Sub Pop's DVDs Showcase Lesser-known Artists (8: Unedited)

Ugly Casanova, The Album Leaf, Iron & Wine, The Thermals, Fruit Bats, and The Shins have more in common than being some of the most talented musicians currently recording; they’re all on the Seattle-based independent label Sub Pop Records.

In May of this year, Sub Pop released its second DVD compilation of music videos, Acquired Taste. The title features videos by the aforementioned bands, with an additional 15 other bands, cataloging a total of 25 music videos.

Chris Jacobs, the Senior Director of Special Projects at Sub Pop explains, “We have a bunch of music videos, most of which have not been seen by fans of the artists we work with. We should put these all together on one DVD and sell it cheaply,” and it is, considering the $9.99 price tag. He continues, “Perhaps that is a means to getting people to see these videos, as the folks who program music video channels seem so profoundly uninterested in playing them!”

His statement rings true when you turn the television onto MTV, VH1, or even BET. The videos on these networks are, essentially, commercials with huge budgets that showcase the wealth or look of an artist or band. Lesser known artists, especially those on smaller, independent labels, get almost no airplay. It’s a lot like the radio.

Jacobs disagrees with the use of music videos only as another form of advertising, “While, there have been concessions made to avoid preventing videos from the possibility of being aired on TV, I don’t think that any of them are especially effective advertisements.”

When watching videos by Michel Gondry, Chris Cunningham, Spike Jones, or anyone else in the myriad of talented directors, some may consider the music video another medium of art. Theoretically, a video is an artistic interpretation of a musician’s message or ideas. A director is trusted to create something new, with foundations supplied by the soundtrack of a song. Jacobs agrees that videos deserve a higher status than commercials, but says, “Whether any of them might be considered art is subjective, but in every case the idea was to make something interesting.”

And most of the videos on Acquired Taste are interesting. With the exception of Ugly Casanova’s graphic Things I Don’t Remember, the videos are mostly narrative and completely devoid of women taking their clothes off, gold teeth, and a performer repeating their name over and over.

When you consider what it means, Acquired Taste seems like a strange title, “We picked the name because we thought it was funny. Things that people describe as an acquired taste typically taste kind of shitty. In choosing that as the title, we are, effectively, letting the consumer know that they probably won’t like what we’re offering.” The irony, of course, is that the videos and music are almost always superior to the viewer’s expectations.

Aside from this collection, Sub Pop has tapped into the quickly expanding market of music DVDs that focus entirely on one band. Almost any video, music, or book store stocks a collection (although sometimes very small) of live concerts, tour diaries, video collections, or biographies of any particular band. When I spoke with Band of Horses lead Ben Bridwell in June of this year, he praised Sub Pop’s willingness to work with his group in making their album and its contents in both parties’ best interests.

Jacobs reflects the same ideology when deciding what video or DVD releases the label should pursue, “[It’s] the sort of decision (like much of what we do) that we’d make with the artist. If they were super into the idea, we’d try to find a way to make it work. If they have a bunch of video content, stuff that they want to get out, then we’d likely suggest trying to find a way to do that.”

It’s worth mentioning that Sub Pop doesn’t focus completely on musicians. Comedian David Cross, largely known for co-starring in Mr. Show and as the character Tobias in Arrested Development, has two full-length albums and a DVD tour diary- something that is uncommon for a comedian. Stand-up comics usually have DVD releases of recorded performances, whereas Cross’s video follows the comedian around the country with heavy focus on his interactions during the tour itself. Along with some standard performance footage, the disc also has about five hidden “easter eggs”- or hidden special content.

The use of DVD media to deliver music and interpretative videos is becoming a more widespread practice. It’s easy to measure this growth by simply walking into a store and noticing what bands or artists have a new DVD, or to look at the music magazines that are shrink-wrapped with a small compilation of exclusive footage or musician interviews. Just like in the music industry, Sub Pop, among other independent labels, holds ground for the lesser-known artist trying to get his voice heard, or seen.

TAL's Book and DVD Mix Radio and Art (7: Unedited)

Usually, the term “mixed-media” brings to mind a mediocre artist who hot-glues stuff to his painting. “Mixed-mass media” doesn’t make our artist obese, but instead implies a fusion between the published art forms of print, video, and audio.

This American Life is a radio program produced by Ira Glass at WBEZ Chicago, and distributed by Public Radio International. TAL is not a typical radio show, as their website claims, “We're not a news show or a talk show or a call-in show... Instead, we do these stories that are like movies for radio. There are people in dramatic situations where things happen to them.” So, essentially, they talk about the happenings of ordinary Americans, most often subject to unordinary circumstances.

In 2004, Ira Glass and comic artist and writer Chris Ware collaborated to produce a slideshow called Lost Buildings. Glass composed the interviews and stories, and Ware drew relevant artwork for the corresponding slideshow.

Lost Buildings is the story of Tim Samuelson’s fascination, as a young man in the 1960s and 70s, with Chicago’s buildings that were designed by famed architect Louis Sullivan. As modern architecture gained popularity in the public and private eyes of America, the multiple Sullivan buildings that characterized Chicago began to disappear.

In its original presentation, Lost Buildings was recorded live in front of a theatrical audience, and the images were projected onto a large screen. For the public that was not in attendance, TAL sells a DVD of the audio and slideshow, coupled with an extensive book of the notes and photographs from Samuelson.

The show is first introduced with an explanation of its original presentation and audience, and asks forgiveness in an attempt to put its current viewer in the seat of one of the slideshow’s original patrons. What follows is an incredible amalgamation of radio and printed art, presented on DVD for home viewing. Three mediums are utilized to tell the story about a young man’s obsessions with buildings.

Lost Building’s menu is typical of Ware’s printed work, which in this case, mimics that of its subject. A complex array of bending lines weave across the screen and are superimposed with the emergence of an ornate staircase decoration, and are then overlaid by a simple map of Sullivan buildings in Chicago. These stylistic themes become a point of reference in the show, in both its subject and style.

The slideshow starts with a black screen and the familiar radio voice of Ira Glass, as he begins an anecdote about Samuelson’s boyhood obsession. Samuelson frequently chimes in with answers to Glass’s questions, and the audio track becomes both documentary and interview, accompanied by an appropriate mixture of contemporary and classical music. As the show continues, the viewer finds himself studying Ware’s renditions of the famed buildings with growing sympathy towards Samuelson and their destruction, and the futility of its prevention.

The show becomes a study of two major themes: Samuelson and his mentor, Richard Nickel, find their friendship built by the destruction of Sullivan’s buildings. The second theme looks through a larger scope to observe America’s starvation for capitalistic newness and how it destroys beautiful work, despite men’s passions and efforts to stop it. Houston’s supporters of the River Oaks Theater can easily relate to the latter.

The special features of the disc include unused audio of Samuelson and Glass, which are significant in the feature's short run time. There is also a “frame enlargement” option to make easier the appreciation of Ware’s drawings. Also, when put into a computer and opened as a volume drive, the disc contains a high-resolution Quicktime version of the slideshow in its entirety.

The hardcover book could stand on its own with its comprehensive content and information. Following two pages of explanation and introduction from Chris Ware, there are about 90 pages of notes, reproduced letters, detailed and candid photographs, and interpretations by Samuelson and Nickel that submerge the reader into a deeper study of Sullivan’s master work. Most of the book concentrates on the famous Garrick Theater, relived in the detailed photographs and floor plans of the building. The book becomes a dissection of his architecture and complicated art form, found in the pages, on the DVD’s surface, and as the endpapers and covers of the book.

The book and DVD set is available from This American Life at thislife.org for $22, shipping included. For the wary, the website has a short Quicktime preview of the slideshow. Proceeds benefit the nonprofit radio show, which can be heard on the website and in Houston on 88.7 KUHF on Sundays at 11am, and 90.1 KPFT on Mondays at 2 pm.

Further Your Obsession With The Internet! (6: Unedited)

If you care to think about it, the complex intricacies of the internet can be summed up in one word: awesome. Luckily for everyone, this all-consuming adjective also applies to the hobby of collecting and watching DVDs. This week’s Disc-ussion will focus on a few websites that the collector or mild-enthusiast may find useful in their expensive and unhealthily obsessive hobby.

A new, though vindictively exclusive, program called Delicious Library recently became available for Mac OSX users to catalog their collections of DVDs, CDs, games, and most surprisingly, books. The program’s interface is remarkably familiar to users of iTunes, and uses the Apple iSight personal web-camera to take a picture of the barcode. Then the program magically reads this barcode and pulls up all available information on the product from Amazon.com’s database. Instantly, the cover or album art appears on a small shelf in the middle of the operating window, and the product is recorded into your user database.

The program also has a small feature in the bottom left-hand corner that allows the user to create “borrower” profiles (friends, relatives, coworkers, etc.) that can be tagged with movies they’ve borrowed from you. Delicious Library keeps track of which titles the person has, how long they’ve had it, and when it thinks too much time has passed since they borrowed your only copy of Happiness.

A free, though limited, demo of Delicious Library is available from http://delicious-monster.com, and a license for full use costs a cool $40.

For the poorer of us, or the PC users, a free web-based cataloging service is DVD Aficionado, available at http://dvdaficionado.com/. Despite its ugly interface, the website is useful for keeping track of what users own, and gives them the ability to create wish lists and show off what they already have. It also finds cover art and product information automatically.

An interesting tool attached to the “wish list” function of the site is the “Price Search Engine,” which compares the sale cost of a particular title against four of five retailers. Users also have the ability to alter their purchases, without going to the retailers’ websites, to save time and multiple shipping costs. DVD Aficionado claims their “price search engine can save [an active user] hundreds of dollars over just a few months.”

Although not specifically focused on the DVD market, the very popular Internet Movie Database has earned itself a reputation as the most comprehensive movie catalog on the internet. A simple visit to http://imdb.com/ can quickly turn into a link-clicking festival, as users dive further and further into the abyss of trivial movie (and television) minutia.

The website serves a useful research function, and can rapidly confirm discrepancies in the bitter after-movie arguments we all have with our loved ones. Visitors to the site can find out almost anything they need to know about a certain title, including its original theatrical release, and any subsequent home-theater releases the title may have enjoyed.

Registered users have the ability to post incredibly useless and frustrating comments about movies, including whatever accidental blunders a cast member may have made. To be fair, these discussion forums can be useful if one is interested in finding movies or television shows similar to one they already enjoy.

As a former member, until the cash got tight, of http://netflix.com, I can somewhat vouch a first hand account of the usefulness of the online rental service. The popular three-DVDs-at-a-time for $17.99 is a good value, and usually the limit a single person can watch in their dorm-room at one time. A variety of deals are available, ranging from one to five, with unlimited rentals per month. However, the term “unlimited” should be taken with a grain of salt. Netflix hides mention of its alleged “throttling” practice, wherein users’ rentals are held an extra day or three so that the company doesn’t lose money in its free shipping policy.

Googling the acronym DVD turns up too many useless results that require more effort than their worth to find anything useful, so hopefully these few recommendations can save you some trouble and get you to the good stuff. Don’t forget to search for my catalog on DVD Aficionado, I’m somewhere in the “borderline fanatical” category.

The Heartbreaking Act of Selling DVDs (5: Unedited)

Although students have two weeks before they have to start worrying about rent, they may be eying their DVD collections trying to figure out what can go to pay bills. As an employee of a record store that buys and sells used DVDs, I’ve picked up a few tips to significantly increase the amount of money paid out per disc.

It should be noted that similar to CDs, selling DVDs is never a huge cash cow- you’re technically losing money on a product you paid a much higher price for. Because of this, you should always consider selling DVDs as a last resort.

Try to keep something in mind while you struggle to pull movies and box sets off your shelf; someone is going to buy this and want to watch it. Consider everything about the physical product itself: Is the packaging messed up because I used my teeth to get those stickers off? Was the cover insert ruined when I left it in the sun for a year and spilled coffee on it? Did I loose, tape to my wall, or throw away the inserts and included booklet? Did my cat interpret the bottom of the disc to be his new scratch toy?

It’s really hard to believe the condition of some of the DVDs, or beach Frisbees, people try to sell. Always remember that a store intends to resell the disc, not just pay you money for it and throw it away. If everything is intact and looks like it was watched once before going on a shelf, you’ll usually score an extra dollar or two per title.

If there are very small hairline scratches on the bottom of the disc, and it’s playable, stores will usually accept them. However, they’ll be less reluctant if you take a moment to use a CD cleaner or buffer. They’re cheap and work surprisingly well, and can also be useful for the occasion your CD or movie skips from frequent use.

Lastly, if you bought the movie used, take off the old price tag. For some reason, on what is probably a subconscious level, store managers don’t like the idea of buying a third or fourth generation used product.

Within the inner-Houston area are a few brick and mortar shops that buy used DVDs. Movie Exchange at 6508 Westheimer offers the best price at an average of $7 for new releases, which are considered titles to have come out within the past month. This price isn’t a guarantee, just an approximation based on how many titles they have, condition, etc.

Inside the 610 loop is Soundwaves at 3509 Montrose, Half Price Books at 1011 Westhiemer, and Hollywood Video at 1201 Westheimer. Although all three are incorporated chains, these specific locations are known to pay out a little better than most others. Soundwaves and Hollywood Video average $3-$5 for recent releases in good condition, while Half Price Books is notorious for offering as little as 50 cents to a few dollars. In all fairness, Half Price does buy titles the other three locations would turn away, which explains the 6 copies of Alfie on the shelf.

These prices are based on new releases in good condition, and can fluctuate dramatically due to how many a store already has in stock, how rare or valuable the title is, how many discs it has, if it’s a special edition, or if it’s an anthologized television show. Because pawn shops are eerily sketchy and pay practically nothing, I highly recommend against hawking your movies at one.

If you feel like you’re not being paid enough, arguing with the clerk for a better price never works; just walk out and try somewhere else.

Much like purchasing on the internet, someone looking to sell their used DVDs can increase their return by selling on eBay.com or Amazon.com. However, most people don’t have the time or patience to enter the product information, wait for someone to buy it, package it up and ship it out. It takes a long time, and many see the few extra dollars only as an addition to their inconvenience.

As an easier alternative, the MySpace.com and Facebook.com bulletin boards have become a popular and more accessible means of selling used media. Sellers are dealing with their friends or extended social network, and therefore reduce the risk of shipping, complications in payment, and questionable trustworthiness. Usually, your friends trust that you take good care of your property and are willing to pay around $7 or $10, even for older titles.

Hopefully the sight of your empty bookshelf isn’t as upsetting as it is for me, someone who only sells movies when he gets the newer (and always more expensive) special edition.

Whales, Dolphins, DVDs, Oh My! (4: Unedited)

Hard to spell and even harder to understand, Wholphin is a new DVD series featuring short films that have gone mostly unwatched, or unnoticed, by the general public. The name itself is a derivative of the words “whale” and “dolphin,” and aside from the DVD, a very real and very strange offspring between the two mammals.

The Wholphin DVD started as a side project of McSweeney’s from conversations between the scientist and media-buff Brent Hoff, and Dave Eggers, a published author and Editor in Chief of McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern. About to release its third installment of the series, Wholphin is already enjoying a growing popularity for its exclusive content and originality in presentation.

Executive Producer Brent Hoff explains, “For the Wholphin DVDs, I want them to really kind of be wholphin-esque; things that aren’t really out there as much.” Malek Khorshid, an Iranian cartoon featured in the first issue, was made in the 1970s as a result of governmental programs trying to establish Iran in the rapidly developing league of western animation, only to be closed down shortly thereafter. This cartoon, probably unseen by most Iranians, is the sort of totally obscure and absurdly beautiful films Wholphin tries best to showcase.

Wholphin’s second issue acted as a world premier for The Mysterious Geographical Explorations of Jasper Morello, an absorbing animated tale of silhouetted explorers and lovers, written and directed by Anthony Lucas. These uncommon and hard to find short films are only two of the dozen or so films in each issue.

When asked why such a bizarre name was chosen, Hoff explained, “It was a little bit like, ‘This is not a good name.’ It’s esoteric, you can’t pronounce it, it doesn’t fall under the realm of, you know, this-is-the-perfect-name. It’s really kind of a stretch… but it just kind of, for me, fits the premise.”

Because there are only two known captive wholphins in the world, the theoretical idea of “rare and unseen” is especially fitting. Being a subscriber to Wholphin is like having a superior independent film festival, featuring nearly impossible to find shorts delivered to your mailbox, without reading and hearing “noir” and “avant-garde.”

Unlike the Spike and Mike DVD animation festivals or music video DVDs included with Paste and Vice magazines, Wholphin is more closely structured like a book of collected fiction. The films don’t share an overall theme or message, differ drastically in content and production, and sometimes start by themselves if you take too long with the menu. Hoff wants Wholphin to “make our innovations on the DVD itself…and find out the different things you can do with them.”

Future issues of Wholphin will further the experimental nature of what can be done with DVDs. One issue has a quiz on the included booklet, and asks that the viewer answer them with their DVD remote. The staff also hopes to have its fourth issue based on 3D films, glasses included, by asking various film-makers to create 3D shorts.

Keeping pace with almost anything put out by the McSweeney’s publishing group, Wholphin’s packaging is aesthetically pleasing and well-made. The staff decided against the common grey DVD case, and instead made No. 2 to look like small hardback book. Issue No. 1 has slightly simpler packaging, but maintains a consistent modernistic theme of muted rectangles and bold sans-serif font. The included booklets of both issues are equally attractive.

Concerning submissions and the selection process for what actually goes on the DVDs, Hoff said, “I try and put a higher standard of like, “You won’t be able to see this anywhere else” for the stuff that goes on the DVD.” Many of the films are “blind submissions,” and others are actively sought out. Issue No. 3 will have a short film that was the thesis project of Alexander Payne, director of Election (1999), which was actively sought out by Wholphin staff.

Hoff’s only complaint is that they never have enough room to fit all of the shorts they like, exactly the reason the second issue came with an extra disc completely dedicated to the first part of the film The Power of Nightmares.

Some of the discs’ content, including many of the films that start as menus, are produced and directed by the Wholphin staff itself. A crying competition, a short about a man trying to get his shoes down from a telephone line, and a fishing how-to that will most likely go unused; the Wholphin staff likes the idea of making their own films to set themselves apart from imitators or the competition, even if there isn’t any for a few more years.

Although subscription-based, Wholphin hopes to become available on Netflix.com and other online rental sources, if only to make the films more available to a wider audience. However, Hoff warns people that without the packaging and liner notes, viewers may not get the most out of the issues.

Wholphin is available at wholphindvd.com and a few local brick-and-mortar stores. Brent Hoff will be in Houston this Friday at Domy Books (1709 Westheimer) and Saturday and Sunday at Aurora Picture Show (800 Aurora St.) showing select films from issues one, two, and three, respectively.

LOST In Observation (3: Unedited)

4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42; if you recognize these numbers, then you most likely also recognize your helpless addiction to ABC’s hit show LOST.

When the off-course Oceanic Flight 815 encounters unexpected turbulence on its way to California from Australia, the plane suddenly tears apart and crashes onto an unknown island. A large amount of the surviving passengers, approximately thirteen of which become the show’s main ensemble, clamor to the island’s shore for safety and to remove usable elements from the fuselage.

After settling down, the survivors incorrectly assume the island is uninhabited and encounter frequent unexplainable sounds and movement in the jungle. Through enlightening episodes of character back-story, betrayal, deceit, friendship, mystery, and the hope of being rescued half-forgotten, the end of the first season abruptly climaxes with the discovery, and opening, of a bizarre buried hatch.

Today marks the release of the complete second season, titled LOST Season 2- The Extended Experience, which picks up exactly where the first season abandoned you and takes the viewer headfirst into the hatch. Today's release of the set gives you plenty of time to watch all 24 confusing, enlightening, curious, and even profound episodes in order to be caught up in time for the October 4th airing of the third season.

For reasons unknown to your humble reviewer, this collection of episodes is strangely titled The Extended Experience. Although the set boasts an impressive seven discs, owners of the first set will be quick to note that The Complete First Season had the same amount. Also strange is the fact that season two contains one less episode than the first.

The experience that is alledgedly extended is the seventh dics of the set, which much like the first set, contains all of the special features for the season. The seventh disc contains an array of extras; never before seen character flashbacks, information concerning "the hatch," a dissection of mysteries, theories, and conspiracies, and of course bloopers and deleted scenes. Fans may also appreciate bonus material similar to the first season, like the featurettes about character connections, making ofs, interviews, etc.

The box itself is designed with the theme of the hatch in mind. A dirty brown surface with the mysterious numbers inscribed near the bottom alludes to the presence of “the hatch”, holding similarity to the previous season's cool brushed steel outer sleeve, which was referencial the the plane and fuselage. The all-caps title is the same size as the first season’s, but instead of the interesting shredded white-to-teal gradient texturing on the letters, all of the text on the cover of season two’s box is a rough and gritty brown with a black outer-glow.

Because both season’s outer sleeves are made from a clear plastic, a 1” thick horizontal center stripe reveals the cast of the show, printed on the paper of the box itself. The first box set made excellent use of this space with an attractive high contrast black and white image of the ensemble in front of a cloudy teal sky. The second season’s box instead features an awkward full-color composite image of the modified ensemble, all looking strangely up and to the left.

The box set's construction is exactly the same as the first's, so the two seasons together on a shelf yield a pleasing consistency, unlike the multiple box series of South Park or The Simpsons.

It's interesting to note that unlike the portraits of the cast printed on the first season's discs, the second season's discs feature pictures of symbollic items from the show. Viewers will recognize most of these items (the virgin mary, Eko's cane, etc.) as important references, though some are arbitrarily placed on discs not containing the episodes that feature the items.

For the technically inclined, the six discs of episodes all maintain a widescreen 1.85:1 ratio and are switchable between 5.1 and 2.0 surround. Only a few of the special features also have these specifications. The episode image quality is excellent and gives the pause, rewind, watch-in-slow-motion viewer the opportunity to look for clues (an almost crucial task) with sharper image detail than ever available on the TV broadcast.

As with most tv-to-dvd box sets, the pleasure of watching a full show without a single trace of commercials almost makes it worth the purchase alone. Because each episode runs approximately 50 minutes, and there are 24 episodes, the justifiable price of the set gets you 20 hours of entertainment, not including the special features, commentary, and included booklet.

LOST: Season 2 – The Extended Experience has a list price of $59.99, but BestBuy, Target, and Borders sell it for under $38.99. Or, if you trust ebay.com users, you can score it half-off for almost $30.

Owning the second volume of LOST is well worth the money, despite a few lame marketing devices and shrug-your-shoulders packaging. As a season that was criticized for having a few too many filler episodes and spending a lot of time on a character who ended up leaving the show, Season 2 does uncover more mysteries and argueable phenomenae, and answers many of Season 1's questions. However, staying true to LOST style, it raises a whole new batch of questions and leaves you wanting more.

Back That Thang Up! (2: Unedited)

We assume that when Prometheus brought fire to mankind from the gods he intended us to use it for warmth and light. However, with the whole fire thing under control and he being the rebellious Titan that he is, I don't think he'd mind if we used a concentrated amount to back-up and burn a few DVDs as well.

Before we get into this wonderfully enlightening how-to, it should be understood that it is against federal law, and Zeus, to make unlicensed reproductions of copyrighted materials (pretty much everything ever), including DVDs and their contents. Punishments can range from monetary fines to being chained to a mountain while an eagle eats your liver every day.

Your favorite columnist and daily newspaper do not solicit or encourage law-breaking, so the following article is for educational use only.

If you purchased your computer within the past few years, it's very likely that your PC or Mac came with a built in DVD burner. If not, they can be found at Fry's, Best buy, and even Wal-Mart for under a surprising $80.

Like most blank media, DVD±Rs can be bought very inexpensively in bulk quantities. Blank discs come in two formats, + and -, but most new burners can write to either disc. The difference between the two is slight and mostly inconsequential (hence the ± symbol), so it's not worth extrapolating here.

It is important, however, to mention the Dual Layer disc. A standard DVD±R has about 4.7 gigabytes of storage space, while a Dual Layer disc has nearly double that capacity, because it obviously uses two layers of the disc instead of one. You know that short pause in the middle of a boring 3 hour epic? You didn't lose consciousness, that's just the laser switching layers on the disc. Again, most burners have the ability to write Dual Layer, you'll just need to use the proper discs.

To first import a DVD to your computer, you'll also need about 6-12 gigabytes of free hard drive space, and the very efficient and very free program DVD Shrink from www.dvdshrink.org/where.html.

After downloading, installing, and agreeing not to break the law, pop in your DVD of choice and click the button "Open Disc." After selecting the DVD drive, the program takes about 20 seconds to map out the entire contents of the disc. When it finishes, you can select or deselect audio and subtitle tracks, as well as adjust the level of compression for importing with the slider bar up top. You should really try to get it as close to 100% as possible, but if you're using standard DVD±R discs, you'll have to limit yourself to the 4.7 gig ceiling.

After you're done fiddling around, if at all, click the "Backup!" button and tell the program where to target the "ISO Image File". Once you hit "Okay," walk away from the computer and give the program about 25-35 minutes to import the DVD. It's a pretty sensitive and processor-hogging task, so go eat a Hot Pocket and read the rest of this newspaper.

When you hear the pleasant little chirp, the program's finished its dirty work and can be closed. You won't be able to watch the .ISO file on your computer unless you use another program that takes more explaining than I have space for. If you're curious about it, send me an email and I can explain that as well.

Next, you'll want to put one of those blank DVD±Rs in your burner and open whatever bundled burning application came with the drive. If you haven't one, free demos and purchasable copies of the aptly-named Nero can be found through Google. Most programs are similar and easy to follow; select the .ISO file, select the blank disc, click "Burn." This process is also about 20 minutes long, depending on the write speed of your burner, and also very sensitive. It's sensible to exit your other programs and leave your computer alone during this task, too. Once it's done burning, get out a marker and you're done!

Before you run off to buy blank DVD±Rs, we'd like to remind you that it is also illegal to rent movies for $3 and copy them, or to subscribe to netflix.com and get movies constantly and inexpensively delivered to you and sent back the next day.

Now that you have the ability to legitimately copy your cousin's wedding video for Grandma, we trust that Zeus won't need to send woe and punishment in the form of your brother's wife. If Pandora does become your sister-in-law, at least it won't be for DVD back-up and copying, right?