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Review - MacTheRipper and iFunia's DVD Ripper
First Product Name: MacTheRipper
Developer: GeezerButtz
Price: Freeware
System Requirements: OS X (10.2 or above), a DVD burner and 15GB of drive space for saving DVD
Second Product Name: iFunia's DVD Ripper for Mac
Developer: iFunia
Price: $35.00 (download only)
System Requirements: OS X (10.5 or above); at least 20MB of free hard drive space; at least 512 MB RAM and 1G Hz Intel processor.
Let us begin with MacTheRipper. What is MacTheRipper? The manual states: "MacTheRipper is a DVD ripper (extractor) for Mac OS X. It is dependent upon the open-sourced GPL libdvdread and libdvdcss libraries. We also use the GPL 'tocgen' program in certain modes, which is a part of the 'dvdauthor' project. This product is made to backup DVDs you have legally purchased for personal use onto your hard drive."
Let me propose the following scenario: you live in the United States and bought a movie DVD that you want to take with you on a trip to Europe. You want to show the DVD movie to a friend in this European country. Surprise, surprise, your DVD, the one you paid for, will not play because each DVD is encrypted with a zone of origin and the DVD player is set up to play that DVD for a single zone. Making a long story short, you will not be able to play a DVD bought in one "DVD region" and play it in another (you can check all zone codes at http://hometheaterinfo.com/dvd3.htm). I understand copy protection; after all, if the movie industry is not making any profit printing DVDs, they will not print DVDs. However, there is a difference between being profitable and being greedy.
The problem above can be circumvented in two ways. The first way is to use MacTheRipper. MacTheRipper comes with a very nice and very clear manual (PDF format). It will allow you to copy the contents of a DVD movie to your hard drive eliminating all encryption and wiping out the zone information ("dezoning") making the DVD acceptable in all zones. It records to your HD a totally unencrypted version of the DVD, that you can actually record to a video tape. After MacTheRipper decrypt the video as it copies it to your hard drive, you can use 3rd-party DVD burning software(DVD Recorder is required) like DVD2one or Popcorn to copy the extracted video to a blank DVD.
What if you do not have a DVD recorder? How can you show the DVD movie to your friend? Well, almost! You certainly can transcode DVD movies to your portable devices like iPhone, iPod touch, etc. However, MacTheRipper limit is to convert a DVD to the formats that compatible with portable players on the Mac. So it is now time to introduce the second program, iFunia's DVD Ripper for Mac. What is iFunia's DVD Ripper for Mac? It is software that allows one to rip, compress and convert DVD to any video formats, including the formats compatible with most portable players.
So you're on your Mac, and you're looking for a program that quickly and efficiently rips everything from a DVD disc without a DVD recorder. Now, it's hard to find great software that works well enough on a Mac that you can go back to bingo without worrying it's all going to go pear-shaped the second you've command-tabbed your way out of that interface. But fear not: you just need the software set and you're good to go - or should that be "rip"?
How does this process work? Extremely easily. iFunia DVD Ripper for Mac comes with a small but three easy steps. It will not dezone or change the color format (NTSC to PAL for instance) but it will directly rip and convert DVD to any video/audio formats, including High Difinition video and flash video formats. Before compressing the movie, you have some alternatives for shedding some of the extra weight. For instance, select the subtitle and audio tracks, do some simple movie editings like trimming, cropping, adding special effects or watermark and so soon.
The least amount of compression the software uses, the better the quality of the final version. MacTheRipper has a very nice and comprehensive manual. iFunia DVD Ripper for Mac comes with a small but intuitive interface and it also includes movie editing and video conversion besides of DVD ripping. Users must pay to get the full version, the trial version comes the limitation with converting the first 5-minute of the DVD movie.
Well, so how do I rate these programs? MacTheRipper: It is free and great. A useful tool if you only copy DVD to your HD. iFunia's DVD Ripper for Mac is more powerful and easy to use than MacTheRipper, but it has only one drawback, it's not free! However, it is worth its weight in gold. There are other options out there, but they are in general more expensive. Highest possible rating. Go out and get iFunia DVD Ripper! NOW! I did!
