AOTW – RipIt – From your DVD to your Mac (PC would have rhymed better…)
RipIt is a neat little program which helps you copy your DVD movies (‘rip’ your movies) to your hard drive.
The creators of the program, ‘The Little App Factory’, suggest that ripping your DVD’s to your mac hard drive will save your macbook battery, since ‘Laptops use a lot more juice when they’re spinning a DVD and a hard drive’. While this may be true, I think it’s rather clear that any DVD ripping program will most likely be used in order to copy borrowed or rented movies to your computer, to save yourself from purchasing it. It is from this perspective that I shall conduct my review!
The first thing you notice when RipIt is launched is the creators definitely kept in mind that Mac’s are supposed to be incredibly ‘easy’ to operate. Instead of providing us with any options, we are simply supplied with a directive, ‘Insert DVD’ (
). Let us oblige and see what happens!
In keeping with the simple theme of RipIt, things don’t get much more complicated once the DVD is loaded (and once we close the obnoxious DVD Player app which no doubt automatically launched and began playback of your DVD). The RipIt display updates with the name of the DVD you have inserted, as well as as the size. Two options are also available to us, ‘Rip’, as well as ‘Compress’ (
). Simple right?
Clicking ‘Rip’ begins to extract the DVD straight to your hard drive. This option creates an exact replica of the DVD, so bear in mind it will likely take over 8 GB of storage space for the average movie. The format used to save the file is known as ‘dvdmedia’, and double clicking this file will open the DVD in Mac’s built in DVD Player. For the average movie, this process will take approximately 40 minutes (based upon the performance of a pretty old Mac Mini, so your results will hopefully be slightly faster).
If you don’t have the space available to create an exact replica of the DVD on your hard drive, then RipIt offers the ‘Compress’ option as well. This option extracts the DVD in the same fashion as ‘Rip’, however after ripping the DVD to your hard drive, it converts the DVD to a smaller format. The converting process takes around 60 minutes (once again, based upon my old Mac Mini). As you can imagine, a smaller file size results in slightly lower sound and video quality.
Something to keep in mind : Before you are able to ‘Compress’ your DVD, you need to install additional software. You will be prompted to do so once you press the ‘Compress’ button (
). The download is very quick, which led me to question why it wasn’t included in the application to begin with (
).
RipIt does not contain extensive preferences options, which makes sense considering the simplicity of the application (
). There is nothing spectacular in the general preferences tab for you to play with. Here, you can set the location of the ripped movies, you can choose to automatically begin ripping DVDs once you insert them (I am unsure as to how valuable this option is…), as well as options to turn off some of the eye candy, such as as the spinning DVD animation, as well as the dock icon labels. One notable option is the ability to turn on or off the anonymous reporting of successful rips. Please leave this checked! It helps out the community, and it doesn’t implicate you in any way.
In the ‘Compress’ preferences tab, there are some important options to set which will affect how your ‘Compress’ button operates (
). When you rip the entire DVD by clicking the ‘Rip’ button, it includes all of the languages, subtitles, etc. However, when using the ‘Compress’ option, it’s a good idea to set your preferred language and not leave it up to the computer to detect. Secondly, you can also set the type of video you want to convert the DVD into. High Quality MP4, Xbox 360, iPhone/Touch, Apple TV, as well as PS3 are the choices available (
). Once again, pretty self explanatory, pretty easy to use!
In order to give you an idea of how the program looks, feels, and operates, I’ve created a quick video outlining my first attempt at using RipIt.
As you can see, there isn’t much to this program. It has one job, and to be honest, it seems to do it quite well. I’ve read quite a few reviews stating that RipIt was only successful in ripping around 10% of the DVDs they inserted. I have experienced much higher success (somewhere around 100% after 9 DVDs), and so I question the validity of these reviews, as well as how obscure the movies are which they are watching! However, you do get 10 free rips with the demo version; make sure to test your DVDs before buying!
It’s important to note that many free program exist which can also rip DVDs to your hard drive, notable MacTheRipper and HandBrake. Both can be extremely effective, both are also very customizable, and both are much more complex to operate. As a result, there are a lot of Mac users who criticize the existence of a program like RipIt. However, even seasoned Mac experts can quickly come to enjoy just how simple RipIt is to operate. In seconds, you can create an exact DVD replica on your hard drive, or start converting a DVD to the proper format for your iPhone. It really takes out any guess work, any googling, and any uncertainty when trying to get that DVD on your computer, or on your iPhone, Xbox 360, etc. Furthermore, ‘The Little App Store’ guarantees that ALL DVD’s will rip properly, and if it doesn’t, they will personally buy the DVD and fix the issue (Which sounds great, and I hope they follow through on that guarantee). For myself, it is an easy purchase. $20 is a small price to pay for a nice GUI app which effectively does what it’s supposed to do.
Date of the review : April 11th, 2010
Version reviewed : 1.4.1
Download the demo here : http://thelittleappfactory.com/ripit/
Full-version price : $19.95 (USD)
