DVDFastCopy - BEWARE. Do not buy this.

This is a general notice for all those thinking of purchasing DVD Fast Copy - Do Not Buy It.

We purchased this to back up DVD's of our educational programmes for our Children's Centre. We have 4 Mac OS X computers in the Centre and two Mac experts working with us part time. Both technicians failed to get the DVDFastCopy to work and several blank DVD's later, we wrote to the manufacturers at Velan, who categorically stated that, as in their FAQ's page, "we do not give refunds to anyone, and we will stick to it.".

We sent them information on our company, telling them we are a non-profit organisation and work on a voluntary basis for handicapped children - for this reason finances are extremely limited but they still would not allow us a refund. We sent several requests for assistance and the replies that (eventually) came back simply told us to read the Troubleshooting page.
Our technicians have since used DVD compression/burning software, both of which work perfectly well with our Mac OSX.

Our advice is not to buy this programme at the rather inflated price of $100 and to be prepared to receive no sympathy whatsoever from them at all when it does not work. The sales support simply tell you to read the FAQ's. If you wish you can buy this software yourself but we are sure you will find the same. Our advice is certainly to try the Trial before you buy. Please see the other reviews in Macrumors etc. and you will see others have had the same results.

One important thing to note also is that FAST DVD COPY this application will NOT, as specified in their Troubleshooting page (page 18) burn a VIDEO_TS folder created with any other applications other than their own, which means that if you have a VIDEO_TS folder ripped with any other application then it will also not work.

On the last page (21) of the Help Guide, FAST DVD Copy also state that if any errors occur whilst reading the DVD then it must be due to the fact that your DVD is dirty or scratched. Several emails to their Online help also gave us the same information. They also tried to blame our Superdrive, connection and battery power. Why then, did every single DVD we then compressed and burned using our colleague's software on our Macs work perfectly well? It is simply a "get Out" clause for a shoddy piece of software.

One wonders, looking at their site, why it is that they provide no contact information, no company registered address. It is impossible to contact them. I am afraid that we were rather duped into purchasing this from their glossy advertising pages.

The most disheartening thing is we explained to them from the beginning that we had limited resources. It seems Velan not only produce products of low quality, they also care little for those struggling to help others less fortunate than themselves but for making a quick profit from an absolutely useless piece of software. It is a total sham, I'm afraid.