DVD Ripping Made Simple
Posted by Don Dueck on August 12, 2009
I read a comment somewhere today that made mention of a video encoder called Handbrake. Curious, I decided to try it out on one of my Twilight Zone DVDs since my player conked out (again, *sigh*).
I also had to install another program called DVD43 in order to get Handbrake to read copy-restricted DVDs, but with those two programs together, making backups of DVD videos is a breeze! With the default settings I was able to rip an episode off of my DVD in torrent-ready quality.
The ease-of-use and noob-friendliness of Handbrake prompts me to give the program (along with DVD43) five pirated DVDs out of five:
Nathan said
So simple! I remember the days when you had to configure things in text files and use command line utilities to rip DVDs. When 2 pass encoding was a mysterious and arcane skill. When my DVD-rom and my 4x CD writer were separate drives. When you had to divine which .VOB files to rip through the examination of goat entrails. Ah… the good old days.
Don Dueck said
Ugh, don’t remind me. I still have nightmares about having to split video and audio streams apart, processing them separately, then recombining them again, hoping you didn’t just spend fifteen hours making a pile of garbage.