Those three are probably the most common uses other than playing movie DVDs on the computer which can be done with virtually any program.

The tools listed below have been tested extensively and completely free, most are Open Source. If you know of a tool that is not in the list but should be let me know and I add it after evaluating it.

Play movie DVDs on the computer:

I rarely play movie DVDs on the computer, heck I dislike watching movies on the computer and prefer to watch them on the big TV screen. My video player of choice, SMPlayer, can play movie DVDs.

It does not offer a menu driven interface but different chapters, subtitles and titles can be selected from the menu. No need for additional specialized software in most cases.

Rip movie DVDs in DVD format to the computer:

Tools in this section:

DVD Smith Movie Backup
DVD Fab HD Decrypter
DVD Shrink

Here we have to distinguish between applications that rip the movie but retain DVD quality and those that rip the movie into a compressed format like avi or a portable format so that it can be played on a mobile phone or iPod.

DVD Smith Movie Backup can backup a DVD to the computer with little user interaction. It can deal with copy protections so that all movies can be copied with ease.

An alternative to that is DVD Fab HD Decrypter which offers all the features of DVD Smith Movie Backup plus the option to make the movie region code free.

Both store the movie in a Video_TS folder on the hard drive which has approximately the same size as the DVD.

The third tool is DVD Shrink which can reduce the size of the ripped movie which comes in handy if you have a DVD-9 movie and want to burn the backup on a DVD-5. DVD Shrink handles all copy protection as well.

Rip movie DVDs in compressed format to the computer:

Tools in this section:

Auto Gordian Knot
Bitripper
Handbrake

Converting movie DVDs into a compressed format has many advantages. One is the ability to store multiple movies in the place that one full DVD rip would take on the hard drive. A general size of around 700 Megabytes for a compressed movie would mean that about six movies fit into the place of one full DVD backup.

Another example where it does make sense is mobile computing. If you want to store movies on your iPhone, mobile phone, netbook or UMPC you have to take size into consideration because they usually come with hard drive or flash drive sizes of 20 Gigabytes or less.

Auto Gordian Knot can convert movie DVDs into avis. Minimal user interaction is required for the process. The only limitation of the program is that it cannot handle copy protected movies. To overcome this users could first backup the movie to hard disk with one of the applications mentioned above and rip it from there.

Handbrake is another tool which can handle basic CSS protection and convert the movie into additional formats like mkv, mp4 and ogm.

Bitripper finally handles DVD copy protection with ease and requires minimal user input to rip the DVD to the computer. The main benefit of Bitripper is its ease of use, no technical knowledge is required to rip the DVDs.

Convert Videos to DVD Format:

Tools in this section:

AVStoDVD
DVD Flick

DVD Flick supports a wide variety of formats which is its greatest strength, a total of 60 video and 45 audio codecs are supported by the application. It supports subtitles, PAL and NTSC DVDs and can burn the created DVD right after the creation has finished.

The biggest advantage of AVStoDVD is the ease of use. Just add videos to the program interface and it will automatically calculate the correct size to fit all the videos on a DVD-5 or DVD-9 depending on the users selection. Everything is created automatically and it can also burn the DVD after the DVD creation process.

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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 to be able 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.

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