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wrote:

> Is it possible, and if so, what's a good program, to copy a video DVD, or
> actually parts of one, to a hard drive, so that the video can be watched without
> having to put the DVD disk in the drive? I have some music instructional videos
> I'd like to be able to watch on the computer, and be able to jump back and forth
> to different lessons without having to stop and keep changing disks. These are
> commercially bought DVD's that I own. I'm using Windows 7 Professional. Thanks.

You already have the program needed to play the video files on the DVD;
else, you wouldn't have been watching them on the DVDs to now consider
putting them on your hard drive. So why not just use Windows Explorer
to copy the .vob file and load it in whatever player you used before?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VOB

If you don't want to get stuck on a menu screen asking you to select
play or get stuck watching the preview movies that are shoved in your
face before you actually get to play the real movie, use something like
DVDshrink to extract just the main movie stream. Even when I am copying
a movie to another DVD (to keep the original as the backup and wear out
the copy), I use DVDshrink to just copy the movie. Then I can just
insert the disc and the movie starts playing. No menus, no previews.