“Eli, how do I rip DVD’s?”

This the question I get asked most at school. And often, I will try to explain, but as I do, I can tell they just get lost. Maybe I’m just no good at talking. Maybe these people need me to hold their hands and just show them how to do it. Wait. That sounds pretty good. Lets do that.

This tutorial assumes that you have Windows, but you can still kind of follow this on a Mac, as they use the same program. What you need is:

• A DVD
• Handbrake
• DVD Decrypter

Step 1: Choose DVD

This is Sin City. It is amazing.

I chose Frank Miller’s “Sin City”. I do dig film noir movies.

Step 2: Insert DVD

Do I even need this picture?

I mean, this is pretty self-explanatory, but you’d be surprised what I see.

Step 3: Fire up DVD Decrypter and copy the disk

It may be old, but it is awesome!

DVD Decrypter strips the CSS copy protection from your DVD movie and copies it to your hard drive. At this point, the movie is technically “ripped”, but note, at this point the ripped movie is about 8 gigabytes and broken up into tiny pieces. The next step will fix that.

Step 4: Use Handbrake to make your movie awesome

Handbrake is my best friend. It will soon be yours, also.

Open Handbrake and click on the “Source” button and then click on the VIDEO_TS option. You will then navigate Handbrake to where DVD Decrypter placed your DVD. This will usually be in the main part of your C drive, so finding it should be simple.

Handbrake will then analyze your file and then you need to choose a place to save your file in the “Destination” box. I save to my desktop for easy access.

Step 5: Handbrake and it’s limitless options

Your video size is pretty important....If size matters to you.

Handbrake is just a GUI frontend of the open source FFmpeg project. If that flew over your head, don’t worry about it. Simply put, FFmpeg is a very complex command line beast, one that not even it’s creator fully understand (alright, I made that last part up). Handbrake just puts a face on that command line, making it easy for you and I to use.

That said, Handbrake is still pretty complex. Luckly for us, there is a wide ranging amount of built in presets for common devices. So if all you want to watch your movie on is a PS3, just click on the PS3 preset and hit encode and consider yourself done. For me though, I’m a little more picky.

In the picture settings tab, I make my video a little smaller. In the video tab, I make a target file size 1000 megabytes. In the audio tab, I leave the audio as ACC, so that I can get 5.1 channels of audio. I mean, there are limitless options, so feel free to experiment or read the Handbrake wiki for more info.

After you do this, click the Start button at the top.

Step 6: And now we play the waiting game…

You will learn to hate this sight.

Now a window that looks like this will pop up. This window means that the video is rendering. This step will put a lot of strain on your computer, using up much of it’s resources. I can’t recommend using your computer during this time, either, as it will make the video skip, and you don’t want that, do you?

This also takes a very long time. On my computer, which has 2 gigs of memory and a decent dual core processer, it took Handbrake and hour and a half to two hours to encode a movie. Your time will vary depending on how good your computer is.

Step 7: Enjoy that movie!

It's a very intense movie, I must say.

Your movie is now in a nice viewable state. I use VLC media player to watch my movies, but depending on your settings, it really doesn’t matter. Go ahead and watch that movie anytime, anywhere, and on anything. Also, you can now delete that huge 8 gig copy of that DVD on your hard drive.

Notes:

• If you want to rip a bunch of movies overnight, copy them all at once with DVD Decrypter and then follow the steps in Handbrake. When it comes time to start the encoding, hit “Add to Queue” and then add and configure your next movie. After that, in the Queue viewer, hit the start button.

This is the window of champions or aXXo. Same thing really.

• If you are on a Mac, you can still use Handbrake. In fact, if you have VLC media player installed, you can skip copying the DVD part with DVD Decrypter. Handbrake will use VLC’s DVD decrypting technology, so it will rip it right off the disk.
• While this is kind of illegal, it’s a moral gray area. The way I see it, it is no different then ripping a CD I own or borrowed from a friend/library. Do what you think is right and don’t tell me how to think.

Question? Comments? Leave me a comment and we’ll talk it out.