Decrypt and Rip DVDs

The main tool we’ll be using to rip DVDs is called Handbrake, which you can download here. Out of the box, Handbrake can rip any DVD that isn’t copy protected…but almost all DVDs you buy in the store are copy protected. Getting around this is a weirdly gray area legally, so applications like Handbrake can’t legally include the software needed to decrypt copy protected DVDs. You can, however, download it separately—as long as you’re just using this to watch a movie on your computer and not starting a bootlegging business, we promise we won’t tell on you.

We’ll be using a free DVD playback library called libdvdcss. This will let Handbrake read your encrypted DVDs and rip them to your computer. The process is a little different for Windows and Mac users, so we’ll go through each one individually. Note that you don’t have to do this every time you rip a DVD—once libdvdcss is installed, you can skip to Step One each time you rip a new disc.

First, you’ll need to download libdvdcss to your computer. For 32-bit versions of Windows, download this version. 64-bit users should download this version.

Copy the .dll file to your Handbrake program folder. If you used the default installation settings, this should be in C:\Program Files\Handbrake.

Once you’ve installed libdvdcss, it’s time to get ripping. Open Handbrake and choose your DVD drive from the sidebar that appears.

Handbrake will take a moment to scan the titles on your DVD. Wait until this process is finished. It should only take a moment. If libdvdcss wasn’t installed incorrectly, you’ll see an error saying that the disc can’t be read here instead.

Don’t be scared by Handbrake’s complex window—most of this should be pretty simple. Once your DVD is open, head to the “Title” dropdown box and choose which title you want to rip. By default, Handbrake will choose the movie, but if you want to rip any special features or deleted scenes, you can change the target you want to rip here. You can also change which chapters you want to rip, if you only want part of the movie.

Under Destination, click Browse to pick where you want to place the movie after you’ve ripped it.

Next, you’ll need to decide the quality of your output file. The higher quality the movie, the more space it will take on your hard drive. If you’re technical, you can use the Picture, Video, and Audio tabs to adjust these settings, but most people only need to click one thing: a Preset.

Along the right side of the Handbrake window, you’ll see a selection of Presets (if you don’t see it, drag the corner of Handbrake’s window and expand it until you do). There are presets for nearly anything you could need: Apple TV, Android phones, PlayStation, and lots more. If you’re watching on your computer, use one of the “General” presets—“Fast” and “Very Fast” will be low quality but small in size, while “HQ” and “Super HQ” will have higher quality but take up more space.

If you’re ripping a DVD sold in the US, choose the 480p preset. European DVDs are usually 576p. Don’t choose larger presets like 720p or 1080p for DVDs—they won’t make your video look any better, they’ll just make the file bigger.

Adjust frame rate to match the source frame rate. Choose the encoder (e.g. H264, H265, VP9 and etc.). I usually choose DTS passthrough for original audio quality.

Interlaced handbrake 1.0.7 support:

1. Use Mediainfo (separate app) and set to sheet to find source video info. E.g. progressive or interlaced, if tff or bff (top frame first or bottom frame first)
2. Choose one of the Matroska presets that is closest to the source format (e.g. H.264 MKV 1080p30 for my 1080i29.97 source). I found MKV gives smallest file with the same quality. H.265 doesn't seem to support interlaced video output.
3. Add :tff or :bff in the “Extra Options” box, put at end (append).
4. Turn off all filters: set to off, set fps to the same as source and constant.
5. Feel free to set resolution, etc. You can save the new settings as a custom Preset for future use.

This will allow your TV or device to perform the de-interlacing which is far superior than removing half the motion resolution as 98% people and/or software encoders do by default.

I had previously converted these videos using the “decomb” filter in the Handbrake video conversion tool. Decomb is supposed to intelligently smooth out the video. But I’ve recently learned that it throws away half of the information and then guesses how to fill in the gaps. The details are boring, but think of a world where index cards are expensive, so you write on both the front and back – and then you reconstruct your thoughts later using only the front sides.

A filter called Yadif can try to preserve all the information by doubling the number of frames from 25 or 30 per second to 50 or 60, then reading both sides of each card.

Handbrake, my converter of choice, calls this “bob”. The more powerful but rather confusing ffmpeg calls it “yadif mode 1”. Either way, you feed in something at 24, 25, or 30 frames per second, and something with double the frames comes out the back.

If you know your source is interlaced, don’t rely on Handbrake’s decomb. Be explicit, either by setting Deinterlace to Bob on the GUI or by specifying –deinterlace=bob on the command line. Setting H.265 to 10-bit mode, rather than the default 8-bit, helps a little bit as well.

The difference goes a little something like this. And your file size won’t double – it may go up a bit or even down a bit, because de-interlacing can help the video compressor work more effectively.

You may want that video interlaced. You may have a desktop machine that de-interlaces better than the Yadif filter. But Handbrake does not preserve the “interlaced” flag in the video header. Your computer will not know to apply the interlace processing, and then you’ll get a whole clip that looks like the “before” picture.

You can tell Handbrake to set the interlaced flag on a video by entering “interlace=tff” (or bff) in the Advanced Options on the GUI, or by specifying “-x interlace=tff” (or bff) to the command-line version. “tff” and “bff” mean top or bottom frame first, which you can find using the mediainfo program.

Once you’ve chosen your Title and Preset, click Start Encode at the top of the window. Then, grab a snack.

StaxRip** ia a free and multimedia encoding software that can rip DVD/Blu-ray/Videos to more popular formats like: MPEG-4, Xvid, x264/H264/AVC, x265/H265/HEVC, VP9. It is an all-in-one encoding/conversion tool that has a function to convert DVD/DVB and other video file formats to DivX, Xvid, H.264, H.265. As an open source application, StaxRip is completely free. It supports output in the container formats: AVI, MP4, MPG, MKV, DIVX. Therefore, if you have no idea on how to rip DVD with HandBrake or you HandBrake just stops working, you could also turn to StaxRip.

The below steps would show you how to rip DVD with StaxRip in detail:

1. Download and install StaxRip on your computer. And get your source DVD movies ready.
2. Launch StaxRip on your computer and select “Source” in order to load DVD files to this program.
3. On the pop-up window, select “Single Or Merge” and select ALL the VOB files that you want to rip from your DVD file. Then click “OK”. StaxRip will now demux, index and merge the VOB files.
4. In the “Target” box, set an output directory.
5. Click the “MKV” button to choose output format. You could choose MP4 here for iPad. Click the “DivX Plus” button to set output quality and size.
6. You could also click the “Config Codec” and “Config Container” options according to your own needs.
7. Under the “Audio” options, you could adjust output audio parameters.
8. Then, click the “Next” button.
9. On the new pop-up window, click “Start” to start the encoding process. You can view the H.264 encoding process in the Log screen. And the encoding process will complete itself.

After converting, you will get video files from DVD movies to playback on your tablets, smartphones, TVs, HD Media Players and so on.

A very high quality deinterlacer with a range of features for both quality and convenience. (This is probably the best deinterlace algorithm)