WinX DVD Ripper, a GPU-accelerated ripper with the useful ability to change the number of CPU cores it uses, can rip your DVD to a file in roughly five minutes at full speed. It's as simple as inserting the disk, selecting the output folder, and pressing the large, blue 'Run' button to get started.

There isn't much more to it, and WinX DVD Ripper is one of the greatest DVD ripping apps because of it. With no need to fiddle with codecs, framerates, or audio choices, this is a wonderful way to swiftly rip a huge collection of home movies, especially if you have a PC with up to eight cores and a current discrete GPU.

While it does provide a free trial, it only allows you to rip the first five minutes of non-copy-protected disks. Upgrading to the full version should be a no-brainer for individuals who will employ its easy, quick approach.

Specifications

• Works on: Windows, Mac
• Region free?: Yes
• Blu-ray ripping?: No
• CD ripping?: No

Get it here: https://www.winxdvd.com/dvd-ripper-platinum/

Reasons to buy

• Very fast rips
  
• Loads of profiles
• GPU-accelerates rips

Reasons to avoid

• Free trial is useless

Handbrake is a strong video transcoder that can also rip unprotected DVDs. It is one of the best DVD ripping apps, and unlike WinX DVD Ripper, it has more features than almost any other video tool.

Handbrake can be used to de-interlace, sharpen, rotate, add subtitles, remove subtitles, down-mix audio tracks, add chapter markers, tinker with framerates, and pretty much everything else you can think of. Its sophisticated video quality settings allow you to regulate compression so that you meet a file size objective, and a large variety of presets allow you to customise your video file for any number of devices, as well as save your own.

Handbrake can generate files in the h264 and h265 codecs, with additional options on top of each. Handbrake is one of the best DVD ripping apps once you've figured out how it works, and the fact that it's absolutely free only adds to that. The only disadvantage is that it is neither as fast nor as simple to use as something like WinX DVD Ripper.

Specifications

• Works on: Windows, Mac, Linux
• Region free?: Yes
• Blu-ray ripping?: No
• CD ripping?: No

Get it here: https://handbrake.fr/

Reasons to buy

• Comprehensive
• Open-source
• Ready-made presets

Reasons to avoid

• Not easy to use

In terms of features and difficulty, Wondershare Uniconverter falls between between Handbrake and WinX DVD Ripper. The other two, however, do not.

For example, in addition to DVD ripping and video conversion, it can also transfer still photographs across formats and generate animated GIFs from video clips. It can also cast your screen to a TV and function as a media server, as well as record your screen activities as a video. It can rip CDs, transfer information to an Android smartphone, and even convert videos into a format that can be played back on virtual reality devices.

Conversion times are quick thanks to GPU support, however aside from picking between h264, HEVC, and several lesser quality legacy formats, there isn't much control over the ripping process. Aside from that, it's one of the smoothest and fastest DVD ripping apps we've encountered, and it packs a lot of features into a single package. A free trial is offered, however it only allows you to see the first third of your source DVD.

Specifications

• Works on: 64GB
• Region free?: Yes
• Blu-ray ripping?: No
• CD ripping?: Yes

Get it here: https://videoconverter.wondershare.com/?

Reasons to buy

• Comprehensive suite of tools
• GPU acceleration
• Even contains an editor

Reasons to avoid

• Free trial only rips 1/3

MakeMKV, which is now accessible for free as part of a public beta test, provides a highly streamlined ripping procedure that handles a lot of the work for you. While there aren't many options to play with, it's an excellent pick for beginners and means you can get through a lot of disk rips rapidly, but it doesn't benefit from the GPU acceleration present in other apps.

The term is derived from the Matroska Multimedia Container, an open container format capable of holding common video formats such as h264. Its files have the.mkv extension and may be played by any device that can read an MP4 file.

If you wish to compress ripped files to save space on your hard drive, you should use it in conjunction with Handbrake.

Specifications

• Works on: Windows, Mac, Linux
• Region free?: Yes
• Blu-ray ripping?: Yes
• CD ripping?: No

Get it here: https://www.makemkv.com/?__c=1

Reasons to buy

• Simple and free
• Rips Blu-rays
• Open-source

Reasons to avoid

• No GPU acceleration
• Lacks compression

Another all-in-one app with a few strange omissions. You'd think you'd have everything covered if you looked at Freemake's list of target files, which spans three times the width of the program window. But who needs to rip video to Blackberry or Nokia handsets these days?

Freemake can also rip CDs and convert picture files between formats. While the ability to customize files to Windows Media Player, PlayStations, and Xboxes is useful, we'd want it to support h265 and have proper GPU acceleration - the Nvidia GTX 1070 Ti card in our test computer was invisible to the app's digital eyes.

While it is free to download, Freemake will put its logo in any files you generate and will constantly prompt you to purchase additional capabilities. Presets are used to select conversion settings, and you can construct your own to adapt video files to your preferred device. After then, it's only a matter of pressing the OK button and sitting back. Freemake is a fantastic alternative if you're new to DVD ripping or have older devices that you wish to keep updated with fresh video files, and if your PC's GPU is better than ours.

Specifications

• Works on: Windows
• Region free?: Yes
• Blu-ray ripping?: No
• CD ripping?: Yes

Get it here: www.freemake.com

Reasons to buy

• Good for beginners
• Supports loads of devices

Reasons to avoid

• No h265 format
• Constantly asks for money