recent) commerical DVDs contain CSS copy protection. In short, this protection prevents commercial DVDs from being copied. You can give yours a shot using the Disk Utility method - good luck.

I'm not even going to go into the DMCA violation speech - it's old and tired at this point.

Check out this website HERE, it will answer all of your DVD backup questions.

-Joe

Good link Joe - that about covers it.