How in the Tech

Quick and Dirty DVD Ripping

By Adam Myers ⋅ February 2, 2009 ⋅ Tags: Media Center, Multimedia

I’ve began using Boxee, the social network media player based off of XBMC, as a front end for all my content. I really enjoy having a consistent and unified interface to my content – whether it’s Music, Movies, or TV shows through Hulu. By now, we’ve all gone through the digitization of our audio CDs; a process that wasn’t terribly easy at first but nowadays has become more or less trivial. Our DVD collections are another matter. When I first began my initiative to digitize my DVDs it really wasn’t very straightforward. A quick Google revealed many multiple step tutorials, often utilizing multiple free programs. It was very much the case that free and easy weren’t bounded together in a nice package. Eventually I began seeing things about Handbrake which was much better but still required a fair bit more work, at least up front, that really slowed down the entire catalog ripping process. Finally, I settled on bitRipper.

bitRipper is the perfect tool for those that desire an easy solution to ripping their DVDs. How easy? How does a one-click rip sound? Without being bogged down with the multitude of options available in other programs, bitRipper provides a simple and streamlined interface.

1. With the program running, insert your disk into your DVD drive. bitRipper will automatically scan the drive and begin the ripping process if a proper DVD is inserted.





2. If you are so inclined to tweak options a bit further, clicking Settings will uncover a few more options concerning aspect ratios, audio tracks, or codecs. Generally, I’ve been just as happy with the defaults. This allows me to rip movies with minimal inconvenience – just pop in a disk whenever I’m at the computer and bitRipper will basically do the rest.

bitRipper is a free program that handles both 4.7GB and 8GB copy-protected DVDs.