[MacDV] What does it take???

[Brett Conlon]

We've had the "duplicating copy-protected DVD's" discussion numerous times 
on this list and I thought I had a handle on it but obviously not....

The details:
I bought "Polar Express" (children's animation DVD) from a pawn shop and 
we went to watch it a few weeks later and found it had a pit mark 
(manufacturing defect) on the outer edge of the disc which caused about 5 
minutes of coughing and spluttering before it continued on (just when 
Santa's big bag of presents was being lowered into the slay). My 
sister-in-law also has the DVD so I thought I'd simply burn off a copy of 
that and be happy with a burned disc.

As an experiment I loaded her good disc into my MacBook Pro drive 
(10.4.10) and used Disk Utility to make a disk image of it (via "Disc 
Image from [inserted disc]"). It didn't complain about it being copy 
protected and created the image without a problem so I assumed Apple had 
possibly lifted the copy protection bar on the latest Disk Utility. I then 
used Toast Lite to burn the image to a dual layer disc on my external DL 
writer. I ticked simulation mode because I have had previous DL problems 
with the external drive and sure enough it errored near the end. I wasn't 
too surprised with the error but was happy I ticked simulation mode. 
However, the disc had been written to (arrrgh), so I lost DL disc 1.

I then tried burning the image to a DL disc in the MacBook Pro drive 
(again with simulation ticked) but it again errored AND wrote to the disc 
(Aaaarrrrggghhhh!) - dead DL disc 2.

I then used MacTheRipper to download the disc to my drive, removing all 
copy protection etc, and used Toast Lite to do a data copy of the created 
folder (with VIDEO_TS folder) and it burned without error but it won't 
read when inserted into my home DVD player. Apple's "DVD Player" also 
doesn't recognise it unless I choose the VIDEO_TS folder via "Open DVD 
Media" where it does play normally - dead DL disc 3 (sigh).

So what is needed to get the "ripped" disc happily back onto a disc which 
will play like a normal Disc???

And why on earth did the disc get written to when I ticked "simulation 
mode" in Toast Lite (v6)?

Sorry this post was soo long but people always ask clarifying questions so 
I thought I may as well put it all in here the first post.

Regards to all,

Cojcolds