10 Best Free DVD Ripper for Windows 10/11 and Mac in 2024

Last year, more than 16 million people bought or rented home entertainment content, among which 8.8 million people purchased DVDs and Blu-ray discs. And it is estimated that the number might go larger this year due to the coronavirus pandemic and stay-at-home policies.

Since you are landing here, I guess you are a DVD collector with hundreds and thousands of discs and wondering how to relieve the space from shelves of DVDs that you preserve for years or just purchased from Amazon. Apparently, ripping DVDs into digital files would help you a lot as long as you are using the best DVD ripper for Windows 10/11 or Mac.

How Does the Best DVD Ripper Benefit DVD Collectors

• Save physical space by ripping DVDs to external hard drive, flash drive, or clouds.
• Protect old and precious DVDs from scratching, rotting, and damaging.
• Watch DVD videos on a bigger projection screen, smart TV, laptop, iPad, mobile phone, etc.
• Share DVD media content online more conveniently.
• Extract materials for video essays and yearly movie compilation editing.
• Recover damaged or unplayable movie DVDs.
• ...

1. VideoProc Converter AI – Best DVD Ripper for Windows and Mac

Compatible OS: Windows 11, 10, 8.1, 8, 7; Mac OS X 10.6 and later

Editor's rating:

If you have thousands of discs but have no idea which software is powerful enough to rip so many DVDs, VideoProc Converter AI is surely capable of helping you out. It's an all-in-one tool and video converter endowed with the great talent of copying and ripping DVDs on Windows and Mac. It can rip all old and new DVDs with copy-protections, copy full title to MKV, VIDEO_TS folder, and ISO image file, and digitize DVDs to MP4, AVI, WMV, MOV, and 370+ formats to play, share, archive, and edit conveniently.

For beginners, it has a full list of presets categorized by devices (iPhone, iPad, Android, TV, etc.) and video platforms (YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, etc.), so that you can rip a DVD in one click. For tech-savvy users, VideoProc Converter AI gives you full control over the video resolution, the bitrate, the frame rate, the video codec, and the subtitle track.

By the level 3 hardware acceleration tech, VideoProc Converter AI rips DVDs in the fastest manner. Knowing that most DVD owners want the best of the best, it offers one-stop video solutions incl. editing, AI upscaling, deinterlacing, compressing, recording, downloading, etc.

Pros:

• Workable for both homemade and commercial DVD discs, movies, music, TV shows, workout, and anime DVDs.
• Bypass the region restriction of DVDs and remove copy protection from DVDs including Disney 99-title DVDs.
• Support hardware acceleration and boost DVD ripping up to 47x real-time faster.
• Copy and convert DVD to MP4, FLV, MTS, MKV, AVI, MP3, and any format you want.
• 6 DVD backup options to deliver videos in the original quality.
• Enhance video quality of old, low-reslution, blurry, and slightly scratched DVDs.
• Compress and edit ripped DVD videos to fit smart TV, Facebook, YouTube, iPhone, Android, etc.

Cons:

• Cannot rip Blu-ray discs.

Video Tutorial: How to Rip a DVD with VideoProc Converter AI

Three Hacks That Make DVD Ripping in VideoProc Converter AI Never this Easy

#1 If you don't know the type of your DVD file system, just keep the default setting, and VideoProc Converter AI will detect the right title for you automatically.

#2 Tick the box before NVIDIA/Intel/AMD and select multi-core usage, and you can enjoy real-time faster ripping speed.

#3 Toggle on the Safe Mode, and VideoProc Converter AI will take care of the whole ripping process and prevent it from stopping accidentally.

#4 Import the digitized DVD movie to its Super Resolution and Frame Interpolation (AI modules), and you can upscale low-res or old movie to HD/4K and convert films from 24fps to smooth modern FPS.

2. VLC - Best Free DVD Ripper for Windows and Mac

Compatible OS: Windows (64-bit only), Mac, Linux

Editor's rating:

VLC is well-known as a media player available on both computers and mobile devices. It supports a wide arrange of media formats, of course, including discs. You can browse to open DVD, Blu-ray, audio CD, and SVCD/VCD with VLC, and convert them to MKV, MP4, TS, and more. Since it won't rip DVD with smart presets, you need to manually adjust settings of codecs, resolution, frame rate, and select title, audio track and subtitle track. To rip DVD/Blu-ray in the original quality, output settings have to match the source content, so you must be well aware of the source information.

Compared with HandBrake, VLC is much simpler for beginners and semi-pros. Follow the lead of its intuitive interface, you can load, rip, and export the DVD video easily. But note that, you are only allowed to select one title/chapter at a time. If no title that contains all chapters in the DVD, you have to rip DVD chapters one by one, and finally, merge them into one video. Alas, it gets users baffled again.

Pros:

• Free and supported on most computers.
• Intuitive and easy to pick up for most users.
• Rip kinds of discs – DVD, Blu-ray, VCD, and CD.
• A perfect player on computer for DVD and Blu-ray.

Cons:

• Can't read the best title automatically.
• No sound issue occurs when ripping DVD to MP4 format container.

Official website: https://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html

3. HandBrake – Open Source DVD Ripper Software

Compatible OS: Windows (64-bit only), Mac, Linux

Editor's rating:

HandBrake is an open source video transcoder that also functions as the best free DVD ripper. It supports DVD, Blu-ray discs, and ISO image files without copy protection. For advanced users who prefer customize output settings, this software gives you maximum free to tweak on your DVD videos – video encoding modes, resolution, bitrate, subtitle tracks, title/chapter selection, video dimensions, filters, etc. Besides, it has handy presets categorized by devices, web, Matroska, production, and general use.

Although it comes with easy video editing features like rotate, flip, sharpen, and denoise, you cannot preview what you have done to your video in real time. It takes a long time to render the ripped video and then unitizes the system default media player to play it. Beginners may spend hours and even days adjusting DVD ripping settings before they get the whole media content from the disc successfully.

Pros:

• Capable of ripping both DVDs and Blu-ray discs.
• Entirely free and lightweight.
• Flexible ripping settings, and can be manipulated with command lines.
• Support most modern and widely used video codecs: H.265, H.264, VP9, and MPEG-4.

Cons:

• Unable to rip encrypted DVD and Blur-ray.
• No real-time preview.
• Limited output formats – MKV, MP4, and WebM.
• Fail to rip large movie DVD/Blu-ray when you load multiple tasks on your computer.

Official website: https://handbrake.fr/

4. MakeMKV - Best DVD and Blu-ray Ripper

Compatible OS: Mac, Windows, Linux

Editor's rating:

Although MakeMKV is a video converter, it offers less optimal formats for the ripped DVD video. It grabs all the contents from the disc and saves them in an MKV file. After you insert a disc and load it to MakeMKV, the ripper detects and presents all the tiles and source information in a fast manner. If you don't know which title to rip, just choose the one with the biggest size. This DVD and Blu-ray ripper choose MKV as the only output format because it contains all the data you need: video, audio, chapters, track language, etc.

Pros:

• It reads and converts both DVD and Blu-ray discs even protected with AACS and BD+.
• It preserves the original video quality of BD and DVD movies.
• The MKV file you get contains all media contents in the discs.
• The workflow is super easy for all users.
• Its beta version comes with all features available and completely free.

Cons:

• Only one video format container MKV.
• You need to play the disc and select the right title manually.
• No more customizable settings to reduce the file size or change the video resolution.

Official website: https://www.makemkv.com/

5. MediaCoder – Best Free DVD Ripper for Windows

Compatible OS: Windows 11, 10, 8.1, 8, 7, Vista

Editor's rating:

This is an audio and video transcoder that can be applied to grab videos from unencrypted DVD, VCD, CD, and BD. You can tell from its interface that this is an aged tool – old-school UI design with loads of settings panels. Honestly, this is not friendly to newbies. It costs you much time understanding the function of each panel and setting the start and end of your desired part, because it doesn't read the discs by titles, instead it roughly grabs all video files and merges them into a long video.

Pros:

• A rich set of parameters for tuning the video and audio files.
• Support tens of lossy and lossless compression formats.
• Best for advanced users with much multimedia knowledge.
• Completely free and easy to download.

Cons:

• Not available for Mac.
• It rips all titles by default.
• Extremely slow preview on the recent Windows 11/10 system.

Official website: https://www.mediacoderhq.com/

6. Freemake – DVD Ripper for Windows

Compatible OS: Windows 10, 8, 7, Vista

Editor's rating:

The DVD ripping software from Freemake is recognized as the best DVD ripper for Windows for almost 10 years. It is pretty easy to extract subtitles, video, audio, menus from DVDs and Blu-ray discs. It has assisted millions of users with varied goals - archiving, copying, transferring online, or playing DVDs on portable devices. As long as the media content is non-corrupted, Freemake can rip any type of DVDs including DVD-R DL, DVD+R DL, DVD-R/RW, and DVD+R/RW, as well as region-locked and copy-protected DVDs and Blu-ray.

Pros:

• Rip most old and new DVDs and decrypt region-locked DVDs.
• Customizable settings for optimizing video quality and size.
• Easy for beginners.
• Copy DVD videos to USB, HDTV, iPhone, iPad, Android, etc.
• Support 50+ video formats.

Cons:

• Windows only.
• It does not support video codecs like H.265, VP9, and AV1.
• Apparent quality loss when shrink the DVD size.
• The ripped video will be watermarked in the free version.

Freemake DVD Ripper "Downloading installation files failed" Error

Even though you can download the.exe file from its official site, you are always stuck by this error. That's because Freemake DVD Ripper has been expired and merged into another software called Freemake Video Converter.

Official website: https://www.freemake.com/

7. WinX DVD Ripper Platinum – Powerful DVD Ripper

Compatible OS: Windows, Mac

Editor's rating:

The next DVD ripper we are going to talk about is WinX DVD Ripper. You must be familiar with this brand if you started using DVD ripper a long time ago. It has set the industry standard for DVD ripping. By its special compatible CSS mechanism, it decrypts Disney X-project DRM, Sony ARccOS Protection, DVD region lock, and user operation prohibition. So it can rip DVD on Windows 11/10 and Mac without fuss. Another thing makes WinX DVD Ripper Platinum a robust ripper is the tech of hyper-threading and multi-core hardware acceleration (up to 8 cores), which empowers you to rip a full DVD to MP4 H.264 in 5 minutes.

Besides MP4, it can rip DVD to AVI, MPEG, M2TS, and any format accepted by TV, hard drive, laptops, and mobile devices. To keep everything you want, it backs up almost all content in your DVD including all chapters, subtitle track, and tag info. And if necessary, you can do some edits before ripping, like say, trimming, cropping, or adjusting audio volume.

Pros:

• Optimize the file size 80% smaller while keeping the original resolution.
• Remove DRM from Disney, Warner Bros, and Paramount movies.
• 350+ output format options for playing DVD videos on any devices and platforms.
• It offers a free edition for people on a budget.

Cons:

• Cannot rip Blu-ray discs.
• It doesn't support AMD hardware acceleration.

Official website: https://www.winxdvd.com/dvd-ripper-platinum/

8. Format Factory – Free DVD Ripping Software for Windows

Compatible OS: Windows 11/10/8/7

Editor's rating:

Format Factory is a powerful multimedia processing tool competent to convert videos, images, and documents. And DVD ripping is just one of its functions. Just as the name suggests, it is compatible with a truly wide array of formats. Besides DVDs, you can use to rip BD, and music CD. In the ROM Device/DVD/CD/ISO option, Format Factory offers 5 ripping utilities for converting DVD to video file, Blu-ray disc to MKV, CD to audio file, DVD/CD to ISO/CSO, and ISO to CSO. You can pick the output format as you like from its format arsenal freely.

Pros:

• It is completely free and safe.
• It reads and keeps all the contents in the DVD, titles, chapters, metadata, etc.
• Compatible with most media formats: MP4, WMV, AVI, 3GP, MP3, AAC, WMA, etc.
• Simple editing tools for video, audio, and image files.

Cons:

• You cannot preview the movie before ripping.
• It can't detect and select the best title automatically.
• Format Factory has no Mac version.
• It tends to take a long time to rip movie DVDs without the help of hardware acceleration.

Official website: http://pcfreetime.com/formatfactory/

9. VidCoder - Open Source DVD Ripper for Windows

Compatible OS: Windows 11, 10, 8, 7 (64-bit)

Editor's rating:

VidCoder comes in handy if you want to rip DVD or BD to widely supported and playable video formats MP4 and MKV. Like most DVD ripping software, VidCoder offers both customizable ripping settings and dumb-easy presets. If you are an experienced user, you can control the results as you wish, such as the format, video size, resolution, and quality. In most cases, we just keep the default settings and then wait for the ripped video.

The core encoding engine is written by HandBrake developers based on the Net Framework. You don't need to install Handbrake but have NET 4.7.1 pre-installed on your PC. Otherwise, VidCoder won't start running and will prompt you to download and install it.

Pros:

• Instant preview of what the ripped video looks like.
• Flexible settings for video titles and chapters, languages, and subtitles.
• Rip and merge multiple chapters into one video.
• Powerful batch encoding.
• Multiple codec options: H.264, H.265. MPEG-4. MP3, AAC, etc.
• Video encoding is boosted by hardware acceleration.

Cons:

• Cannot rip decrypted commercial discs.
• Only two available video containers in VidCoder – MP4 and MKV.
• You can't preview the whole video until the DVD ripping is finished.

Official website: https://vidcoder.net/

10. Magic DVD Ripper – DVD Ripper and Copy Software for Windows

Compatible OS: Windows 11/10/8/7

Editor's rating:

Since developed as a pure DVD ripper, Magic DVD spends every effort dealing with DVD, and that's why there are no extra features like video editing in it. Most users are confused by it its brother Magic DVD Copier. Actually, they come with almost the same functions, but Magic DVD Copier is more expensive and has one more feature - burning videos to blank discs.

Back to Magic DVD Ripper, it has 4 ways to rip the disc – copying the disc fully, ripping the main movie, splitting DVD9 into DVD5 discs, and compressing the DVD to tit on a single player disc (but with 55% quality loss). On top of that, DVD Magic Ripper can help you convert DVDs including encrypted DVDs to playable formats on smartphones, iPods, PSP, PS4/PS3, etc. Besides common video formats, it also enables you to convert DVD to VCD or SVCD.

Pros:

• Rip full DVD disc including trailers, menus, and special features.
• Remove DVD restrictions (Region, RCE, CSS, etc.).
• High speed ripping without much quality loss.
• Compatible with all Windows computers.

Cons:

• No real-time preview.
• No smart title selection. You need to play the DVD and figure out the right title in advance.

Official website: http://www.magicdvdripper.com/

Best DVD Ripper Software Comparison

For anyone who in a rush, we've made this comparison table of the 10 best DVD ripping software on the market. Check it out and pick the best one for you in just a second.

Why These DVD Rippers Are Not on the List

DVDShrink

DVDShrink is an obsolete Windows freeware to copy and back up DVDs, and it doesn't perform very well in Windows 11, 10, 8, 7. Although it claims that it won't charge anything, it asks you to donate and redirects you to other sites. And after browsing the entire website, I did not find any download button.

Aurora DV Ripper

Aurora was once the hot DVD ripping software on Windows XP and Windows 98, but it hasn't been updated since 2006. So it is not the best DVD ripper on modern computers.

FAQs

1. Ripping or copying?

DVD ripping and copying both read and extract data from physical discs to a digital format, but differ in the way of achieving this goal. DVD ripping is a compressed process and strips out some special features, thus ripped videos are smaller than the one copied. While copying is to duplicate the original discs bit by bit. So when you play the copied DVD video, you'll feel like playing the original DVDs and dealing with menus, trailers, etc.

2. What is the best format to rip a DVD?

If your goal is to rip and store the DVD in the best quality, it is better to choose DVD standard video format MPEG2 that keeps the original resolution 720p @29.97fps. But note that you'll lose subtitles, VMG files and more info. While for 1:1 copy in an uncompressed way, ISO and Video_TS Folder are your best choices.

When you rip and convert movie DVDs for playback on tablets, smartphones, or TVs, the best format should be widely supported and playable. MKV is the most recommended among DVD collectors because it includes subtitles, video and audio tracks, menus, and chapters.

3. How long does it take to rip a DVD?

It depends. The DVD video length and size, the target format, the computer configuration, and the DVD ripper you use all combine to affect the ripping speed. Generally, it takes 12 - 30 minutes to rip a standard DVD movie. However, the time can be shorter or longer based on the DVD ripping software you use and whether it utilizes hardware acceleration and multi cores to improve the speed.

Taking VideoProc Converter AI as an example, with the hardware acceleration engine enabled, it only takes 10 minutes while keeping the CPU usage around 20% to rip a feature-length movie DVD (109 min, NTSC 720x480) to MKV.

Disclaimer

Before ripping a DVD, we need to address the elephant in the room – DVD copy protection. According to the case Real Networks v. DVD CCA, any use of circumvention tools for infringing purposes is illegal and forbidden, while, to make a personal backup copy of the media content is permissible under some conditions. But note that this differs from country to country. Therefore, go check your local laws before you use these DVD rippers.