How to Rip a DVD or Blu-ray Movie

January 14, 2010 By Digital Trends Staff

Step 2: Prepare to Rip Your DVD

At this point, you should have installed all the software you need, dropped the disc you intend to rip into your DVD drive, and defeated its copy protection scheme. The next step is to launch and configure Handbrake. Click the Source button in Handbrake’s top left corner and select the DVD drive that has the movie you wish to rip. The program will then scan the disc in search of information such as chapter markers and titles. If Handbrake doesn’t pick up the chapter titles, as it didn’t with Boogie Nights, you can click on the Chapters tab and type in this information (although it’s not absolutely necessary).

Select your DVD drive under the source tab

The next step is to instruct Handbrake where it should store the ripped movie. Click the Browse button in the program’s Destination segment and navigate to the folder you wish you use. Note: If you intend to save the file to a shared folder on a media server or NAS (Network Attached Storage) box, you’ll first need to map the share as a network drive. Navigate to the folder, right-click, and select Map Network Drive from the pop-out menu.

Handbrake 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.

We’ll start with the Basic, Normal preset and tweak it just a bit to preserve the movie’s original Dolby Digital (AC3) soundtrack and create a second soundtrack encoded with Dolby Pro Logic II, so that we can play the same file on devices that aren’t equipped with AC3 decoders. To do this, click the Audio & Subtitles tab and then click the down arrow under the heading Source and select the soundtrack you want (many DVDs have soundtracks dubbed in other languages, or soundtracks containing commentary from the director or actors). Move over to the Audio Codec column and choose AAC from the drop-down menu. Finally, move over to the Mixdown column and choose Dolby Pro Logic II. Leave the Sample Rate, Bitrate, and DRC settings at their default values.

To create a second soundtrack to pass Dolby Digital data to a home-theater receiver or other device equipped with an AC3 decoder, move down to the second audio track and choose the same soundtrack under the Source heading, but select choose AC3 from the list of audio codecs (the remaining menu items will be grayed out).

HandBrake Audio & Subtitles Tab

Some movies display subtitles when a character is speaking a language that’s different from the language selected in the audio track; e.g., if you select the English soundtrack and a character speaks in German, the movie will typically force the subtitle to be displayed. Handbrake will typically detect this when it scans the disc the first time, but you can make sure this happens by choosing Autoselect from the drop-down menu at the bottom of the window and placing a checkmark next to Forced Subtitles Only.

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Showing 25 comments

Jennifer2012 at 1:14am 17th May 2011 So. once a time. the protected DVD or blu-ray moive can't be ripped because it it protected. Now. with the DVD ripper that can can remove protection on DVD. So you can convert DVD file to video or audio in a few steps and get high resolution movie for other portable devices.
Ryland Jon at 1:03pm 10th March 2011 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?
Michel at 10:55am 1st December 2010 I use DVDfab to rip my dvd, but for the audio part, it does not keep the dts, it is alwasy in prologic
Bill at 8:36am 24th October 2010 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!
Adel at 2:32pm 14th October 2010 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
Philcat at 2:21pm 11th August 2010 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'
1. Philcat at 8:39pm 11th August 2010 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.
hanse132 at 8:24pm 19th May 2010 oh, cool staff. Thanks for sharing.with your guide ,rip blu ray become a simple thing

share you a cool blu-ray to iphone converter
http://www.rip-blu-ray.biz
BluRipper at 11:43pm 10th May 2010 nice for sharing ,so kind of you
BluRipper at 11:39pm 10th May 2010 oh, cool staff. Thanks for sharing.
me at 7:11am 6th May 2010 Yes you can!

http://apcmag.com/how_to_play_ripped_dvds_on_vi...
Neo at 9:31pm 19th January 2010 I use Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper do this, just one tool!
Neo at 6:17pm 18th January 2010 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
Scott at 4:35pm 14th January 2010 Here now, appreciate your patience!
Ian Bell at 8:15pm 12th January 2010 Working on it. We had to re-write it, should be back any day.
Josh at 6:56pm 12th January 2010 so how bout getting that content added back?
Ian Bell at 10:56am 5th January 2010 Sorry about that. Looks like part of the article got cut off when we moved to the new site. I will have the editorial team add it back ASAP.
disappointed at 10:41am 5th January 2010 The title of the article says "How to Rip a DVD or Blu-ray Movie". So where is the "Blu-ray" part of it? I'm asking because my understanding is that it is more complicated than a DVD. Maybe you should remove the "blu-ray" reference so that people like myself don't come here for nothing.
Neo at 7:39pm 27th November 2009 Hi,guys, my pleasure to give you my suggestions. I use Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper rip my Blu-ray discs, no other software, and only 49 dollars;
You can find this Blu-ray Ripper here: http://www.pavtube.com/blu-ray-ripper
AnyDVD HD is good at removing all sorts of BD protections, but when it comes to file size compression, it can not do anything about it. What a pity!
Neo at 7:39pm 27th November 2009 Hi,guys, my pleasure to give you my suggestions. I use Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper rip my Blu-ray discs, no other software, and only 49 dollars;
You can find this Blu-ray Ripper here: http://www.pavtube.com/blu-ray-ripper
AnyDVD HD is good at removing all sorts of BD protections, but when it comes to file size compression, it can not do anything about it. What a pity
1. Bobtang at 11:43pm 17th May 2011 I have used it a couple of times to convert a Blu-ray to a format that will play on my iPad. It works great and I am very happy. I did use the trial program first to check which works great too. I will mainly use the program to put movies on my iPad through itunes. The user interface is east to understand and I have tried one other program but didn't like it as much as this one.Moreover,I really appreciate the use of CUDA in your products.
andrew at 11:37pm 18th September 2009 I've been working on backing up my collection recently, and I found this guide to be a huge help. However, I'm running Vista 64 bit, and ran into some problems with the audio/video quality. After trying out the different programs here, and talking to a couple of friends, I've gone to using DVD shrink to rip my DVDs and simply playing the Video_TS.VOP file through media player. The only problem is that the .VOB won't play through Media Center. Does anyone have a better way of keeping a DVD at it's native resolution, with all of the menus, and still be able to easily access it through media center?
1. Xemacs at 3:24pm 30th September 2010 This was easy. Media Centre can play DVD directory you copied out. But you need install a MPEG decoder for that.
2. yao847zi at 11:47pm 22nd December 2010 Well, I always use this Blu-ray Ripper( http://wannasoft.com/Pavtube-Blu-Ray-Ripper/ ) to help me rip Blu-ray and DVDs. It can copy/back up Blu-ray DVD or convert to other video formats. And with it, i havent run into problems with the audio/video quality till now.
3. Tom Murgitroyde V at 4:22pm 18th March 2011 XBMC. The best free player available. It doesn't require you to add extenders like Media Center.