Hollywood wants you to buy its movies on DVD and Blu-ray, but it also wants to control what you do with them once you get home. That doesn’t sit well with us, so we’re going to show you how to do something that Hollywood most definitely does not want you to do: Rip movies and copy them to your computer’s hard drive so you can enjoy them without ever having to get up off your couch to drop a disc in the DVD player.
Once you’ve got a movie onto your hard drive, you can do all kinds of other cool stuff with it: Transcode it into a different format so that it’ll play on your smartphone or gaming console, or maybe just delete those annoying FBI warnings that tell you how much trouble you can get in for doing exactly what we’re about to show you.
While we fully acknowledge that the movie industry has the right to protect it’s intellectual property, we also believe that consumers have the right to enjoy the property they purchase. It’s called fair use - if you buy a movie on a disc, then you should have the right to make a back-up copy, or transfer the content to another medium, like a hard drive. Of course, you don’t have the right to distribute or sell copies of the movies you buy, but you probably knew that already.
How to Rip a DVD
Jump to: How to Rip a Blu-Ray Disc
What you’ll need:
- DVD-ROM drive. Most modern PCs will come equipped with optical drives that can read DVDs, but many of the newest ones (ie, ultrabooks) have ditched them to save space. If you don’t have a DVD-ROM drive, you can pick up an external one that connects to your PC via USB up for around $30 on Newegg.
- Make MKV. You’ll need this program to break the disc’s copyright protection and perform the initial rip. It’s free, open source, and
- HandBrake. After the initial rip, you might want to make the file smaller or change its format so you can watch it on your phone or media center. Handbrake is a free video encoder that lets you tweak just about everything after you’ve got the movie on your hard drive.
Step One: Defeat copyright protection with MakeMKV
There are a lot of other software programs out there that make this a very involved process, but MakeMKV makes it extremely simple. Just open the program and pop your DVD into the disc drive. Once the program recognizes the disc, click on the big “Open Disc” button and MakeMKV goes to work.
Step Two: Rip the movie with MakeMKV
After you’ve vanquished the AACS encryption, MakeMKV will return a list of chapters and segments that you can rip. Find your movie (usually the longest title or biggest file) and uncheck all the other boxes. Next, designate an Output Folder where you’d like the file to end up once it’s been ripped. When you’re all ready to go, hit the “Make MKV” button. This process can take anywhere from two minutes to half an hour depending on your computer’s processing power, but when it’s done you should have a nice big MKV file waiting for you in the folder you specified.
Step Three: Transcode with HandBrake
Once you’re done using MakeMKV to subvert the DVD’s copyright protection and save the movie to your computer, you’ll probably want to transcode the file to make it smaller and ensure that it’s in the format you want. This is where HandBrake comes in. It’s got TONS of settings and tools you can use to tweak your video, and comes with an extensive collection of presets (displayed in the right-hand column) that make the ripping process relatively foolproof. The developers have already created presets for most Apple products, including the iPhone, iPod and iPod Touch, and Apple TV; the PS3 and Xbox 360 gaming consoles; and several other platforms. You can also modify any of these presets and save them with new names or create custom presets from scratch.
Play around with the settings until you’ve got everything just right, then go ahead and click Start. This part will take a while, so sit back, relax, and let HandBrake do its thing.
Next Page: How to Rip a Blu-Ray Disc
I'm not sure why after I installed every thing , and when I try to rep the Anydvd gives me an error "Drive F: is not ready"
where F is my blu-ray burner witch I can watch the movie from it directly, so the driver is working fine
Also after all I wish to know how to use the ripped file to burn dvd or even blu-ray rwiteable better
so, I have read up on this anyDVD HD, but the only question that I have I can't seem to find an answer to: does it remove the copyright protection on the actual disc and physically alter it?
no. not possible – the disks are read-only.
I use DVDfab to rip my dvd, but for the audio part, it does not keep the dts, it is alwasy in prologic
That used to be an option well, i remember a “Delete DTS’ options, but i just went through the setup menu on my copy of the latest version, and i don’t see it.
I've been using only HandBrake on the MacPro & it works in just one step.
There are a few cases where the files won't read to be ripped.
I think when I upgraded the ware, is when it became a problem.
Glad I found you guys on YouTube to help out in this process. Thanks'
I didn't see a link here for DVD43, but did search avs and the reviews weren't that good,
for a MacPro anyway.
Quote from there for alternative:
with mac the ripper then I make a queue in hand brake to compress them overnight.
I think this might help with those stubborn movies.
nice for sharing ,so kind of you
oh, cool staff. Thanks for sharing.
I use UFUSoft Blu-ray Ripper rip my commercial Blu-ray/DVD discs and convert to kinds of formats, and only $49 dollars.
DVDfab handles any transcoding you might want to do. (Though that increases the price over the basic ripper/de-CSS/de-Region Code version.
Also, i’ve been using DVDFab since long before i had a dual-core CPU; no problems.
More important than the CPU is disk space. A straight rip of a DVD with no transcoding will take three to nine gig of disk space.
Hi I found your tutorial really helpful. and I have been using DVD43 and Handbrake to rip my DVD's. it has been successful for quite a number of DVDs but recently I have started to get a problem. basically, on completion of the ripping and on playback I found that the chapters of the movie have been shuffled so that after the first 5 minutes, it straight away jumps to near the end of the movie, after which it will jump to some other part of the movie, so on and so forth!
Is there some problem in Handbrake? What am i doing wrong? it will be great if you could help me out!
I suspect that it’s something in the new DVDs.
Have you checked for any updates to the program?
Try ripping one of the same ones you were already successful. If it works okay, then the problem is probably not the software – well, aside from not having been updated to handle newer protections.
If it messes up on the one you previously succeeded on, the program is corrupted; uninstall, and re-install.
And, if it still doesn’t work, do what i do:
Use DVDFab
I use Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper do this, just one tool!
As far as I know, some people use AnyDVD to remove protections of their Blu-ray discs firstly, and then use an MTS/M2TS Converter to convert the .m2ts BD files into their wanted media formats. This is a definitely complicated matter, and why don’t they choose a one-stop Blu-ray ripper to do it once and for all? I guess that they may have not found a proper application to do this at all. Well, to assist you guys to simplify the conversion procedures, it’s my pleasure here to share a pretty good Blu-ray ripper to you all, hope it will be of great help for you who are searching for this solution just right.I use this one, you can check it out,http://bit.ly/1i0Wop
Hi Neo, I also like Pavtube but it is slow to complete the whole process. I have tried Anydvd trial and it ripped a 2 hr movie in about 1 hr and bluray ripper takes 3 to 4 hrs.
Am I doing something wrong in Pavtube? Also do u know why Pavtube recommends or suggest using bluray ripper and byte copy together isnt this the equavalent as using Any DvD with handbrake?
Looking foward to ur reply.
Thanks