The user loads a DVD into the program by clicking on the Disc button in the top button row which opens a small drive letter selection window. WinX DVD Ripper Platinum will then scan the disc and display the contents of it on the right side. The program can rip normal DVD video disks but also copy protected DVDs including those protected with CSS, Sony ArccOS and newer copy protections like those used in blockbusters like The Dark Knight or Star Trek.

Each of the titles that are stored on the DVD are presented with information including the title’s playtime, the resolution and format and audio, video and subtitle information. Checkboxes are used to select those titles that should be ripped with the first title always preselected by the DVD ripper.

A small selection interface below the title listing can be used to change the output settings including the audio used in the output (if multiple audio tracks are stored on the DVD), subtitles, an alternative start and end time plus the output folder.

The default audio and subtitle language can be changed in the program’s options so that the preferred language selected by the user will be picked by the program automatically if available.

The lower half of the screen contains the formats that the DVD can be ripped to. This is divided into general formats like avi, mp4, mpeg or flv but also device specific formats including formats for devices such as the iPhone, iPod, Apple TV, PSP, PDA or 3GP.

Selecting a different video output format can change the available configuration options at the bottom of the screen. They usually consist of fine tuning audio and video quality settings but may sometimes contain multiple pre-configured profiles that can be selected.

This is for instance the case if the iPhone is selected as the output device.

A click on the start button after making the selection will start the DVD ripping process. This opens a new window that will display the progress of the operation.

Options to shutdown the computer when the conversion has been completed or to open the output folder are provided in the menu.

Installation and Download

WinX DVD Ripper Platinum can be downloaded for free today at the Giveaway of the Day website. The product, if installed today, will remain free and fully licensed. The website of the developer of WinX DVD Ripper Platinum offers trial downloads of the software and additional information about it.

The software comes as a zip file which will extract a text document with instructions and a setup.exe. All that it takes to install and register the DVD ripper is to double-click the setup.exe and to follow the installation until it completes.

Positive

• Easy to use
• Can rip copy protected DVDs
• DVD ripping does not slow down the computer

Negative

• No preview option
• No custom DVD ripping profiles (only for devices but not general)
• No option to change the output file name

You might also want to take a look at our previews review of WinX DVD Ripper Platinum. The program is a very comfortable easy to use DVD ripper that worked fine with every DVD we asked it to rip.

All you need to do is to put the DVD movie into the DVD drive of the computer and click on Load DVD in the program interface. It will load the DVD contents with the option to preview them. The program has pull down menus for selecting one of the available audio tracks and subtitles that will be included in the rip.

The only other customization option is to select the target size for the output file and one out of three encoding profiles (avi, video CD and super video CD).

A click on convert will start the ripping process and save the file to the computer’s hard drive. The only nuisance of the program was that it did automatically open a website with another DVD ripping tool by the same author as advertisement. A viable alternative without advertisement is the one-click dvd ripping tool Bitripper.

The software supports many popular video formats like avi, flv, mpg and mov that can be added to the DVD. Both DVD-5 and DVD-9 are supported as well. One great feature of the software is that it automatically calculates the best Bitrate so that all movies that have been added fit on the selected DVD.

This takes some pressure from the user who does not want to have anything to do with bitrates and DVD quality. It’s obviously not possible to add an unlimited amount of movies but if you can live with a reduce quality you can pack more film on the DVD.

The DVD creation process requires minimal input from the user. Experienced users on the other hand can customize the settings to optimize the output.

To create a DVD the user has to add movies to the video queue of the application. A click on Start starts the DVD creation. No other input whatsoever is required.

AVStoDVD creates a DVD by default which can be changed in the options. A dvd menu is for instance not required if the DVD contains only one movie but should be mandatory if it contains several movies. The menu can be edited by the user if he has the desire to do that.

Another interesting feature is the ability to add subtitles to each movie. That’s as uncomplicated as the rest of the options.

The process to create a DVD took around 1:20 hours on my system. Creating a DVD-9 should take roughly double that time. Jobs can be queued so that it is possible to create several DVDs in one go.

It can deal with all kind of DVD protections that have been added to make the life of the DVD purchasers miserable while movie pirates enjoy their DVDs without those protections. The process is really that simply as described. Put a DVD into the DVD drive, make up your mind if you want the full DVD or only the main movie and hit the Start button.

Movie Backup deals with and removes DVD protections (CSS, RC, RCE, APS, UOPs and Sony ARccOS) and is compatible with PAL and NTSC DVD-5 and DVD-9 disks.

The only other selection that the user can make is to select the destination folder on his computer. The biggest plus of Movie Backup is its simplicity. It lacks a few features that would have been great, for instance the ability to create a custom DVD or convert the DVD into a compressed format. If you want to copy DVDs to the hard disk however this could be your program.

Update: The movie backup software is now available for Windows and Macintosh computers. Both systems share the same simple process. Users can now select the copy method when copying the full disc or only the main movie to their computer. The default is set to normal, which works best for unencrypted and CSS encrypted movie DVDs. The lowly enhanced and highly enhanced copying method should be selected if the program fails to copy the DVD to the local system.

You also need to make sure that you have enough free space on the hard drive.

He can select to rip a DVD from disk or hard drive to disk or hard drive. Supported are DVD5 and DVD9 dvds and copy protection is not an issue either. DVD9 disks can either be ripped in the size that they come with or compressed to fit on one DVD5 disk.

A copy of a DVD can be made with minimal user input. I only had to change the destination directory of the copy before I could hit the Start button.

Five options are available at the bottom that influence the output. Three are checked by default (Include Subtitles, Include Movie Menu and Extras, Compress to single-layer-disk DVD5). The other two are to Include DTS Audio and to Copy to dual-layer-disk which would obviously uncheck the DVD5 option.

Aplus DVD Copy is a solid application that works. Just pop a DVD in or pick one from the hard drive and click on the start button to rip it. It cannot get much easier than that. A “nice-to-have” tool.