RipIt Review: DVD Ripping Done Right
- Works well
- Intuitive interface
- Costly (comparatively)
- Only rips, no actual conversion
DVDs can be very bulky to bring on trips, or anywhere. They take up a lot of battery (if you use a laptop), and the noise of them spinning can get outrageously annoying. Many companies have made tools that let you rip your DVDs and watch them on your Mac. However, most of these apps are very complex and give you too many options (if you do something wrong, the rip may come out bad). Well, I never thought I would say it, but the best DVD ripper is the one with the least options: RipIt.
RipIt is a paid app, unlike most of its competitors. HandBrake does an amazing job converting any type of video to many formats, and MacTheRipper does a fairly good job of ripping DVDs. Both of these apps give you so many features that it can be daunting for some people. What RipIt provides is a good-looking and easy-to-use interface, at the cost of a lot of advanced features and ripping to multiple formats. So, before you even decide to try RipIt, ask yourself if you are willing to give up these features. If you’re not, then HandBrake and MacTheRipper are perfectly fine DVD rippers — especially HandBrake.
The point of RipIt is to be simple and to work well, and it does both of these beautifully. If you have a DVD inserted into your computer, when you open RipIt, there will be two buttons on the window: Rip and Eject. Press Rip if you want to rip the DVD, and Eject if you want to eject the DVD. If you click on Rip, then you just have to sit back and relax until RipIt is done ripping your DVD. It even tells you the percent that has been ripped and the time remaining! Once it’s done, there will be a .dvdmedia file in your Movies folder. A .dvdmedia file is a DVD Player (the Mac’s DVD player app) file. If you double-click it, it will open in DVD Player. You now have a file that requires no disk to be present, thus saving you much battery and clutter. RipIt works as simply as that!
RipIt also has a number of preferences that make it even easier to rip DVDs. In Preferences > General, you can choose where to rip to, what to do when the rip is complete, and you can even tell RipIt to start ripping as soon as a disk is inserted! In Preferences > Appearance, you can enable or disable animation (of the disk on the screen), and choose what badges to display in the Dock (like Percent Complete and Time Remaining). And finally, there is the Network pane. This allows you to use something called DiskIndent. This is a database of ripped DVDs (so other users can know if a certain DVD can be ripped). Don’t worry! It sends your data anonymously! If you use it, you will be helping others rip DVDs too.
Although it is possible to rip commercial DVDs, and DVDs not owned by you, we at MacApper do not condone circumventing copy-protection of DVDs using RipIt. So please, only use it on disks that you personally own. RipIt retails for $18.99, and you can download a free trial from their site too. It is by far the best ripping program that I have used to date, so if you rip DVDs, want to conserve battery, simplify entertainment on the go, or organize your movie collection, you should definitely try it out.
Can you convert the dvdmediafile using handbreak or visual hub to another format?
Yeah, just open it with handbrake, and it will act like a regular DVD file.
VisualHub: yes also, but, since Techspansion closed, you are better off using Handbrake.
I just bought RipIt, and from what I could find it was actually the cheapest option for full DVD backups. The download links for MacTheRipper are dead, and it appears that the 3.0 version which never left beta was going to be shareware for ~$30-40. HandBrake is great, but I didn’t want to spend countless hours converting movies to MP4 to have something to watch on some long flights. Looking around on iusethis all the other backup options cost ~$30-50.
Actually, using the latest Handbrake, I have been able to rip full length movies in less than 30 minutes. Two hour home movies that is.
This interface is kind of like AppZapper…
Simple but does the work, and doesn’t confuse newbies to Mac.
I want to love this software – unfortunately it has failed well over 1/2 the time in my tests.
[...] Update: Another, more in depth review of Ripit is available over at the great Mac software review site Macapper. It can be found by clicking here. [...]
The successful rip claims made by RipIt are way overstated.
The very first DVD I tried to rip failed. The second DVD I tried to rip, “successfully” ripped according to RipIt but when playing the movie it was a jumble with chapters out of order and in some cases duplicated chapters.
I evaluated RipIt as I am looking for something that will help improve the conversion of the 700+ DVD library for easy access through Plex. RipIt is definitely not it.
If you’re thinking about buying it, make SURE you take full advantage of the trial period to test it on DVDs. You’re likely to find, as I did, that about 40% of DVDs don’t work. Many of those will rip, but when you go to watch them … well … you’ll find the rips are a mess.