How to rip DVD with Handbrake-the free DVD Ripper Software?

In various forums, how to rip DVD with the free DVD ripper- Handbrake is becoming a hot topic. So I make a comprehensive introduction and analysis about ripping DVD with the free DVD ripper-Handbrake.

Part 1. How to rip DVD with free DVD ripper-Handbrake?
Part 2. Analyze strength and weakness of ripping DVD with Handbrake.

Part 1: How to rip DVD with free DVD ripper-Handbrake?

Free download the latest version of Handbrake 0.9.4 and run it.

Step 1. Insert DVD
In the drop down list of "Source" button, you can get three choices "Video File"," DVD/VIDEO_TS Folder"," DVD Drive Option".
You can click the later two options to load DVD files to Handbrake.

Step 2. Set output destination and format
Set output destination: Click "Browse" to choose a folder in you computer for saving output files.
Set output format: Choose .mp4 or .mkv as the output format.

Step 3. Start to free rip DVD
All things done, Click "Start" button to free rip DVD to .mp4 or .mkv files.
rip-dvd-with-handbrake

Handbrake also has some additional functions as below.

1. Source
Choose Title: There are all titles of DVD. You can choose the title which you want to rip. If you don’t set title, Handbrake will automatically choose the longest title.
Choose chapter: In this option, you can choose any chapters for ripping.
Tip: You must choose continuous chapters.

2. Picture
Size: You can adjust aspect ratio to adapt the different devices such as iPod, iPhone, QuickTime, Apple TV by setting the parameters of width and height.
Crop: Crop the unwanted and black sides of DVD video by customizing the parameter of "Left", "Right", "Top", "Bottom".
Tip: No preview, when you set the parameter. After setting you can click "preview", it will generate a 5 to 60 seconds clip of the beginning of the film for preview.

3. Video
Video: From the drop down list, you can choose video codec and framerate for your video
Quality: For video quality, you can adjust from "target size", "avg bitrate" or "constant quality" for adapting different purpose.

4. Audio
Audio tracks: In this option, you can set audio tracks such as audio codec, mixdown, samplerate, bitrate etc.

5. Preset
In the list of "Preset", you can choose iPod, iPhone, Apple TV or High profile as you want. Handbrake will automatically set all setting for you.
free-dvd-ripper

Part 2. Analyze strength and weakness of ripping DVD with Handbrake.

After free ripping of DVD with Handbrake, we make a comprehensive record.

Tool	Handbrake
Consuming time	1h:31m:05s
Supporting OS	Windows, Mac, Linux
Output format	Only MP4, MKV
Supported devices	iPod, iPhone, Apple TV etc
Operation	Complex
Video quality	SD
Preview	Don’t not synchronize with editing and ripping
Splitting files	N/A
Merging files	N/A
Extracting audio form DVD	N/A

Tips:
Texted DVD film: 2h: 02m: 37s
Computer: Window XP, Pentium Dual-Core E5300, 1.96G Ram.
Output format: MP4

Analysis
From the record, we can see Handbrake is a free and useful tool for ripping DVD, but it also has some limitations in output format, editing functions and video quality as below.

1. Strengthen:
1. Handbrake is a free DVD Ripper.
2. Handbrake is useful for all kinds of operation system: Window, Mac, Linux
3. Handbrake can rip DVD to MP4 and MKV
4. Handbrake can rip DVD for iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, and so on.

2. Weakness:
1. Only support MP4 and MKV as output format.
2. Can’t rip DVD for uploading website like YouTube, MySpace, Facebook etc.
3. Can’t preview when editing and converting DVD movies
4. It is complex and inconvenient to realize some setting functions like cropping.
5. Can’t extract audio like MP3 from DVD.
6. Can’t merge two DVD files together.
7. Can't split files into some clips.

Conclusion:
Now, we have an overall understanding of Handbrake.

If you only want to free rip DVD to MP4 or MKV, uploading DVD movies to iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, Handbrake is a good choice.

If Handbrake is useless for resolving your problem or you don't like it. I can recommend a powerful and easy-to-use DVD Converter for you- AVCWare DVD Converter. AVCWare DVD Converter can help you rip DVD to almost all formats like WMV, AVI, MOV, MPEG, RMVB, MKV, FLV etc for editing your DVD movies with Window Movie Maker, importing to iPad, iPod Touch 4G, iPhone4 etc, or uploading your DVD movies to YouTube, Facebook etc. It also supplies you with various edit options such as merging, splitting and so on.
If you need a Mac version, please visit AVCWare Mac DVD Converter.