DVD rip software

Tech, TV, Mobile, Internet and Geek Corner
1
Can anyone recommend and (ideally free) softwear to rip DVD's to my hard drive.

I rarely actually use my DVD player and usually buy online and use apple TV so am planning to put all my DVD's on harddrive too. I have over 600 so I am prepared for a lot of work but it will be worth the effort and will save lots of space. I tried with itunes but I think because they are protected it doesn't work. Does anyone have any software advice that will let me do this ??

Itunes worked well for my CD?s which took nearly 6 months to do but I love having them all digitally available so it was worth the effort.

2
Just gone through this process myself. Rather than ripping them all (which will take ages) just download them off Bittorrent. If you feel bad about illegal file sharing, just remind yourself that you already bought them once.

Then you can either sell your DVDs or give them to charity.

3
I use DVD shrink and some other bits and pieces to remove security measures and region coding.

It's not illegal to download in CH. Surely though, any qualming of guilt by reminding yourself you've already paid for it is negated if you then sell or give away the originals? I keep the originals, simply as another form of backup.

4
http://www.makemkv.com/download/

Tom

5
Whole reason I went through this exercise was to make more space as DVDs take up loads. Storing them does too which is why I gave mine away.

6
I am such a saint. (Not really! ) I should have thought that there must be a way cheaper way to get around this silly region coding rather than having several computer setups for the different regions.

OP, can I be first in line for your some of your DVDs when you get rid of them? Depending on what you have...

7
Great idea, I didn't think of that... though I suspect some will not be available... also I bought some DVD's in german to help with learning the language..... so I'll need those copied with german subtitles...

Will definately be giving them away and the CD's I still have left.

8
With MakeMKV you can select which languages and subtitles you want to keep, as well as extra features, or not.

No problems with different regions.

Tom

9
Thanks, that is good to know.. I'll give it a try

10
Maybe they've improved it but last time I tried to rip some DVDs using MakeMKV the audio was not transcoded properly and came out with the audio equivalent of pixellated video.

11
I've never had any such problems, and I've ripped 100s of DVDs with it.

Got them all on my server and then have some RaspberryPi's set up with XBMC.

And they do make updates a few times a year.

Tom

12
Yeah, it's not illegal to download , but the way torrents are designed to work is that you constantly upload while a file is downloading, thus seeding the file for other people too. You can switch off the upload function, but it will run like a three-legged dog.

Newgroups are the safest, but they are finicky and temperamental in comparison.

13
I've always had good results with Handbrake used in conjunction with VLC

You need VLC to rip DVDs with handbrake as handbrake uses VLCs DVD decoder.

14
I use VLC to verify the MKV rips, as a couple times the file was corrupted and lost part of the movie. Run VLC at 32x and check that it finishes with no errors, while doing the next rip.

Easy.

Tom