So in preparation for ship life, I'm rushing to rip my DVDs to my external hard drive. Don't whine about legality, it's perfectly fine for personal use. It's illegal to use your rips in non-personal ways, and it's illegal to distribute software to bypass copy protection schemes. So shame on the guys who developed the wonderful software I'm using to rip my personal collection of DVDs and Blu-rays, they're technically breaking the law. But I most certainly am not.
Some laws are just ridiculous… making such software illegal because it can be used for illegal activities, even though it has perfectly valid legal uses, is as absurd as making the sale of cars illegal because they can be used in illegal ways.Anyway, I calculated that I'd need to rip just under 4 discs a day starting from July 1st to have all of 'em ripped by my deadline of September 22nd. I'm quite ahead of schedule at over 35 discs. And even better is that I'm actually transcoding most of these to h.264 in the process, with the exception of a few that have copy protection schemes that force me to use MakeMKV for ripping instead of HandBrake.HandBrake is easily my favorite video transcoding software. Free, clean and powerful. Not to mention cross-platform. It's not capable of transcoding video from copy-protected discs however (including all Blu-rays), so for those I'm forced to rip with other software first.MakeMKV is currently my favorite ripping software. Like HandBrake, it's free, clean, powerful and cross-platform. Handles most copy-protected discs, including most Blu-rays, like a champ. As the name implies, it outputs MKV files, which is great for preserving multiple audio and subtitle tracks. And since the majority of my DVDs are anime with multiple audio and subtitle tracks, this is quite nice. Not only that, but MakeMKV doesn't butcher the video by transcoding it. I prefer to do all my quality transcoding with HandBrake, so the fact that MakeMKV doesn't try to do a half-assed transcode is a godsend.HandBrake and MakeMKV compliment each other perfectly. Anyone looking to backup their personal DVD/Blu-ray collection should try these out first.And for playback, naturally the free, clean, powerful and cross-platform VLC media player fits the bill perfectly. Some might argue that there are better players out there, but VLC has never failed me. And these supposedly better players are either Windows/Linux-only or have truly atrocious Mac ports.
Like a boss.Clone Dvd8.
and then encode with MakeMKV.DVDFab? I think I tried that once, but didn't care to much for the interface.
Also, it's not free. They charge $60 for their Blu-ray ripping software, and it only does Blu-ray. You have to buy their DVD ripping software separately for $50.…And yeah, I know there are ways of obtaining software for free. But we're talking about ripping legally here, and pirating the tools certainly isn't legal. Not that I have any moral issue with doing so, but there are free tools available that can accomplish the same task. And I actually like 'em better than the commercial tools I've tried.Yeah, there was one good free ripper that I can't recall.
OsiDVD?That sounds wrong.Shame on the law.
Shame on the Bastards who make it hard to copy these disks.
The first time I ever ripped a disk was to prove I could to this other guy.Yeah, all these copy protection schemes are quite annoying. People are always gonna figure out a way to get past them, so why even waste the effort implementing them? They're only gonna accomplish pissing off the people who actually paid for the product and are only trying to use it in entirely legal ways.
Anyway, this weekend's been put to good use. Nearly 70 discs ripped and still counting.Piracy protection schemes are bullshit. The fact is, the company's product will always be pirated, and piracy will never be stopped. The industries need to adapt instead of being bitchy. They need to benefit the customer instead of screwing with the pirate, also screwing with actual customers in the process.
It's just like bill S.978; a ridiculous concoction wrought from the hellforges of the mainstream music and movie industry, becauseof they're being too immature to adapt.In fact, by law, no-one is legally allowed to listen to/view your purchased item unless they pay for it also, I.E.; game/music/movie lending is apparently a felony.Copy protection on non-interactive media is particularly hilarious, given that it has to be decrypted, decoded, and sent down an unsecured wire that I own.
The Clincher!