I’m thinking of turning my old Acer desktop into a media server. I have a few DVDs that I would need to RIP to get a digital copy.
HandBrake is capable of Ripping DVDs if they are not copyright protected. Here’s how.
Download Hand Brake: https://handbrake.fr/
Open the program and with the DVD inserted you should see it listed under the left-hand “Source Selection” menu.
On the next screen I didn’t change anything. The Title was automatically selected. Handbrake automatically selects the main movie file. You can select different titles if more than one is available.
Presets: The resolution you want. I kept it on “Fast 1080p30”.
Format: Only three available; MP4, MKV, and WebM. I selected MP4.
At the bottom you have the option to change where the file will be saved.
Now click on “Start Encode”. The green button on the top menu.
You will now see a progress bar at the bottom of the HandBrake window.
Nothing to do now but wait. This movie only took ten minutes. But I have a few original DVDs that I want ripped. With HandBrake you could try downloading a file called “libdvdcss-2.dll” and copying it to the HandBrake program folder. I tried it but still couldn’t get it to work.
Download libdvdcss-2.dll from here. https://download.videolan.org/pub/libdvdcss/
If you want a free program that works try “MakeMKV”. Download MakeMKV here: www.makemkv.com/
Open program. Insert DVD. Click on the DVD icon.
Wait a few moments for it to initialize.
In the screen that opened, The first title at 5.7 GB is the main movie. Clicking on that little arrow before the check box opens some other components that can be removed.
I unchecked all the extra language files and the subtitle files and the three at the bottom of the list that I assumed are just the menus. To the right you can change the output folder. Then click on the “Make MKV” button.
And wait. It took 20 minutes and the end result was a 5.27 GB MKV file. It still might not work with all copyrighted DVDs but I’m impressed with my original results.
