Digital Home Thoughts: Ripping Your DVDs the Quick, Easy and Free Way

DVD Decrypter
The first thing you'll notice are two windows: One the main window and the other the log window. The log window contains marginally helpful information, and will display the various properties of the DVD in question. Ignore the log window as we'll be focusing on the main window in this guide.



In the main DVD Decrypter window, you can see on the right had side that, having read the DVD, it has already determined the track that is most likely to be the movie and selected it. You can tell it's the right track because it's the only one that's over two hours. 9 times out of 10, it will have selected the correct track. Sometimes though, a DVD will have a second track that's very similar, often a 'view movie with alternate ending' version. Usually these will be the second track and DVD Decrypter has correctly selected the first track. Also, if you're ripping an 'episodic' DVD (like your favorite Sopranos DVD), you will see them all there on the right side, though you may have to go hunting for them in the tree structure. When ripping an episodic DVD, you'll need to ensure that the proper episode (track) is selected (they're usually in order).

Once you've ensured the proper track is selected, select a destination for the ripped files by clicking the folder icon near the center of the window and browsing to the correct folder. I've created a folder on my drive called 'DVD Rip', under which I've created folders with names corresponding to the DVD I've ripped. When ripping episodic DVDs, I create sub-folders that are numbered with the corresponding DVD track number (e.g. folder '4' is for the fourth episode on the disc) and rip each episode into them. For our guide here, I've created a folder called 'Aliens'.

After selecting a destination folder, click the 'button' in the lower-left that shows a DVD (I know that 'cause it says so :wink:) and a green arrow pointing to a hard drive. The ripping process will begin and the main window will convert to a progress indicator window. The speed of this step depends on the reading capabilities of your DVD drive. Mine took about 19 minutes to copy all the files of this 2.5-hour movie. When it's done, a cheery little sound (that you can mercifully turn off in the options menu) and an operation successfully completed! box will appear. Click OK to return the main DVD Decrypter window. If you're ripping multiple episodes, you'll need to repeat the last few steps for each episode, ripping each one to its own folder. Exit DVD Decrypter when you're done.