If you're looking for a powerful and supereasy program that copies DVDs to a number of formats--including DVD, VCD, SVCD, 3GPP and 3GPP2 (for 3G cell phones), and even MP4 and H.264--InterVideo's DVD Copy 4 Platinum (H.264 Edition) is worth more than a glance. At around $79.95, it may strike some as expensive. Another $20 will buy you Nero 7 Ultra or Roxio Easy Media Creator 8--full-blown suites that do basically the same things plus a whole range of other disc-related chores. Still, the program's short learning curve and ease of use overcome some minor foibles, and H.264 and MP4 encoding will appeal to those who don't need the features of a more complete suite.
Setting up InterVideo DVD Copy 4 is easy, if a bit ponderous. You must install DVD Copy 4 and the bundled WinDVD 7 player separately, entering different serial numbers for each. The setup routine offers to install a free version of QuickTime so that DVD Copy 4 and WinDVD can deal with those proprietary media formats. In keeping with the increasingly common practice of bundling toolbars and other Web-oriented programs along with software packages, InterVideo asks if you want to install Google's Desktop Search engine. It's a sign of the times, but we wish the choice didn't default to Yes. Unfortunately, what it didn't give us an option on was the installation of a virtual CD drive. DVD Copy 4 quietly installed this piece of software without notification and we didn't even notice for three weeks. What we did notice was that our system's performance took a hit, and it took us a while to figure out why. Fortunately, it's easy to get rid of: just go to your Device Manager and uninstall it.
InterVideo DVD Copy 4's interface is extremely attractive; it's also easy to learn, thanks to its intuitive icons and logical work flow. Our only real complaint is that InterVideo forgot to provide a way to create a new folder when selecting the destination for some jobs. This means you have to cancel out of the save task, manually create a new folder for the job, and restart the task. The program offers to create a destination folder based on the type of output, but you can't name it. That's a minor nit but bothersome to experienced users nonetheless.
InterVideo should ponder renaming DVD Copy 4, because the program goes well beyond copying unprotected movie discs. It can merge movies from several discs onto one; create DVDs from many types of movie files (for example, MPEG, AVI, MOV--even straight from the Internet); and reencode to MPEG-1 (VCD), MPEG-2 (SVCD and DVD), WMV, DivX, and even the 3GPP and 3GPP2 formats for cell phones. Brand new in the latest version of the Platinum edition is H.264 encoding in Sony PSP-, Apple iPod-, and PC-compatible flavors, plus MPEG-4 with PSP, iPod, and Game Boy output. (If you're not familiar with it, H.264 is about four times as efficient as MPEG-2 and is the codec standard least likely to get voted off the high-definition island.) DVD Copy 4 will also grab audio tracks from DVD and DVD-Audio discs and output them to audio, MP3, or WMA CDs.
You can pick and choose what you want to copy: the entire DVD; the main movie alone, sans menus, trailers, and extras; or individual titles from the disc. You can also burn disc structures to your hard drive as well as burn ISO image files to DVD. In light of the integrated MP3 and WMA encoding, we were a bit surprised that the program didn't go a step further and rip audio CDs--DRM concerns, we suppose.
InterVideo DVD Copy 4 nicely straddles the line between ease of use and tweakability, sticking with a "fit to target" model that simply encodes at the highest bit rate that will fit on your CD or DVD, including dual/double-layer DVD. If you want control over the more esoteric aspects of encoding, you can opt for Nero's Recode (part of the Nero Ultra suite), but the vast majority of users will be just fine with InterVideo's approach.
One problem we did run into was InterVideo DVD Copy 4's inability to save or track a DVD-merge project midstream. If you're combining multiple DVDs, the program obviously has to copy data to the hard drive first. However, if your optical drive or OS freezes up, as ours did when we inserted one bad disc during a merge, you'll have to start from scratch, even though the files are still where the program copied them. We also found that the first release of the program had a tendency to lock up when using some older DVD burners--a problem that the current Gold and Platinum versions have fixed.
DVD Copy 4 poses one of those head-scratching purchase decisions. You can get a lot more features with a suite, but DVD Copy 4 does what it does extremely well. And since Roxio's Easy Media Creator has no H.264 support, if you're not ready to switch or upgrade to Nero, InterVideo's pride and joy is worth a look. (For a suggested retail price of $49.95, InterVideo also sells DVD Copy 4 Gold, which has fewer features and does not support H.264.)
In light of DVD Copy 4's extremely intuitive design, we'll call InterVideo's support adequate. Don't buy the software until you're ready to use it, because free telephone support is available only for the first 90 days from the time of purchase. On top of that, you have to pay for the toll call, and the support center is open only on weekdays from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. PT. Web support is also weak: InterVideo merely provides online registration, an extremely limited FAQ, and the opportunity to send e-mail to a techie 24/7. InterVideo doesn't host live Web support or user forums where you can ask others questions or see their complaints. However, you can download a limited demo, which is a convenient way to find out if you like the program. Once you've registered your copy, you can download a manual or a software update.
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