Backup and Digitize DVDs to MP4 in 5 Mins without Errors

• Free Dvd Ripping Software
• Best Cd Ripper For Mac

May 21, 2020  The best free CD ripper for Windows if you have time to invest in the setup. The best free DVD ripping software; Tech deals, prizes and latest news. Get the best tech deals, reviews, product. FreeRIP MP3 Converter is an advanced CD to MP3 Converter that comes packed with features. At its core, FreeRIP MP3 Converter reads audio from your CDs and allows you to save them to your computer in a variety of digital formats including WMA, MP3, Ogg, Wav, or FLAC audio files (this process is known as CD ripping or CD to MP3 conversion and converter MP3). Ripping CD Audio to MP3 on Mac Using Wavepad for Mac Wavepad is a powerful music and mp3 editor tool developed by NCH Software Company. It’s a free CD ripper tool which can easily help you rip CD audio tracks to common-use music file formats, like MP3, WAV, WMA, AU, M4A, OGG etc. For playing on iPod, PSP and other mobile devices. Feb 25, 2018  To enjoy the Blu-ray video on the go or share it on video streaming site, you should rip the Blu-ray disc and convert the content into a digital format, like the common MP4, MKV, MOV, etc. Here we are going to round up top 5 paid and free Blu-ray ripping software to make the job quick and straightforward. Blu-ray Ripper.

Before we dig deeper into the free DVD ripping software for macOS review. Here are some facts and problems in connection with DVDs.

It's reported the U.S. consumers have collected 87 DVD titles on average over the past decades. However, the advent of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and HBO Go changes the way of home entertainment from physical disc to digital video. That's why many DVD owners jump onto the bandwagon to digitize their DVD library. But what will you benefit from ripping DVD to computer hard drive?

* Free up some room in your house because your DVD collection is cumbersome.
* Copy DVD to hard drive or NAS so that you can organize & achieve your movie library by genre, year without going to the shelf yourself.
* Back up DVDs to computer to avoid any scratch, fingerprint or damage.
* Free DVDs from region code restrictions, since you're unwilling to end up watching Hollywood summer films on Xmas Day in your country.
* Convert disc to digital format to extend your viewing options to your Macbook, iMac, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Plus, or other media server anywhere, without even dropping a disc in the drive, downloading a MPEG2 decoder, taking along the whole discs, or repurchasing the movie contents from iTunes Store.

To follow the trend and live without a disc drive in your Mac computer, smartphone or tablet, no need to make any compromise when these ideas conflict with the facts. The advent of Mac DVD ripping tools will get it all solved.

Best Solution to Copy & Convert DVD without a Hitch!

* Copy and digitize any DVD to MP4, MKV, MOV, H.264, ISO, etc.
* Convert DVD content to Mac, Hard drive, TV and mobile devices.
* (Unique!) Support any new DVDs, 99-title DVDs, damaged DVDs, etc.
* (Hardware acceleration)Only 5 mins to rip DVD with original quality.

Strapped for time? Click one of the sections below to jump straight to your most interested part.

• Part 1: How to Judge the Best DVD Ripper for Mac in 2020
• Part 2: Top 3 Free DVD Rippers for Mac in 2020
• Part 3: Performance Comparison among the 3 Free Rippers
• Part 4: FAQ about DVD Copying and Ripping

Is There a Mac Built-in App to Digitize DVD? No. The DVD ripping process on Mac doesn't go as simple as burning. The latter can be achieved with Mac's built-in app like Finder or iDVD, as long as you have an Apple external USB SuperDrive. While the former is still out of reach with Mac unless you own a third-party DVD converter software.

This is because almost all DVD movies or TV shows you bought or rented are technically copyrighted and DVD rips will inevitably involve in breaking DVD copy protections, e.g. the Content Scramble System. Such action is currently unlawful in the US and UK. Apple is of course unwilling to set against law or money in consideration of continuous cooperation with U.S. studios for iTunes movies, it won't allow you to rip DVD to Mac the way you can burn it. This makes it a sense to download a third-party DVD ripper for Mac instead.

Note: We don't accept ripping DVD in such a way to steal the movie you don't legally own.

Part 1: How to Judge the Best Mac DVD Ripper 2019

There are plenty of free DVD copying and ripping software for Mac, which claims to rip any DVDs to any formats, say DVD to MP4, MOV, FLV, MPEG, H.264, etc. But most often, you endure a whole day long sitting aside your Macbook, trying to get the contents off DVDs yet find it crashes constanly, makes scratching high frequency sounds, gets choppy video on output, or keeps giving messages like no valid source found, etc. Therefore, you shall take 'something' into consideration prior to download a free Mac DVD ripping software. Here are the four decisive elements that make up the best one.

Ripping Ability: A good ripper will access all commercial DVDs, no matter they are encoded with CSS, region code or other schemes, and has all discs digitized to MP4, or whatever other formats. Preset profiles for mobiles, TVs, webs, gaming systems, computers, and more are preferred. You have to bear in mind the latest macOS Catalina weeds out 32-bit apps, so make sure you download the 64-bit DVD ripper with good compatibility with macOS 10.15.

High Quality: DVD transcoding involves in codec compression that leads to quality degradation inevitably. Good rippers manage to create high-quality movie file with almost imperceptible loss of quality (preferably the bitrate is around 1500kbps), by virtue of advanced video transcoding kernel.

Fast Speed: DVD converters used to rely on CPU to improve ripping efficiency while some accelerate the speed twice or more with GPU that's good at concurrent computing. If you have hundreds of DVDs to be digitized, why not choose the one with GPU acceleration enabled.

Ease to Use: Great tools will feature intuitive interface under the hood, where its features are clearly marked and locally placed, leaving little room for guesswork. Preferably, Mac users can get the hang of DVD to digital process with no more than 3 clicks, regardless of the computer skills.

To prevent any illegal redistribution of commercial discs, DVD studios adopts copy protection schemes to set up roadblock on DVD software, among which CSS is the most well known one. With facing with these mechanisms, many DVD rippers or DVD decrypters, especially the free ones, no longer stand the gaff and end up with various errors in the whole process, categorized by disc analyzing before ripping, DVD transcoding and the final rips after the conversion.

Except the above mentioned issues, ordinary DVD converters will go wrong with the recent movies, behaving with errors like dirty title, subtitle track issue, repeated ripping, halfway encoding, unwatchable rips, and more. It will be even trickier when you want to backup DVDs with particular non-UDF and ISO9600 formats such as workout disc beachbody. They are deliberately placed with bad information and the true titles are hidden. As a result, almost 99% of DVD rippers for Mac and Windows in the market will fail to load DVD, encounter a large number of tracks, show impossibly 40gb or more of data but output just several KB. So the capability of defeating encryption codes and recognizing the tricky DVD formats is one success factor for the ripping software.

Click to see the complete DVD ripping errors and fixes >>

Part 2: Top 3 Free DVD Rippers for Mac in 2020 [Review & Guide]

With these 5 elements taken into consideration, we've sought out 3 from an overwhelming number of Mac DVD ripping software. They are MacX DVD Ripper, HandBrake and MakeMKV, respectively. Handbrake is an open source DVD and video transcoding program, and MakeMKV is a widely used free DVD and blu ray ripper, both of which work well on macOS. What about MacX DVD Ripper? Scroll down.

No.1 - MacX DVD Ripper

MacX DVD Ripper is a professional DVD copier and converter designed for Mac (incl. macOS Catalina) and Windows (7/8/10). With unique DVD analysis kernel, the program deals with most commercial titles with encryption schemes that deliberately hamper the ripping, incl. CSS, Region Code, RCE, ARccOS, Disney X-Project DRM, etc. Besides, all DVD formats are supported, including UDF, intractable non-UDF, and ISO9600, so whether it is a new movie title, workout disc, or the DVD unplayable or damaged, MacXDVD will cope with it calmly.

Engineered for Apple ecosystem, it can freely convert DVDs to Mac-specific formats like MOV, M4V, H.264 that are compatible with QuickTime, iPhone, iPad, iTunes, Apple TV, and digitize DVD to MP4 format your SSD, NAS or USB accepts for a better DVD storage. You can also transcode DVD to other mainstream formats like HEVC, MKV, AVI, ISO, or convert a movie to format playable on your iPhone, iPad, Huawei, Samsung, TV, PS4, and more. Besides, a full range of basic editing features like cut, crop, merge, subtitle, etc are offered to cater to your DVD movie customization needs.

MacXDVD supports unique level-3 hardware acceleration, hyper-threading and multi-core CPU techs. When it starts transcoding DVDs, computer hardware, together multiple cores, is fully utilized to execute DVD decoding, processing and encoding task simultaneously and multiple threads are enabled to run on each core. This dramatically shortens the DVD ripping process, while unburdening CPU greatly. High-quality engine and De-interlacing engine are available for you to check, purpose built to produce remarkably high quality.

[Tutorial] How to Use MacX DVD Ripper

Step 1: Insert DVD
Click 'Add DVD' button to load the disc. MacX will easily find the accurate main title. In our test, we successfully open the titles like Inside Out, Frozen from Disney. For TV shows with several episodes, select the item and MacX will decode it in sequence.

Free download the DVD ripper on Mac >>
Free download the DVD ripper on Windows >>

Step 2: Choose the output format
Preferrably, you can rip DVD to MP4 H.264 for better compatibility, quality and smaller file size. With no further tweaking, it achieves an H.264 file with crisp picture. The Mac specific library also offers options to backup DVD, convert DVD to Apple, Android, Microsoft, Sony, Web and more.

Step 3: Start protected DVD converting
For DVDs with tough protections, MacXDVD's unique title check mechanism and DVD analysis algorithm automatically scan the title, crack severely protected DVDs and smooth the ripping process. It also cuts the commercials and merge the useful parts via its editing features.

No.2 - HandBrake

Handbrake is an open-source DVD ripper for Mac, Windows and Linux, which can freely convert DVD to MP4 and MKV, with support for iPhone, iPods, PSPs, Apple TVs, PS3s. Handbrake rips DVD that is homemade/unprotected only. It cannot rip commercial DVDs unless you rely on third party tool like VLC or DVD decrypter, not to mention the Disney newer protections. MacX would be the HandBrake alternative to solve this problem.

The version Handbrake V1.0.7 adds support for HEVC encoding. This means that you can re-encode DVD into HEVC to store more movies on Mac's hard drive and newer iPhones or iPads. You shall understand the DVD to HEVC converting process takes a longer time as HEVC entails high computational demands. The good news is Handbrake still performs ultrafast DVD conversion speed if your Macbook or iMac is equipped with a video card like Intel's Kaby Lake processor series. Now in the latest version 1.2.0, Handbrake adds support for AMD and NVidia GPU acceleration for H.264/HEVC encoding like what MacX DVD Ripper Pro does.

[Tutorial] How to Use HandBrake

Handbrake works with Mac OS X 10.7 to 10.14. Make sure your Mac has enough space to store the program (around 12.41MB). You can go to its official site to download and install the freeware.

Step 1: Insert DVD disc into Mac's DVD drive and run Handbrake. Click the Source button to load the DVD. It takes a few seconds to scan the disc. To rip protected DVD on Mac, libdvdcss is required to remove the CSS.

Step 2: Click 'Browse' to set where you want to save the output files.

Step 3: Click 'Presets' and select an output format. Here are MP4 (M4V) or MKV, and mobiles like iPhone, iPod, Apple TV, Android, Windows Phone.

Step 4: Now click 'RUN' to rip DVD for free on Mac now.

Having problems with Handbrake, check the full solutions to Handbrake DVD ripping errors on macOS:
* Handbrake cannot rip DVD with 99 titles? Fix it here
* Handbrake libdvdcss error on macOS Sierra? Check the solution

No.3 - MakeMKV

If you're seeking for a tool that rips protected DVDs & Blu rays and preserves all video/audio tracks and subtitles with meta-information, there is no better tools than MakeMKV, an easy free DVD/Blu ray ripper for Mac. As its name suggests, this program aids Mac users to free rip DVD to MKV format only. Since MakeMKV works rather a format converter than a transcoder, it remuxes the movie content from one format MPEG2 to MKV without affecting too much quality, so the whole DVD to MKV converting process is pretty fast with excellent quality. In this regard, MakeMKV is your premium choice if you just want to backup and store your movie contents on your hard drive, NAS or USB.

Since there is little compression in the DVD to MKV ripping process, the output file size is tremendous, almost the same as the original DVD disc. This is not good especially when you want to import the DVD movie into your iPhone or iPad - Just 3 full-length movies will eat up your 16GB iDevice space. So you'd better compress the movie into a size-friendly file with a video transcoder. MakeMKV is available as a free DVD ripping tool. For free Blu-ray disc digitization, you can try its beta version that stops functioning after 60 days.

[Tutorial] How to Use MakeMKV

Free download MakeMKV on Mac. The tool is completely free to rip a DVD disc to Mac during the beta-testing phase, and after that, if you want to decrypt Blu-Ray disc, you will need to pay $50.

Step 1: Open the software and insert the disk. It accepts both DVD and Blu-Ray discs. Then click 'Open Disc' to load in the information.

Step 2: MakeMKV will scan and identify the titles correctly and pop up a list of disk chapters. Choose the chapter, normally the longest and biggest title.

Step 3: Select a folder on Mac to save the output MKV files and click 'Make MKV'. It shows a fast DVD to digital processing speed on Mac, with an average of 30 minutes to rip Blu-ray disc. The output MKV keeps high video and audio quality, but MKV file is enormous (6.73GB MKV file for the 7.84GB DVD in our test).

Part 3: Performance Comparison among the 3 Free Rippers

To better understand the performance of the top 3 Mac DVD ripper freeware, below is a table and detailed comparison in ripping speed, output quality and supported encryptions.

Note: This test is based on our hands-on test on 27' iMac (incl. Catalina) with 3.2 GHz Intel Core i5, 8GB 1867 MHzDDR3 and AMD Radeon R9 M380 2048MB. You shall also have to note that the DVD encoding speed is greatly dependant on your computer configuration. Higher config will lead to great performance. And make sure to spare some space to save the final rip. The DVD used here is a 7.84Gb movie named Transformers 2, distributed byDreamWorks Pictures, one of the studios that use intractable protection scheme on discs.

1. Comparison on DVD Ripping Speed

According to the company, it applies level-3 hardward acceleration tech, which intelligently offloads the DVD decoding, processing and encoding to GPU, in cooperation with the hyper-threading technology. That is, GPU is fully utilized to rip DVD with full speed, and CPU is spared for multi tasks without affecting the ripping.

The DVD ripping is impressive on a iMac 5K (3.2 GHz Intel Core i5, AMD Radeon R9 M380, 2048MB, on Mojave). MacX's DVD conversion frequency reached averagely 240 fps, twice as high as that of Handbrake. It took 12 minutes to convert the full-length Transformers 2 DVD to MP4, while we could still view web pages or do other tasks since the CPU usage remains as low as 131-134%.

Handbrake auto enables Intel QSV HW acceleration for DVD and video processing tasks and switches to pass 2 for better encoding. But the time it took to make a digital MP4 copy of DVD is less than satisfactory, generally 25 min lagging behind MacX. The CPU usage went up to 397%. We are happy to find MakeMKV converted DVD to MKV on Mac pretty fast, completing within 4 minutes only, with read rate reaching up to 45.7 M/s.

While you can't use the standard Instagram website to upload photos on a Mac, there is a way to 'trick' Instagram into thinking you're accessing the site via an iPhone, which does allow for photo. Apps to use instagram on mac. Instagram Online. Finally, you can of course follow your photo feed using the official web version of Instagram but again, the web version does not allow you to upload photos. These are the best apps to view Instagram feeds on Mac. These Instagram apps have stood the test but there have been others such as Visual Grub for Mac and Carousel for Mac which are long gone. Oct 05, 2010  ‎Bringing you closer to the people and things you love. — Instagram from Facebook Connect with friends, share what you’re up to, or see what's new from others all over the world. Explore our community where you can feel free to be yourself. Apr 17, 2020  And, if you use Setapp apps like Luminar Flex to edit your photos and Sip to choose the perfect colors for it, you have the perfect Instagram marketing platform right on your Mac. Even if you only use Instagram for fun or socializing, being able to post directly from your Mac is very handy.

2. Quality and File Size of the Output Rip, Who Wins?

MakeMKV works as a format converter that just repackages the movie content from DVD MPEG2 to MKV. The output quality isn't affected at all. Higher saturation of color can be noticed on the rips, with dark darker and white whiter. But the file size is tremendously large - 6.73Gb that is almost the same as the original. You can also resort to MacX DVD Ripper's backup feature to clone DVD to ISO/MKV/MPEG2 with no loss of quality.

Both MacX and Handbrake involved in DVD video compression, which cut file size down but inevitably led to quality loss. What matters most is whether they manage to maintain a good balance between the size and quality. MacX created an .mp4 file with 720x480 (16:9) in 1.61GB from the 7.84GB DVD and Handbrake outputted the MP4 content in 1.87GB in fast 1080p30 encoding. There is no noticeable change between the the source and ripped file. Quality is slightly inferior to MakeMKV. So if you care about quality, MakeMKV is your ultimate choice. But if you emphasis on both sides, choose MacX and Handbrake, which run neck and neck.

3. Which Ripper Supports the Widest Encryptions?

From the developer, MacX supports wide range of DVD protections, from CSS, region code, UOPs, APS to Sony ARccOS, Disney Fake. If this is true, it will sideline Handbrake that requires third-party tool to bypass certain restrictions, or MakeMKV that supports AACS and BD+ only, and other DVD ripper Mac freeware.

In the test, Handbrake popped up 'No Valid Source Found' error and quitted unexpectedly when scanning the new titles like Divergent and MakeMKV produced many problematic rips. MacX chose the right title. Its unique title check mechanism is proven to be very useful with these intractable DVDs. The movies tested include Toy Story (Disney), Wall-E (Pixar), Star Trek (Paramount), Life of Brian (Sony), and newer releases (Venom, Incredibles 2, Avengers: Infinity War). We do not encourage you to decrypt commercial DVDs on Mac or PC for any illegal use and it's not allowed to legally copy commercial DVDs or Blu-ray discs in some countries.

Specs Comparison Among the Top Three Free DVD Rippers for Mac

The 3 Mac DVD rippers are equally matched. What matter most is whether the program fits your bill. For a quality-loss DVD ripping, MakeMKV is second to none. But if you have hundreds of discs and want to have your entire DVD library backed up onto hard drive at fast speed without exhausting your storage space, MacX DVD ripper and Handbrake are your good options. While if the last thing you want is to end up with errors just because the new title comes with tricky protection scheme or the DVD is formatted unnaturally, the ultimate choice is to download MacX DVD Ripper, which not only features great DVD decryption ability, but also comes with unique level-3 hardware acceleration tech that can speed up the whole process and maintain good balance between quality and size.

To backup and digitize DVD for safekeeping or on-the-go watching - Try MacX DVD Ripper [Fast & High Quality]!

Part 4: FAQ about DVD Copying and Ripping

Q1. How Can I Hardcode Subtitles on DVD Movies?

Subtitles are helpful to understand a foreign language, inaudible dialog or narrative comprehension. But getting subtitles on DVD is a bit tougher, let along hardcoding them. You can add subtitles to DVD rips with programs like Handbrake, MacX DVD Ripper or so. For example, MacXDVD gives a lot of subtitle options, including choose and place subtitle track in preferred position, disable or hardcode it with forced subtitles, and even add external srt to the movie.

Q2. Can Free DVD Rippers Deal with Latest DVDs?

It depends. Typically, DVDs from major film studios like Disney, Sony, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Universal, etc. often impose strong protections on their DVDs. For those DVDs, most DVD rippers (including many which claim to support copy protections) will go awry like DVD won't load, all titles are invalid/corrupted or have the same run time, output video is several MB only.. This year, the problematic DVD titles include Venom, Incredibles 2, Avengers: Infinity War, Ralph Breaks the Internet, Black Panther, and some other new releases. To copy these DVDs, you'd better resort to some strong tools. (Before you do so, make sure it's allowed by your law.)

Q3. Should Mac Users Rip DVD to MP4 or MOV?

* MP4 - When digitizing DVD with these free DVD rippers for Mac, many users are at a loss whether to choose MP4 or MOV. Both MP4 and MOV use lossy video compression to sacrifice minimal quality for file size. MP4 is popular for streaming over the internet and playable on Mac, Windows and almost all media players, say VLC, 5KPlayer, QT, etc. But P-frames or B-frames in MP4 makes it difficult to edit.

* MOV - As MOV is originally developed by Apple for its QuickTime player, it's much friendlier in Apple ecosystem. MOV contains one or more tracks, meant to store each type of data including audio, video, subtitle, etc in a hierarchical structure, which is good for editing. So for Mac computers, to convert DVD to digital MOV for Mac QuickTime is more preferred than MP4.

Free Dvd Ripping Software

Q4. What Is the Best Format to Back up DVD to Hard Drive?

When the modern computer hard drive, external flash drive, HDD, SSD and NAS drive can hold as large as 60TB storage, there's no need to store DVD collections anywhere else. After users copy DVDs to Mac's hard drive, they can also stream them on TV using Plex, Roku, PC or transfer to phones or tablets. To rip DVD to Mac hard drive, it depends:

• To view your DVD on players, phones, tablets, TVs, or so, choose digital format MP4 H.264 for the widest compatibility.
• To play your DVD on newer iPhones iPads running on iOS 11/12, choose digital format MP4 HEVC for higher quality and smaller space.
• To save an original copy with menus and extras, copy DVD to ISO image. The disc image contains the whole data of the disc at 1:1 ratio for later burning but ha s less compatibility with media players and devices.
• For homemade discs, just copy and paste the VIDEO_TS folder to save DVD onto hard drive. For commercial discs, you will need a specific ripper to deal with the copy protections.

Q5. Is it Prossible to Rip Scratched DVD on Mac?

DVDs are too fragile, that's why we need to backup the DVD collection. If your discs are already damaged or scratched, there are measures to remedy.

• For a bit of stretches on the surface, polish the surface with cotton balls and abrasive white toothpaste or Brasso plolish. You need to polish across the grain and do not in circular direction. This need patience.
• For deep scratches and serve damages, you can take the damaged disk to a local DVD store with a polishing machine or other places like Phoenix to resurface the badly scuffed disc. This will cost for a couple of dollars. Or if the standalone DVD player with error-recovery scheme can ignore the errors and play the DVD, you can capture the movie with a DV. But this will lost the selectable audio, subtitles streams and original menus.

Note: if the program refuses to rip a well-conditioned DVD with an error stating that there is a bad sector, it's because the DVD is protected by a copy protection scheme from Sony named ARccOS. The system deliberately mixes corrupted sectors with the correct one to mislead DVD copying software.

Q6. Does My 32-bit DVD Player App Still Work on macOS Catalina?

Yes, the 32-bit DVD player is not totally over in macOS 10.15 Catalina. Yet, what you need to notice is that the earilier version Mojave is officially the last OS to support 32-bit apps on your iMac or Macbook. And recently macOS Catalina comes with new 64-bit DVD player and DVD ripper to support DVD playback or ripping on latest macOS. You're suggested to apply its 64-bit version if there is something wrong with your 32-bit app.

Q7. How about Vudu Disc to Digital Serivce? Is Online Tool a Good Option to Digitize DVD?

Vudu is another way that you can convert DVDs into digital files. With the 'In-Home Disc to Digital' service, you can effortlessly gain digital copies of your DVDs for a low price: $2 for DVD to a standard-definition digital copy and $5 for a high-definition 'HDX' copy. But there are concerns:

• It's ridiculous paying twice for a movie, especially when the $5 HDX is close to $8 for a new Blu-ray version on Amazon, which even includes a digital copy.
• Vudu only allows to digitize up to 100 dics a year.
• Vudu supports DVDs from 7 Hollywood studios only. Exercise DVDs, TV shows DVDs and more are exclused from Vudu.
• The streaming buffering and playback limits are another factor to consider.

In consideration of these problems, you'd rather use DVD ripper software than online services.

Q8. Is It Legal to Rip DVDs that You Own?

Many users who want to space-shift or format-shirt their legally purchased DVD or Blu-ray discs often concern about the legality of DVD ripping. The fact is, currently it is considered as illegal to convert copyrighted DVDs in US, even if you legally own the discs. Some other countries have already made it legal. In practice, as the DVD conversion happens locally on your computer, you won't get sued or caught if you don't distribute the digital copies. However, you're highly suggested to obey to the law where you live. Check if it's legal to rip copy protected DVDs in your country.

Q9. Are There any Other Free DVD Rippers for Mac?

1. Mac The Ripper: MTS has been regarded as the oldest DVD copy software for Mac so far. The last free version of MacTheRipper is V2.6.6 that can work with Mac OS X Snow Leopard or lower. It breaks protection and rips DVD content for free on Mac, but doesn't encode video files to other formats. It only digitize the DVD menu to hard drive in VOB file. So a third party tool is required to convert VOB to MP4, AVI or others.

2. FFmpeg: It is considered more as an open-source command-line utility for Linux based on popular libraries such as libavformat and libavcodec. FFmpeg stands for Fast Forward MPEG and now it can be complied under Mac and other OS. This tool is complicated to operate and not friendly to newbies. But if you are more experienced and spend hours on the disc ripping tasks, FFmpeg comes to our top free dvd converter for Mac list and is really worthy of your persistence.

3. Any Video Converter: It handles almost all video formats, including DVDs. Reviewed as 'ridiculously easy to use', this tool can easily and freely rip DVD into the right format in its long list of options including MP4, AVI, WMV, MOV, etc thanks to its intuitive GUI. However, AVC sometimes gets glitches and only make a backup of part of the full-length movie, e.g. It only finishes 40 mins of a 2 hrs DVD movie copy. This is probably because you are ripping a DVD with complicated protection measure. So its pro version is needed to ensure a smooth DVD digitizing on Mac.

4. DVDFab HD Decrypter- Although discontinued in 2014, it's still the favorite when dealing with many old DVDs that refuse to be copied with other free DVD rippers, owning to its aculeate DVD decrypting ability. It offers options to freely copy full disc with all menus, trailer, extras, etc or just extract the actual movie from DVD onto Mac's hard drive, cracking many known DVD protections, like AACS, CSS, RC, UOPS, etc. There are some minor drawbacks, e.g. heavy processing power and CPU resources are consumed during the ripping process. Plus, it only copies protected DVD in VOB rather than MP4 MOV or other formats.

External Sources: DVD movies are almost all encoded in MPEG-2 format defined by Motion Pictures Expert Group. Generally, the content is interlaced for display on ordinary TV sets. Resolution of DVD is either 720x480 pixels at 29.97 frames per second from America's NTSC television system or 720x576 pixels at 25 frames per second from Europe's PAL.

Note: The software developer calls for copying or ripping DVD on Mac and Windows under the concept of Fair Use and does not encourage any illegal reproduction or distribution of copyrighted content. Please abide by the local DVD copyright law before doing it.

CD ripper software is intended for copying CD audio content to music files at hard disc of a computer. Read below about:
• sound quality,
• different ripping ways (including safe/secure and unsecure),
• ripping formats and settings,
• metadata management;
• Frequently Asked Questions;
• how to choose the best CD ripping software for audiophile.

CD ripper software for audiophiles

Disclaimer: The list may contains mistakes and be non-actual for current version of a ripper software. If cell is empty, there author havn't exact information. If you found error contact us. We produce AuI ConevreR 48x44.

More CD rippers for Ubuntu Linux

Disclaimer: In this article theoretical concepts are discussed. Real software and hardware are not discussed here and may works differently. All stuff here is personal opinion of the author. And the stuff is based on the author's knowledge in the time of the article writing.

Common ripping issues

You can meet topic of the article too often at the forums and articles, like: 'the best cd ripping software 2020', 'the best cd ripper 2020', 'the best cd ripper for mac', 'the best cd ripper for windows', etc. The rippers are compared by perceived sound quality, functionality, metadata (song information: track name, album, performer, etc.) abilities, ripping speed and other.

However, in the author opinion, main feature of the best cd ripping software for audiophiles is exactness of copying CD's binary audio information to music files.

This feature is measurable. But the author don't know about studies, that available for public access.

A Safe CD ripper or secure CD ripper is the ripper software that have the binary-content-copying exactness as aim.

Read below:

• sound quality issues;
• how to provide the exactness and how it linked with ripping speed;
• damaged CD music information restoration;
• best CD rip format and settings.

CD ripper software features

• Copying music binary content from CD tracks to sound files
• Copying optical disc fault detection
• Attempt of damaged audio restoring
• Ripping speed
• Embedding text metadata and album artwork (auto and/or manual)
• Resampling and bit-depth altering
• Creating directory structure to ripped files

Read below review of audio data integrity control (quality issues), ripping speed and audio-information restoration.

CD ripper sound quality

Quality of CD ripping is number of broken bytes in the ripped files.

CD ripping error is digital audio data difference between original record (binary audio file content that is intended for CD pressing) and audio content of ripped file.

Original record is audio file that used to produce compact disc.

Correct error detection is correct detection of real broken byte.

False (wrong) error detection is fault on correct music information.

Abbreviations

ED - error detection

Maximal CD ripping quality is ripping without errors. I.e. binary music content of a ripped file should be fully identical to original record.

In the first approach, CD ripping software can't improve sound of CD.

The best thing that can to do the software is binary exact copy of music information from optical disc to sound file only.

However, there are some details. If computer optical drive provide lesser reading error number, than audio optical disc player, ripped sound files can be closer to original master record than digital music stream, that read on the CD-player. It was important to remember, that hardware players have own ways of probable broken music restoration.

The word 'probably' is used too often in the article, because error rising, correct or false error detection, error fixing are not events with 100% probability.

What cause CD ripping fault

Best Cd Ripper For Mac

Digital music stream faults can cause either clicks or pauses or interruptions or other audible distortions.

CD ripping fault detection

There are different ways of the ripping error detection:

• high level fault detection
• checksum comparison of number identical ripped discs
• low level fault detection

High level CD-fault detection

In this case CD audio stream is read:

- without error flags,

- without re-readings,

- with buffering of read information.

Audio information is corrected by optical drive anyway.

But there are some ways of additional ED are missed (read details 'Low level CD-fault detection' part).

Sometimes optical device driver of operation system is able to report about fault, sometimes - not (depend on implementation driver and operation system). CD ripper don't obtain to error flags, generated by compact disc drive, and store music information as is into files.

CD checksum comparison with database

This secure way calculate ripped CD's checksum. These checksums are collected into internet database. When you rip CD at the database compatible ripping software, your rip checksum is calculated and compared with checksums into the database.

But the database don't contains original record checksum. So ripped checksum compared with array of uncertified checksums.

We can hope (without 100% warranty), that the majority (of similar checksums for some CD into the database) is the same checksum of the CD's original record.

But, as example, if a serie of CD was manufactured without 100% identity to original studio files (by unknown to us reasons), then we have non-correct majority.

If a CD ripper (that is used to copying of the majority) have a non-fixed bug, same situation may happens too.

Also there may rare record or different optical disc version (pressing, mastering?) issues.

Low level CD-fault detection

This secure/safe way based on:

• own abilities of CD drive
• ripper software's statistics collecting by multiple re-readings of your optical disc.

CD-drive is able to correct faults and restore (with some probability) valid audio information (Reed–Solomon coding) [1][2].

So compact disc drive try detect fault inside. If it is detected, the drive try to restore music information. In case of unsuccessful fault elimination, error flag (C2) mark broken byte.

The safe/secure compact disc ripper software may to apply additional fault detection and correction algorithm under data, that was before checked and corrected into CD drive.

Raw audio stream from CD-drive is read with C2 flags, re-readings and with buffering elimination of read data.

Several re-readings of CD-drive's music data, can cause different binary content for re-readings.

This difference combined with С2 flags can give new information about faults, that was probable missed into CD-drive.

One error flag control audio data integrity of 1 byte of the raw audio information. The flag calculated by CD drive. Probably, some drives can't calculate it. But, I suppose, it is matter of older drives.

Re-reading is repeated reading of CD track's fragment. Re-reading performed several times.

Buffering elimination is attempt of forced cleaning of CD data buffer for each re-reading. Re-reading from music data buffer have no sense, because there are same information for each re-reading. But repeatable audio data reading from CD can cause different content in problematical places.

Further the obtained data array is analized to additional ED.

This method also don't guarantee 100% probability of audio stream integrity.

However, there is no additional element of uncertainty like a database without original record checksum.

Ripping speed

CD extractor can begin to read information from maximal speed to save time. When compact disc ripper read music information and get fault (as from optical disc drive, as by the data analysis), it can reduce reading speed to safer extracting. Of course, it consume more time.

Ripping speed depend on own CD drive's correct reading ability.

CD reading speed should provide maximal available safety of extracted music information.

If CD ripper use re-readings, it decrease total ripping speed anyway, even for constant rotary speed.
Because in safe/secure mode compact disc is read several times, instead one time in unsafe mode.

Simultaneous using of CD's checksum comparison and low level fault detection

Correct error-detection is event when both sources (safe CD ripper and checksum database) detected 'ripped information is valid'.

Warning:

'Correct error-detection' and 'correct ripping' are different events.

'Correct error-detection' happens when ripper detect errors correctly relatively binary content of source studio audio file, that is used to CD manufacturing.

'Correct ripping' happens when binary audio content of ripped file is identical to binary content of the source studio audio file.

If 'correct error-detection' is happens, it mean that 'correct ripping' don't happen.

Total correct error-detection probability (CEDP) of the safe ripper:

• without the checksum database: CEDPwod=CEDPcd
• with the database: CEDPwd=CEDPcd * CEDPdb

CEDPcd is [CD drive + CD ripper] system's correct ED probability (CEDPcd <= 1.0)

CEDPdb is the dababase's correct ED probability (CEDPdb <= 1.0)

Ideal theoretical value of CEDPcd and CEDPdb is 1.0. But real values are lesser 1.0 always.

Result of multiplication CEDPcd to value, that lesser 1, is lesser than CEDPcd.

Thus, CEDPwd < CEDPwod ('with database' lesser than 'without').

There is no known information, what is higher: correct ED probability of [CD drive+ripper software] system or database.

Simultaneous using of both methods reduce total correct error-detection probability of CD ripping.

Generally, separate using only one of these two methods is recommended to decrease result uncertainty.

You can choose method, that is more suitable for you by other functionality (data restoration, as example, or other).

Though mistake in method choice can cause lesser total correct error detection probability.

Attempt of CD audio data restoration

The ripper software read data array (raw audio data and error flags after several re-readings) and use it to create probable correct content at damaged places (without 100% guarantee, of course).

Some data can't be restored (fatal faults).

What is the best CD rip format

If your aim is binary audio data capturing as is, use any lossless PCM format (WAV, FLAC, AIFF, ALAC, APE, etc.).

If your aim is lossless file size reducing, use FLAC.

If your aim is maximal file size reducing - use mp3 or AAC format.

However, for optical discs, ripping to backups in lossless file formats (WAV, FLAC, AIFF) is recommended.
After it you can convert these lossless backups to mp3, DSF or other format.
It allow to save time of slow audiophile ripping procedure.

What is the best CD rip settings

Most complex ripping part is safe reading from optical disc. For some discs it may be unstable.

Generally ripping into 16 bit / 44.1 kHz PCM backup (WAV, FLAC, AIFF, etc.) without any processing is recommended.

Check your CD ripper settings to turn off any processings (resampling, dithering, gain, etc.).

These ripped backups you can use for further conversions to target musical devices (portable audio player, mobile phone, car audio, music server, etc.).

CD ripper quality comparison method

Fortunately we can objectively compare CD rippers by ripping quality.

This comparison can't cover all cases. Because test result can depend on damaging kind of test CD.

1. Tools

1.1. CD rippers
1.2. CD-drive(s)
1.3. Test CDs with binary identical WAV files per track.
The test CDs should have different
1.4. Tool for binary comparison of WAV files.

2. Testing rippers

2.1. Rip the test CDs to WAV files for different combinations:
a) CD ripper software
b) Compact disc drive
c) CD ripping mode (speed, overlapping, re-reading number, recovering, etc.) if available.

Best photo organizing software 2019 mac. 2.2. Compare ripped WAV files with original files (sources of tracks of the test CDs) via binary comparison tool (goal 1.4):
a) Length in bytes from begin of the track to first detected (via binary comparison) fault byte.
Register it in results as mark of steadiness CD extractor to fault appearing.
b) Percent of detected (via binary comparison) wrong bytes to total number of bytes in track.
Register it in results asmark of ability CD extractor to fault avoiding.

During WAV file binary comparison need consider audio data only (pass by WAV’s header and non-audio chunks).

Recommended provide several times (10 and more) rippings in combination

{[test CD]+[CD ripper]+[CD ripping mode]+[CD drive]}

It is need to be addressed possible byte offset between original WAVs and ripped ones.
If the offset is present, superpose original and ripped WAV files.

To superpose refer to identical binary sequences of audio data. Found identical binary sequences in original and ripped WAV files and shift compared binary content to match the sequences.

As begin of track considered begin of original WAV's audio data.

3. Comparing results of the tests

Integral mark of the tested system [ripper + ripping mode + CD drive] is averaged by different test CDs.
Resume of test are made by comparison of the integral marks of the systems.

Metadata for ripped songs

Some CD rippers are able automatically request track's metadata (metatags): song and album name, year, performer for internet database.

Some databases contains album artworks.

When ripping is started, the ripper form unique ID of compact disc by its track start addresses, as example.

Sometimes database contains several entries for single disc. As example, at different languages.

Some rippers enable to assign metadata and/or album artwork file manyally before or after ripping.

There are databases:

Free:

Commercial (with some non-commercial options):

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best way to rip CDs?

The best way to rip CD-audio is using of system (CD-ripper software + optical disk drive), that cause lesser reading error number. Such things as jitter, colour marker penss to covering disk surface or side and other same things is not matter for you. Read details..

Read also:

How do I rip CDs in Windows 10?

Read the user manual: How to rip CD on Windows..

Why can't I rip a CD?

There are several reasons:

• CD is not audio;
• [Windows only]CD contains both audio and data. And you can see the data in a Windows file manager;
• [Windows only] you can't copy *.cda files directly. Because they are only index files, that don't contains audio data;
• CD is damaged.

Read the user manual: How to rip CD [Mac, Windows]..

Does ripping music from CD damage it?

Some ways of CD can cause additional mechanical load to CD. But, the author know nothing about CD, damaged by ripping.

Fast or express CD ripping on first speed is the same usual CD playback.

How to Choose the Best CD Ripping Software [Resume]

Main useful audio ripper feature is copying exactness of audio data from compact disc to file. In the ideal case the data should be extracted without changes.

For valid CDs it is not matter. In the first approach, all CD rippers will work identically there. Except false error detection case.

But some CDs, especially damaged, may contains errors. And CD extractor should found the faults. It's desirable, the ripping software attempt to restore damaged data that was found.

I.e. we can choose (as the best) the ripper that makes minimal fault number in ripped data.

In the article comparison method of audio rippers is suggested.

Unfortunately, I don't met results of independent ripper quality researches in the open sources.

Using checksum database allow to compare own ripping results with other ones, but original record checksum is unknown.

I'd recommend to choose one of CD rippers (free or paid), that have low level error detection with CD drive, providing C2 error flags. It enables the direct control over ripping errors without referring to uncertified third party sources.

Simultaneous both method using is not recommended, because probable case that both methods show different results.

The simultaneous using can reduce probability of correct error detection.

Yuri Korzunov,
Audiophile Inventory's developer
April 23, 2020 updated since May 21, 2016

Read more about CD ripping

References