There are endless reasons why you might want to rip and convert a movie from a DVD and store it on your computer. You might want to watch a new DVD on your iPad or tablet (which do not have DVD drives); you might just want to backup your expensive movie collection; another reason might be that your DVD collection is bulging and you want to free up some room in your house (a terabyte hard drive full of movies could save a huge amount of cubic meters in your house). Anyway…enough rambling on about why you might want to do it, here's what we think is the best way to go about ripping DVDs to your computer.
Here's how you can rip a DVD in five simple steps
Step one:
Download a DVD ripping program. There are hundreds of these programs available for download on the internet, some will require you to pay for them, some won't. We've found and tested a program called DVD Shrink, this is free and easy to use.
Step two:
Once you have installed DVD Shrink, click on the 'Open Disc' icon near the top rleft of the window, then ensure you have selected DVD drive you want to rip the movie from.
Step three:
Before you start ripping a DVD you might want to 'Shrink' the file size of your ripped DVD. The smaller the file, the more the quality will be affected. If you wish to do this, click on 'Edit' > 'Preferences' and in the drop down box on the new window select 'Custom' and then enter your desired file size.
Step four:
To avoid ripping unwanted DVD titles of trailers to your storage device, click on 'Re-authoer' at the top of the window, then open the 'DVD Browser' tab, after that you need to locate and select the file that is the biggest. This will more often than not be the movie/content you are looking for. If you are unsure, you can preview the file in the bottom left of the screen.
Step five:
Click on the 'Backup!' button at the top of the window. A new sub-window will then open asking you where you want to save the file. Once you have chosen the file's destination, click 'Ok' and DVD Shrink will start to rip the content on your DVD. A normall DVD should take between 30-50 minutes to rip.
Comments
Len said: No problem knowing which to click but my problem is that the Audio file is empty so no sound Any idea why
Hagi said: Thank u very much
Nikki said: Thanks for having people download a program that brings a horrible virus
Leander said: It stucks at 92 This software its not that good
Fred Smith said: So now that Ive ripped the DVD on my drive Ive got a bunch of files some bup some ifo and some vob Which is the movie file and can I conmvert it to avi or other formats
Richard said: Hi David this dvd rip explanation looks ideal just what im looking for i do however have an issue i have one of those USB storage devices as you can see im not upto speed with proper terminology but it does not come up on screen when i plug it in the light comes on the device but does not show up in the my computer screen my usual usb memory stick does any idea as this would be ideal to copy my dvds onto to take away on holiday with my tablet
David Court said: Hi AmericanspiritThanks for your comment and sorry to hear about your virusI have to say that I downloaded and tested DVD Shrink without any powerful vicious virus infecting my computer I also went through the several checks to make sure it was areputableprogram before i downloaded it reading reviews and previous downloaders comments etc and saw no mention of a virus when doing soIts worth saying that you should always do the same when downloading a new program to your computer Just as its worth mentioning that you should regularly backup and create system restore points to minimize the damage a vicious virus will do to your computer - wherever you may have downloaded one fromFinally I wouldrecommendthat you do a little research into where you download future programs from if you have not done so already there is a chance that you have downloaded a program called DVD Shrink that is not the popular freeware program I was referring toBestDavid
Americanspirit said: The free recommended DVD Ripper by David Court above comes with a powerful vicious virus Thanks allot David