Have you tried or used VideoLAN’s VLC Media Player? It’s my favorite media player and the best one in my opinion. Its very versatile and can play almost any type of media file (audio & video) available. Aside from playing media files, do you know that VLC can also rip DVDs? If you don’t then you’re in luck because today I’m gonna show you how you can do it in a few simple steps.
DISCLAIMER: The DMCA prohibits the ripping of DVDs that have DRM or any form of DRM on it like CSS, so make sure you only rip DVDs that don’t have content protection. If you decide to proceed with ripping a DVD, you can use this process at your own risk.
NOTE: For this tutorial, I used VLC Media Player 1.0.3 Goldeneye
1. Open VLC Media Player and go to Media > Open Disc or you can do a Ctrl + D.
2. Make sure that DVD is selected and Disc Device is pointing to the DVD drive.
3. Click Play to check if its the DVD/video that you want to rip. If not, change Title value to 1 or the next number until you find the right video.
4. Now that you have the right video, go to Media > Convert/Save or do a Ctrl + R.
5. Click on the Disc tab and click on Convert/Save. Under Destination, select the folder or location where you want to save the file and type in the title of the file. Make sure you type in the correct file extension – “.ogg” or “.mp4″.
6. Under Settings > Profile, select Video – MPEG-4 + AAC (MP4) if you want to play it on your iPod/iPhone or Video – Theory + FLAC (OGG) if you want lossless audio.
7. You can edit the Profile settings by clicking on the button beside the profile options.
8. When you’re satisfied with the settings, start the ripping process by clicking on Start.
Just wait until VLC is done ripping the DVD and that’s it. You can now watch the finished file with VLC. If you selected the Video – MPEG-4 + AAC (MP4) setting then you can upload the video to your iPod/iPhone and watch it. Hope you’ll find this simple tutorial on how to rip DVDs with VLC useful.
Anyone else use VLC to rip DVDs or do you use regular DVD ripping software? Do you know of an alternative way of ripping DVDs without the use of software? Please share your thoughts.
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October 31st, 2012 at 6:36 AM
Tried to download a DVD to my IPAD.
Ran into a problem.
The drop down box for Settings – Profile does not have Video-MPEG4 + AAC(MP4)
Can anyone help me?
Thanks
June 9th, 2012 at 4:59 AM
hi
i just followed your guide and the vvlc gives me an error that it can’t read some blocks. what can I do?
Thanks a lot
January 27th, 2011 at 9:20 AM
VLC is the only media player I really use, it’s so rare to find anything that it won’t play. Didn’t know you could do this with it though, cheers!
November 21st, 2010 at 9:31 PM
Hi, I’m using VLC from many years….I really don’t know how to convert to different formats…Thanks for sharing……..let me try and get back to you.
November 20th, 2010 at 3:32 PM
i have been trying to rip DVDs and i have been getting video, but the files have no audio with it.
November 18th, 2010 at 1:25 AM
dvd decryptor is what I usually use, but are you kidding me, I can use VLC to rip discs? Oh ya. This is totally solid info, tx man.
February 14th, 2010 at 8:10 AM
@Richard – That’s the reason why I’m sharing this is because I know there are a lot of VLC users who aren’t aware of this feature. You’re welcome! Glad you liked it and found it useful. :)
February 14th, 2010 at 8:05 AM
No way! I am a huge VLC user and I have been using other tools to do this. I have no idea that I could rip using VLC. Thanks for the update. I am going to give this a try!
.-= Richard´s last blog ..Copy DVD To Hard Drive =-.
January 22nd, 2010 at 11:30 PM
@joie – That’s one of the features that many VLC users aren’t aware of or are barely using.
January 22nd, 2010 at 11:29 PM
I havent tried that one yet. But I am using VLC player and it is very good even watching live streaming media.
January 22nd, 2010 at 7:00 PM
@Jhay – Interesting point. I’ll have to try it out and see if it can rip DVDs that are region-specific since I have DVDs from the Philippines and other countries that I can test it with.
Yep, VLC is one of the best if not the best media players out there. :D
January 22nd, 2010 at 6:59 PM
Nice tip! Though it would most likely not to work on DVDs that region-specific as you need the more specialized ripping tools for that.
Still, VLC media player is indeed among the best out there.
.-= Jhay´s last blog ..Would you give Facebook apps your email? =-.
April 29th, 2011 at 5:06 PM
DVD Decrypter does that perfect.
January 22nd, 2010 at 10:20 AM
@Dragon Blogger – VLC has been my media player of choice for a long time now. Finding out that it could also rip DVDs was a bonus.
Btw, I also use DVDDecrypter, DVDShrink and ConvertX for ripping and converting DVDs. :)
January 22nd, 2010 at 10:16 AM
I love VLC and didn’t realize it can RIP DVD’s, I was using DVDDecrypter for the longest time to convert DVD’s to files and then DVDShrink to compress them so they fit on a standard DVD (remove extra’s…etc).
For converting media to DVD, I use ConvertXtoDVD
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