Navigol

If you want to take your movies with you on the road, or just want to clean up those physical discs but keep your films and TV shows on your HTPC, you’ll need to rip them first. Thankfully, there are plenty of great utilities designed to make the process easy and give you files that are playable on any device you choose, whenever you choose to watch them. Here are five of the best, based on your nominations. [jump]

1. What Is The Best Dvd Copy Software
2. What Is The Best Dvd Ripper For Mac
3. The Best Free Dvd Ripper
4. What Is The Best Dvd Ripper

Earlier in the week we asked you to tell us which DVD ripping tool you thought was the best. You definitely responded, and many of you pointed out that you use a combination of these tools to get exactly the file, format, quality, or encoding you want. Here’s a look at the top five of your recommendations.

Best DVD Ripper Software are computer program that facilitates copying the content of a DVD to hard disc drive. They are primarily used for transferring videos on DVDs to various standardized/new formats to edit or backup DVD content and allow the users to convert DVD video for a playback on media players, mobiles, etc. DVD Ripping software coverts the DVD files into standardized file formats.

Advertisement

MakeMKV (Win/OS X/Linux)

We’ve praised MakeMKV before for its ability to quickly and easily rip DVDs and Blu-ray discs to high quality MKV files with a single click. The app has been in beta for a long time (years, in fact), which is just as well, since the developers promise to start charging for Blu-ray ripping once the app leaves beta. The app’s strong suits are that it’s fast, super easy, and cross-platform (the Linux version is available in the forums.) Plus, the app preserves all of the source disc’s information, including tracks, chapters, HD audio, menus, and so on. The app is completely free.

Advertisement

MakeMKV Rips DVDs and Blu-Rays with Just Two Clicks

Windows/Mac/Linux: It's still slim pickings when it comes to finding a good freeware…

Advertisement

DVDFab HD (Win/OS X)

Many of you noted DVDFab’s relatively recent move towards being Windows and OS X friendly and the fact that their stand-alone Blu-ray ripper is just as fast as their DVD ripper as more than enough reason for it to be the best. We agree—cross-platform support is a welcome addition, and we’d note that the app is frequently updated to cut through the copy protection on even the latest DVDs and Blu-ray discs (so make sure you’re only ripping discs you own, okay?) To boot, the price is right: the app is shareware, meaning most features are free, including decrypting and ripping to your hard drive. Many of you note that you use another app for compression and authoring, but many of you say they hey, storage is cheap, and the rips from DVDFab are easy, one-click, and work. The app is shareware, so you can download it for free but additional features will cost you anywhere from $45 to $60 depending on what you want.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Handbrake (Win/OS X/Linux)

Handbrake is our favorite video encoder for a reason: it’s simple, easy to use, easy to install, and offers a wealth of tweaking options to get the best possible file as a result. If you’re daunted by them, you don’t even have to use them—the app will compensate for you and pick some settings it thinks you’ll like based on your destination device. So many of you like Handbrake that many of you use it in conjunction with another app (like VLC, which makes ripping easy)—you’ll let another app do the rip and crack the DRM on your discs, and then process the file through Handbrake for encoding. The app is fast, can make the most of multi-core processors to speed up the process, and is completely open source. Best of all, it’s completely free.

Advertisement

The Best Free Video Encoder for Mac

There are number of handy video encoders for the Mac, but we believe Handbrake is the best thanks…

Advertisement

AnyDVD/AnyDVD HD (Windows)

AnyDVD (which rips DVDs only) and AnyDVD HD (which supports Blu-rays and HD DVDs) both earned high praise from you for being well worth their entry prices, and getting frequent updates to get around the copy protection that disc publishers include that make it harder for you to rip your own movies and play them on the devices you choose. The app can handle unwanted DRM, remove region restrictions, disables forced subtitles or delays, and even plays nice with DVD authoring tools if you’re backing up your movies. You can try the app for free, but its features will cost you: AnyDVD is 49EUR ($65 USD) and AnyDVD HD is 79EUR ($105 USD).

Advertisement

Advertisement

DVDShrink (Windows)

It’s amazing how time flies. DVD Shrink halted development back in 2005, but it’s still one of your favorite decrypting, ripping, and compressing utility. For many of you, you still use it in conjunction with another app, but for a good number of you it’s still the go-to app to handle the job. It hasn’t been updated since 2005, which means its support for newer discs is spotty at best, but when it does work, it works well and results in nice, tidy, small files that are great for portability. In fact, some of you called it out specifically for its compression, which many newer apps haven’t been able to match. It’s also super-easy to use, and completely free—and, according to the developers and site moderators, always will be. If you love DVD Shrink, you’d also love Lifehacker’s own DVD Rip, developed by our own Adam Pash to work with DVD Shrink and make the ripping process as simple and painless as possible. That app is also free.

Advertisement

DVD Rip Automates One-Click DVD Ripping

Click to viewWindows only: Rip and back up any DVD to your hard drive with DVD Rip, a freeware…

Now that you’ve seen the top five, it’s time to put them to a vote to determine the all-out winner.

Advertisement

<a href='

Advertisement

'>What's The Best DVD Ripping Tool?</a>

An honorable mention this week goes out to DVD Decrypter, which missed the top five by a mere handful of nominations, but still was one of your most loved apps for ripping DVDs. The app has been around since 2005, and even though development was halted and the project shut down, mirrors like the one linked above carry on its legacy. As we mentioned earlier, a number of you use a combinations of the above, and many of you noted that you use DVD Decrypter in conjunction with another app for the best possible results.

Advertisement

Aside from that, most of you voted overwhelmingly for these five, and the nominees fell off pretty quickly afterward. Still, we know that a number of you have your own favorites that aren’t represented above. Let us know what they are—and more importantly, why you think your pick is better than the community favorites—in the discussions below.

Have something to say about one of the contenders? Want to make the case for your personal favorite, even if it wasn’t included in the list? Remember, the top five are based on your most popular nominations from the call for contenders thread from earlier in the week. Make your case for your favorite—or alternative—in the discussions below.

Advertisement

Best DVD Ripping Tool?

If you're about to get on a plane, have an HTPC and don't love the idea of changing…

The Hive Five is based on reader nominations. As with most Hive Five posts, if your favorite was left out, it’s not because we hate it—it’s because it didn’t get the nominations required in the call for contenders post to make the top five. We understand it’s a bit of a popularity contest, but if you have a favorite, we want to hear about it. Have a suggestion for the Hive Five? Send us an email at tips+hivefive@lifehacker.com!

Advertisement

Free DVD rippers can be enormously helpful, giving you a handy backup in case your discs become scratched, or allowing you to get rid of the physical discs altogether if you don't have room for them.

It might seem like a complicated process (Windows doesn't come with any tools for the job), but with the right free software you can easily convert the disc's contents to a file that can be stored anywhere. Here we've rounded up the very best free DVD rippers that will make the job a breeze.

The nature of free DVD rippers means it's a segment of the software market that's home to a lot of malicious software. It can be difficult to know which DVD ripping software is legitimate, so we've done the hard work for you and sorted out the wheat from the chaff.

As with CDs, there are no international copyright laws that cover free DVD rippers. For example, in 2014, UK copyright law was changed to legalize personal backups, but that decision was overturned by the High Court in 2015. Make sure you check out intellectual property law in your country before you rip DVDs.

1. HandBrake

You might use HandBrake to convert files, but it's also a DVD ripper

HandBrake is not only a free DVD ripper (or video transcoder, as it prefers to be known) but also open source, so it's totally free in every sense of the word.

More than a decade in the making, the software finally reached version 1.0.0, It is – or at least looks – a little more complicated that some of the others we're looking at here, but don’t let that put you off. By default there's no support for bypassing copy-protection, but this is something you can get around with a little research (bearing in mind IP laws in your country).

As with other programs, there are a number of presets ready for you to choose from, but you can also manually tailor each ripping session if you prefer. If you're working with ISO images or disc folders, it's possible to queue up multiple encoding jobs to run consecutively to save having to be around when each finishes. The sheer level of control makes HandBrake well worth a try.

2. Freemake Video Converter

DVD ripping made easy, with step-by-step instructions

Freemake is a name synonymous with powerful, high quality freeware, and Freemake Video Converter doesn't let the side down. Its free DVD ripper boasts a clean, clear interface is a joy to use, and you're never left feeling in any doubt about what you're meant to do.

Fire up the software, switch to the DVD section and choose your drive from the list. After disc analysis you'll need to indicate which of the video track you're interested in. You can even take things a step further and clip out segments of a video to rip rather than grabbing the whole thing. Shortcuts at the bottom of the screen provide access to popular output formats (AVI, MKV, device-specific formats); just make your selection, hit 'Convert', and you're done.

Unfortunately, although it doesn't contain extra bundled software, the latest version of Freemake Video Converter adds a watermark to ripped videos. If you can live with that, it's one of the most convenient DVD rippers around.

3. MakeMKV

Rip DVDs and Blu-rays without any awkward configuration

If you've used free DVD ripping software before, MakeMKV might look a little familiar – it bears more than a passing resemblance to DVD Decrypter. As well as handling DVDs, the program, is also capable of ripping Blu-ray discs, and the process works in exactly the same way in each case (although it's worth noting that Blu-ray ripping is only be free while the program is in beta).

The great thing about MakeMKV is that there is so little to think about. Fire up the program, analyze your disc, choose which of the track you would like to rip, indicate where the output file should be saved, and then hit the 'Make MKV' button. That's really all there is to it. There's no messing about, no complex configuration – just analyze, rip and go.

4. DVDFab HD Decryptor

Limited options, but handy if you need to rip a DVD in a hurry

DVDFab is an unusual case. The full DVDFab suite isn't free of charge, but its DVD ripping component is. When you download the software, it installs as a trial version, but the DVDFab HD Decrypter – which you need for DVD and Blu-ray ripping – remains free forever.

The free portion is rather limited, allowing you to rip discs in Full Disc or Main Movie modes only. This means that the free version is nowhere near as versatile as the other programs we've covered here, but it still has its place.

For example, it can be useful if you want to extract the video files from a disc and maintain their original formats when transferring them to your hard drive. You're then free to import the files into another program for further work if you want, or just use your favorite DVD software to watch the videos without the need for a disc to be inserted.

5. WinX DVD Ripper Free Edition

Not only for movies, this DVD ripper can handle data discs

When you install the free version of WinX DVD Ripper, you'll notice that it's actually the Platinum Edition in trial mode. This lacks a few of the features found in the premium version (mainly speed-related and a couple of specific DRM cracks), but you'll still have a powerful DVD ripper on your hands that you can use indefinitely.

What Is The Best Dvd Copy Software

WinX DVD Ripper can be used to rip directly from DVDs, but it also works with ISO images, and folders of DVD files. Once your input has been analyzed – a process that doesn't take long – you can take your pick from a raft of ready made profiles. These profiles help you to quickly output a video that's suitable for playback on specific mobile devices or, say, ideal for uploading to Facebook

What Is The Best Dvd Ripper For Mac

You can choose to rip the built-in subtitles or embed your own, and you can select which audio tracks should be included; it's all beautifully simple and pleasingly fast.

The Best Free Dvd Ripper

There is, sadly, one major drawback to the free edition of the software: it can only rip videos a maximum of five minutes in length, which rules it out for backing up your movie collection.

What Is The Best Dvd Ripper

• Edit your ripped movies with the best video editing software