Top 5 Blu-Ray and DVD Rippers

What to look for in DVD and Blu-ray rippers / copiers

Whether you’re making a fresh copy of a scratched disc, ripping a Blu-ray movie to watch on your iPhone, or just wanting to back up your physical media library, there are a few things you can look at with the best DVD media. Ripping programs should look out for it.

• Copy quality: A DVD ripper that outputs shoddy picture and distorted sound is ruining the experience you were trying to preserve. The best DVD and Blu-ray rippers make an exact 1: 1 copy of the content on the original disc.
• compression: There may be times when you want to compress a store-bought DVD or Blu-ray movie onto a blank disc with a smaller capacity. Most writable DVDs have a storage capacity of 4.7 GB (DVD-5). However, commercially produced DVDs contain 8.5 GB of data (DVD-9). The same concept applies to Blu-rays. Therefore, pay attention to the storage capacity of your blanks and the compression functions of the software you have purchased.
• adjustment: Good DVD ripping or copying software gives you the ability to discard things like special features, trailers, foreign language audio, and more. The best programs allow you to create custom discs of anything you want and anything you don’t.
• Change: The best DVD rippers will free your movies from their plastic prisons so you can watch them on your smartphone, laptop, tablet, or any other device of your choice. They convert content to formats like MP4, WMV, MOV or MKV (among others) and optimize files for playback on specific devices.
• Archiving: One of the most useful things about DVD and Blu-ray copy software is the ability to copy the ISO disc image of a disc to your hard drive. Once a disc image is on your computer, you can play it with any media player or use it to burn new discs.
• Free trial: If you can’t try a ripper program before buying it, you are likely getting ripped off. Fortunately, all of the programs in this article come with a one-month free trial.

Best overall result: Leawo Prof. Media 11

Leawo Prof. Media 11 (sometimes marketed as Leawo Total Media Converter) has almost everything we’re looking for in this category. That’s because it’s more than a simple Blu-ray ripper – it’s a digital media toolbox that has modules for everything from disc copiers and creators to file converters and online video downloaders. Plus, you don’t have to buy the entire suite – you can buy what you need, and each of the 11 modules comes with its own 31-day free trial.

Prof. Media’s tools for ripping and copying discs are hard to beat. The DVD and Blu-ray copier modules allow you to make exact 1: 1 copies of your discs, compress content to fit on smaller capacity discs, and even shrink Blu-ray movies to fit on a DVD . No other product featured in this article has this capability.

You can convert your movies to popular video formats like MP4, MOV, MKV, FLV, VOB or WMV. The software also has a healthy number of device optimization profiles, including products from Apple, Sony, Samsung, HTC, Motorola, and LG. The Blu-ray Creator and DVD Creator modules allow you to create your own custom discs of any content on your computer, making it an even more useful tool for digital content creators.

The only thing that Prof. Media lacks is the ability to save a DVD or Blu-ray Disc image on your computer. If you are looking for a digital media program that can do everything, you can hardly go wrong with Leawo Prof. Media 11.

Best for archiving: DVD cloner

As the name suggests, DVD Cloner focuses on making physical copies of your DVDs. You can start the copying process with just three clicks. It has the option of creating an exact 1: 1 copy of a DVD-9, compressing a DVD-9 onto a DVD-5, creating a pure film copy of a DVD-9 onto a DVD-5, the content of a DVD split DVD-9 into two or more DVD-5s and create a custom copy. This may seem like a lot for just one screen, but once you’ve gone through the process you’ll appreciate how DVD Cloner turned something complex into something intuitive, understandable, and fast.

DVD Cloner has some Blu-ray features, but it is not as robust as its DVD tools. It only allows you to make film-only copies of a Blu-ray Disc. If you want more advanced Blu-ray tools, you have to check out sister product Blue-Cloner.

One of the most attractive features of DVD cloner is its ability to easily extract the ISO disc image of a disc. It’s an invaluable tool for protecting your physical media library. Backing up your optical media collection means not only that you can restore it in case it is ever lost, damaged, or stolen, but it also means that you can play it without the need for an optical drive. Just start your favorite media player software, load the picture, press play, and you’ll never have to crack those jewel cases again.

However, since DVD Cloner is so focused on copying physical media, it is not surprising that it doesn’t offer a lot of options for converting your movies to various file formats. You can only convert content to an MKV file. And although that’s good so far, it doesn’t go very far at the beginning.

Best device optimizer: WinX DVD Ripper

WinX DVD Ripper has tons of great features that will allow you to watch your movies and TV shows on any device. The most important of these is the extensive library of preprogrammed device output profiles with more than 300 options to choose from. These include Apple, Android, Microsoft, Sony, BlackBerry, Nokia, Samsung, Panasonic, LG, and more. And it’s not just gadgets; You can optimize your custom rip for uploads to Facebook and YouTube and prepare it for video editing software like Final Cut Pro and iMovie.

Another great feature of WinX DVD Ripper is GPU acceleration, which means your computer’s graphics card can be used to speed up the conversion and ripping process. So if you’re in a hurry and don’t mind putting a little load on your system, this comes in handy. In addition, this program gives you the option to edit your videos before converting them. This is great when you want to rip a single scene from a movie or zoom in on a specific part of the picture.

As you might have guessed from the name, DVD Ripper does not create Blu-ray content. It also doesn’t have DVD burning capabilities, although you can get the disc image of a DVD for use in a player or use a burning program to make a fresh copy.

Best Budget: Aimersoft DVD Ripper

Aimersoft DVD Ripper has almost all of the DVD ripping tools that we mentioned in the above applications, but they are a bit pared down. That’s good because it also makes it less expensive than these options. It has a clean, simple, and responsive user interface that even the least tech-savvy user can easily operate.

The software loads discs quickly, offers a decent selection of output profiles, has modest editing capabilities, and can even burn new copies of your discs with ease. The only two things we are looking for in this category that Aimersoft DVD Ripper lacks are the ability to save a disc image on your computer and Blu-ray compatibility. So if you just want to digitize your DVD collection cheaply, Aimersoft is an excellent choice.

Best freeware: MakeMKV

If the price you’re willing to pay for ripping software is free, MakeMKV is the program you’re looking for. Remember, however, that you get what you pay for, which is not a lot. The only thing it does is create MKV video files of the content on your DVDs and Blu-ray discs. You get no compression, no conversion profiles, no editing, and no burning. This is fine if you have the technical expertise to do all of these other things yourself, or if you already have other applications that do all of these things. If you don’t, it can be worth the money to get a program that will do all of this for you.

While MakeMKV is a free program, it requires a new beta key every month. You can find it here. The developers claim that one day they’ll be charging a fee, but for now it’s free as long as you keep up with the monthly beta keys.