HowTo: Rip DVDs with VLC Media Player

Have you tried or used VideoLAN’s VLC Media Player? It’s my favorite media player and the best one in my opinion. It’s 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.

1. Open VLC Media Player and go to Media > Open Disc or you can do a Ctrl + D.
VLC DVD Rip
2. Make sure that the DVD is selected and Disc Device is pointing to the DVD drive.
3. Click Play to check if it’s the DVD/video that you want to rip. If not, change the Title value to 1 or the next number until you find the right video.
VLC DVD Rip
4. Now that you have the right video, go to Media > Convert/Save or do a Ctrl + R.
VLC DVD Rip
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.
VLC DVD Rip
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.

Does 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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15 Comments

  1. 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

  2. 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

  3. 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!

  4. 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.

  5. @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. :)

  6. 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!

  7. @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

  8. 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.

  9. @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. :)

  10. 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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