Thanks to the Ideal Soft staff for making many replies to questions.

Quote: "It is not just the number of *.pcl files installed (3387) that is disappointing but their size: They are dinky. While the total data f these files is only a little bit over 1 MB, with a 4K cluster size (the most common), the files consume about 18 MB of disk space! Disk space may be cheap but come on! That’s 95% wasted slack space! As you mentioned, they ought to be able to come up with a better storage scheme than that."

Indeed. Why not store them in PCL.ZIP which would be much smaller?

Very clever -- exploring the options I found that I could shrink the main movie to a 1 GB file on my hard disk, a great way to archive movies for reference and research.

Very flexible in spite of the simple appearance -- explore the options folks, and combinations of simple options do offer quite a variety of powerful benefits.

Next I'd like an image dimensions control so I can resize the presentation width and height to my output device, such as my pocket MP3 player screen ... but we have other software to accomplish that, eh?

Kudos to IdeaSoft for hanging in here and responding to user inquiries throughout the day -- other vendors would be well informed to follow IdealSoft's attentive and responsive example.

To those who's computer systems proved incompatible, please take advantage of this experience to explore your own system and understand the choices made by you and your supplying vendors because one of you has done something that is overkill, incompatible, and NOT in your best interests, even though your systems appear to work now for your other applications.

If we see everyone else can install and we can't, then it's a great opportunity for us to troubleshoot our own system to make it suit our own preferences better rather than merely denigrating the vendor here.

That said, I wish installation programs did a better sweep of the end user's environment to confirm compatibility and offer resolutions to problems before continuing an install or load of the program.

Does anyone know of any installer kit that offers such a feature, configurable by the vendor, and smart enough to take exhaustive inventory and refer to solutions?

Slimdrivers offers free driver updates http://download.cnet.com/SlimDrivers-Free/3000-18513_4-75279940.html (email registration required), and there are tons of system scrubber and update utilities, I like IOBit's ASC Advanced System Care today http://download.cnet.com/Advanced-SystemCare/3000-2086_4-10407614.html?part=dl-6271865&subj=dl&tag=button for example.

This Software is amazing thank you
please ignore rest of the comments
this works perfectly.

#84 feel free to contact us, we'll help you as soon as possible and ensure you can have this offer.

NOTE:

If you do everything right, but get a pop-up that says "Invalid Name and registration Code," try it again -- only type in Giveawayoftheday
instead of lower case "giveawayoftheday".

It worked for me.

#20 and #69: Click "Destination", then click "To hard disk".

#67 Really, we include those files in your appdata for you to copy special encrypted dvds. But those files are very small, only hundreds byte. If you like, you also can delete them. Since there's also a copy on our server, if there's a need,our program will auto-download them.

We include them in our setup file so that the users who don't have internet connection also can copy the latest dvds.

#64 It seems there's a mistake. Our program doesn't support upgrade from one version to the other. So your version won't revert to the trial version, unless you re-install it some day in the future.

BTW, it seems you know much about our program, in our old version (3.X.X), we have the function auto-upgrading decryption module, but that means auto-download the decryption files to your local computer every time you open our program. :) We've improved this feature in the later version.

#62 Sorry, there's a bug in our skin in version 4.1. But the version 4.1.2 on our site has solved the minimization issue. Therere still one hour left, please upgrade to version 4.1.2 directly. Note, don't uninstall the current version to avoid losing your registration information, just simple double click the setup file of version 4.1.2 to install, then all the old files will be replaced.

#58 it's quite strange. Version 4.1.2 should have solved this issue, since no users report this kind of issue now except you. If you still have interest in our program, please try the following steps:
1. Insert a dvd disc to your dvd drive.
2. Run Ideal DVD Copy

Let me know if you still got blue screen. If not, then switch the burning engine to ImgBurn to avoid blue screen issue next time. You may click the "Config" button, then click "burning" tab to change the burning engine.

#57 Send us the log file of the program. We'll help you as soon as possible.You may click the icon on the left top corner of Ideal DVD Copy main form, click "export log file" menu to export it.

#54 in fact, our program can shrink main movie. Just choose "Only the main movie" from the "Copy mode" drop-down list, then press start button to begin copying. If it needs to be shrunk, our program will prompt a message to let you decide to shrink or not. If the main movie is less than 4.7GB, you won't get any message.

#51 if you download the setup file here, you will get a readme.txt file, use the code in it to register, then your version will be a full version.

@#72, wosa: It does NOT install under Documents. It puts its files under Users//AppData/Local/IdealSoftware/... like a well-behaved program should. Those 3387 .PLC files will not be included in a backup of your Documents. That's why AppData is separated.

Yes, it might be convenient if they had used a database and the DB would have been 2MB instead of the 13MB that this folder takes up. But I presume that extra 11MB is not going to cripple your system.

I hope this helps.

For those of you experiencing the blue screen of death check out this:
http://www.idealdvdcopy.com/bb/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8032
It solved the problem for me. Thanks to the developer and GAOTD!

A neat little program with a strong ability to overt DRM. However, if the disc is not in the rom before the program is loaded it must be restarted. A "Refresh" button for the source would play good.

The price is too much. There are other software with more capabilities for the same or less.

Features are limited. This would make a great portable app. I believe that may be where you score with this software.

Receive a DEP warning/error upon trying to run. XP w/SP2. Any suggestions?

Easy-as-pie installation on Win 7 x64. Nice interface. Looks great and is much needed. Thanks so much, GAOTD and Ideal DVD Software!

I tried to install this on a MacBook, but all I get is the error "You cannot use this version of the application IdealDVDCopier with this verson of Mac OS X. [OK]"

I don't see links to download different versions of this program for a particular kind of Mac. I'm running 10.5 on an Intel processor Mac. Oh well, with only a few hours to go on the giveaway, I guess I'm out of luck. At least there are free alternatives that should work as well.

Thanks anyway!
Installed it on my brand new state of the art lappie and got BSoD twice straight after registration as the program started up.
The BSoD was a video driver error number, but the drivers are totally up to date.
Uninstalled it and everything's fine again. Won't be bothering with this one. Thanks anyway.

Is there anyway that the publisher can repair the Win 7 SP1 64 bit Blue Screen issue (4.1.2 doesn't work) and have the offer extended so we can have access to this offer?

Installed 4.1.2 version per instructions above on Win 7 SP 1 64 bit Home Premimum. After entering the resgistration code, the program starts up and blue screens OS. Would like to get this but it looks like I won't be able to since the time will expire very soon.

My bad. I went back and double-checked the documentation and the appropriate registration information is listed in the Readme file. Sorry for the false alarm.

I have downloaded the Mac version of Ideal Copy but have not been able to register it because I found no registration code in the documentation. i tried using the information for the PC version but got a "Invalid register information" error message from the program. Does anyone have some experience or information to help me get this installed on my Mac (OS 10.6.8)?

when trying to install it says "invalid key" and i never even had a chance to enter the key in the readme file. THUMBS DOWN!!!!

I'm running WIN7 Home Premium, SP1. Today's offering downloaded, installed and registered with NO problems. I tried a quick partial copy and everything looks good.
Thank you GOTD and Ideal DVD Software.

THANK YOU so much GOTD. Needed to copy Cars 2 for my grandkids, and when I tried it with WIN X Copy Pro, previously downloaded from GOTD, was told I needed to download the latest version but could get it at half price because I had a downloaded free version. Then you present this to us. Downloaded this with no problem, had a bit of a problem with the registering but got that straightened out and made the copy needed and it turned out great. Copied only the main movie....who needs all the previews. Love the fact that it was so easy to use with not alot of ancronyms this technically challenged senior does not understand. So if I can figure it out, anybody can. Using WIN 7, Home Premium. Thank you again.

Easy enough to use your Great Great grandmother could burn one! A DVD that is...

It worked quite well and was easy to use. BETTER then WinX DVD Copy Pro because this software lets you compress a dual layer DVD to a 4.7gb standard DVD. THAT is what sold me on it! NO other video software needed, this did it all. They DO need to fix the bug that when in No GUI mode, the labels to the buttons disappear. That's all I could find wrong with so far.

DaveJ (#67)

It is not just the number of *.pcl files installed (3387) that is disappointing but their size: They are dinky. While the total data f these files is only a little bit over 1 MB, with a 4K cluster size (the most common), the files consume about 18 MB of disk space!

Disk space may be cheap but come on! That's 95% wasted slack space! As you mentioned, they ought to be able to come up with a better storage scheme than that. It begs the question about the quality of the coding for the rest of the app.

Tried copying a dvd and was successful to a temp hard drive location, then tried copying that to a blank dvd and it told me the dvd was not blank, tried 4 of them. shut it down reopened to try again set the source as the HD location and destination and it then it keeps asking me to "Please select a hard disc directory"???
thumbs down!

Like i said #53, Norton blocks installation, but can be completed
after shut "sonar".
I hope Norton will not remove anything later (during a virus-check),
'cos it's obviously just Norton's fault

Crazy:
What about the nonsense installing more than 3300 files .pcl in my USER´s folder (documents...\\...\...\IdealSoftware\IdealDVDCopy\PCL\*.plc

1) the data will soon become rather outdatet
2) but IF you provide such data, better use a database file!!!

Average user will stay with this (in most cases useless) data forever!

Sorry, but BIG thumbs down for this fact.

Version 4.12 downloaded from vendors site (GOTD - Code seems to work with following exceptions)
Does not shrink TS_Folder to make an ISO fit on a normal size 4.7Gb DVD as Nero Recode does, or am I missing something?
The downloaded skins "deform" the window, only the original lte blue skin works properly....

Invalid code on win 7 63 bit and 7 32 bit, It seems when there is some thing on GOTD that I would like to keep and use the is all way a problem

This was asked earlier, with no response: Can I use this program to copy a DVD to my computer?

#47 me2 : Not convinced. Some protection schemes took years for the community to crack, so a magic web download is no "explanation" for a wonder-program that claims to crack all protections the moment they appear on the market.
Sorry, but nobody in the world is capable of doing this. My thumb stays down.

The one issue I have with this program is that it creates 3387 files (yes that is three thousand three hundred eighty seven) in a folder in you App data folder under the IdealDVD folder. Those are not temp files. The directory entries alone eats up a lot of space for that many files. I consider this sloppy programming as there should be a way to put them into one database type file with an index.

As Waruba #13 said, Norton doesn't like this, but it doesn't need
totally shutdown. Closing the "SONAR"-thing is enough.
And yes, it needs registration if you want more than 10 copies.
You'll find needed info in readme.txt-file

No problems downloading and registering on Win7 64. Tested with a DVD from Netflix, copied to ISO without any compression. Flawless. Playback is perfect and all extras preserved. This is easy software to use, fast and efficient. That said, I don't think I'd spend $50 for it as it's rare I copy a DVD and when the need arises would stumble through with free alternatives. However if I copied DVDs on a regular basis, enough to make it the price worthwhile, I think that - to date - this would be my first choice.

Oh!, dont forget to shut off automatic update though or it reverts to trial version?. Didn't see where it says to shut off automatic update. Window says check for Auto update--NOT!--

To #3
It has copied every DVD I have tried in the past.
See if Dvdfab or any of the others will copy "Cars".
This one will. I have not found a DVD that it will not copy.
Better grab this while it is free.
I donot comment very often, but this one does what it says it will do.
You willnot find any freeware that does what this software does.

On Windows 7 if you shrink it to the task bar it appears to freeze and is cranky to get going again. May be an isolated thing.

Don't choose no skin. You will lose the button info. Use the right button to reset this.

Otherwise looks good so far. Will try out more of course. Unlike DVD Shrink, it can access large USB external drives (2 TB) OK. Definitely looks like a keeper.

This is my second of such software (longo DVD Copy) being the first in 5 yrs. that I've found that shrinks everything, including the Iso. so you can burn the complete disk onto a DVD 5 after saving it to your harddrive. It works on all the new DVDS sofar without a hitch. Even after compression of about 80% it still looks like the origonal to me and sound quality is good without any glitches in the audio and video. All the others (Shrink,DVD Smith,DVD43, etc.,etc.,etc., don't work anymore with the new disks as with most other such software. Is even compatable with shrunk Iso. files burned with Image Burn. Great software, Great Company (Not Afraid??)?.

Thumbs up,what I like about this software it does not use much resources not like other software out there that but your CPU AT 100% and fan working over time, this software runs smoothly and does what it says, Thank you GOTD.

I'm running Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit and received the blue screen of death. After reading that it might be caused by the burning engine,
I uninstalled ver. 4.1 and then tried the newer ver. 4.1.2. Again received the blue screen. Uninstalled. Very disappointed.

I registered the program. Wont run it says "not responding" so I go to properties and change compatibility to xp and then vista, run as admin. Still it just sits there.

If it works as good as Longo DVD copy, its a mega keeper!

This is really awesome. I just pictured Elwood Blues in sunglasses saying,

"Mam, If you found a new dvd failed to copy, don’t hesitate to report it to us, we’ll fix it within one day."

(see comment #40)
Ideal DVD is now one of my favorite companies on Giveaway of the Day.

Thank You