Best DVD ripper?

@daviddam341 - HandBrake is compatible with 10.8

Hard drives are so cheap, there's no need for lossy Handbrake conversions. Copy the disc image using MDRP or DVDRemaster, or extract the tracks you want into container files (mkv/mp4/avi). Deinterlace if you were born after 1985. Otherwise get on with your life.

Handbrake.

I don't have an New iPad yet, but I've seen my brother have luck with using the stock AppleTV preset and just bumping up the 'Constant quality %' to around 65-80.

Is it any faster to use a ripping software to rip then Handbrake to encode the file? Currently I'm letting Handbrake/VLC do it all.

RipIt. 'nuff said.

I realize this is a very old thread, but since it seems to be getting periodic discussion, I'll add to the above:

If you're planning on doing full-disc rips (rather than re-encodes, like with Handbrake), I did a fair amount of testing a while back prior to ripping my thousand-DVD collection, and I ended up going with MDRP. Dirt cheap, can be set to rip-and-eject-when-done, will remind you if you try to re-rip something you already did, and nearly flawless in terms of handling funky discs or protection schemes. It only choked on three discs in my collection, two of which are so screwed up (bum disc) they won't play properly on anything, and one is the first anime DVD ever released in the US and apparently is way out of spec or something.

RipIt would have been my second choice, but in addition to being a couple times more expensive there's one big difference between the two: If you have a marginal disc with bad spots on it, RipIt will halt the rip and fail, while MDRP will tell you what percentage of bad sectors it hit, but go ahead and complete the rip, so you end up with a file that's as playable as the original was. MDRP also seems to have a better error-correction algorithm than RipIt, but in either case there were a number of funkier discs that RipIt refused to rip that MDRP had no problem with, and produced perfectly playable files from.

When I tested it, RipIt also only produced .dvdmedia folders, while RipIt will give you nice .iso files (which VLC can play directly!), but it's possible that's changed now.

I want to rip with multiple drives. The software I currently own is Mac DVDRipper Pro, does anyone know if it'll work if I connect an extra drive? I wouldn't even mind if it did it sequentially rather than simultaneously, as long as I can just load two or a couple of discs in it every time I'm at the computer rather than just one.

JasperJanssen said:

I want to rip with multiple drives. The software I currently own is Mac DVDRipper Pro, does anyone know if it'll work if I connect an extra drive? I wouldn't even mind if it did it sequentially rather than simultaneously, as long as I can just load two or a couple of discs in it every time I'm at the computer rather than just one.

Click to expand...

Might be too late to be of use, but I just noticed your question and have actually tried this (MDRP + an iMac with an external USB DVD drive, which I had added in order to not kill the internal while ripping my big collection).

I tested at the time, and at least with MDRP v2 (I don't know if the current version has changed this, I didn't upgrade), yes, this does work, although it's a little funky.

Essentially if there is one copy of the app running when a disc is inserted into a drive, that copy will take control of that drive and start a rip. If a second copy is opened, it will grab a second disc if inserted into the other drive.


So if you want to do dual-simultaneous rips, this is how it would work: You need to have two copies of MDRP (not two licenses, just duplicate the app), but start by only opening one (otherwise they'll both try to access the same disc at the same time and fight over it). Stick a disc into one drive, begin the rip (easiest if you have it configured to auto-start and auto-eject--I'd recommend this).

Now open a second copy of MDRP and stick in a second disc. It will now start ripping that disc. Whichever copy gets done first will eject its disc (again, assuming you've got it set to auto-eject on completion) and wait for a new disc. If you insert a new disc before the other rip is complete, the idle copy will take control of the freshly-inserted disc and begin its rip, then the other copy will eject its disc when it's finished. Repeat as each copy finishes and ejects its disc, and as long as you get a new disc started ripping before the other copy finishes ripping (so they're not both idle at the same time) it will work smoothly.

If both DO finish at the same time, you'll need to manually quit one copy while you insert the first disc, starting the process from the beginning again.

Makosuke said:

I realize this is a very old thread, but since it seems to be getting periodic discussion, I'll add to the above:

If you're planning on doing full-disc rips (rather than re-encodes, like with Handbrake), I did a fair amount of testing a while back prior to ripping my thousand-DVD collection, and I ended up going with MDRP. Dirt cheap, can be set to rip-and-eject-when-done, will remind you if you try to re-rip something you already did, and nearly flawless in terms of handling funky discs or protection schemes. It only choked on three discs in my collection, two of which are so screwed up (bum disc) they won't play properly on anything, and one is the first anime DVD ever released in the US and apparently is way out of spec or something.

RipIt would have been my second choice, but in addition to being a couple times more expensive there's one big difference between the two: If you have a marginal disc with bad spots on it, RipIt will halt the rip and fail, while MDRP will tell you what percentage of bad sectors it hit, but go ahead and complete the rip, so you end up with a file that's as playable as the original was. MDRP also seems to have a better error-correction algorithm than RipIt, but in either case there were a number of funkier discs that RipIt refused to rip that MDRP had no problem with, and produced perfectly playable files from.

When I tested it, RipIt also only produced .dvdmedia folders, while RipIt will give you nice .iso files (which VLC can play directly!), but it's possible that's changed now.

Click to expand...

Unless you plan on purchasing terabytes of hard disk space for your collection, dont believe their claims that this program will work for you. And yes, I have tried this on multiple Mac's and configurations. It simply isn't what it claims to be. This MDRP claims it all, but when it comes down to it it fails. I emailed support and was told he was on vacation (apparently one guy does this ) and never heard back. Multiple DVD's don't play well, and the newer DVD's simply refuse to burn to a backup.

Dipikap said:

Unless you plan on purchasing terabytes of hard disk space for your collection, dont believe their claims that this program will work for you. And yes, I have tried this on multiple Mac's and configurations. It simply isn't what it claims to be. This MDRP claims it all, but when it comes down to it it fails. I emailed support and was told he was on vacation (apparently one guy does this ) and never heard back. Multiple DVD's don't play well, and the newer DVD's simply refuse to burn to a backup.

Click to expand...

Just to offer an alternate viewpoint, as someone who actually used MDRP to rip ~1000 anime DVDs, it only choked on 3 discs in my collection, two of which were bum discs that won't play through on any hardware player I've ever tried them on, and one of which is the first US anime DVD ever produced, so there's something weird about the mastering. Even marginal discs that other rippers (RipIt, specifically) had trouble with--it failed on too many errors--ripped properly, and played just fine.

I obviously haven't watched all of the files I've ripped, but every one I have has worked fine, and I specifically tried several discs that I knew were problematic or borderline (ones that were scratched, indie DVD-Rs, RipIt failed on, or that some set-top players skipped with) to make sure that it was doing okay. All have played fine thus far.

Maybe the situation has changed with the more extreme copy protection methods used on modern Hollywood discs, and MDRP hasn't kept up, explaining your different experiences. I did recently time-shift a big-studio rental DVD new release, and it ripped and played fine, so my extremely small sample size didn't show any issues, at least.

MDRP is a one-man operation, with the plusses and minuses that that has. I got a quick response the one time I asked a support question, but obviously your experience was different. It's not terribly expensive, at least, so there's that going for it.

And yes, of course you need a lot of hard drive space. I, personally, specifically wanted "exact" rips of full-sized .iso disc images. It took 3 2-TB hard drives for my entire collection, which cost well under $300, even including the "toaster-style" USB dock for them. I'd rather run a 4-5 disk RAID-5 array with 3-TB disks to allow for headroom and a hardware failure (may still switch to this some day when finances allow), but going extreme cheap and using the discs themselves as the backup does work.

The ability to produce .iso files instead of compacted rips was actually the reason I chose MDRP over other options. I can see why that would make it less desirable to others, and most people using it to produce recompressed video files are running the .isos through Handbrake after the fact, so it isn't necessarily the best one-stop shop, but it certainly does what I want it to, at least as of version 2.5.

DVDFab for mac is awesome and easy to use, I used the Windows version for years; it's availability for mac was one more nail in my Win XP bootcamp's coffin.

It allows you to choose whole disk or just main movie and creates a video_ts folder with the contents, you can use handgrake to convert from there.