How to Rip Blu-Rays and DVDs

How to Rip Blu-Ray and DVD Discs using MakeMKV and Handbrake

This page will guide readers on how to get good rips from their Blu-Rays and DVDs, allowing for upload to a media server or to watch on their devices.

Tools needed

• Physical DVDs or Blu-Rays
• A DVD or Blu-Ray drive (internal or external)
• Handbrake (available at https://handbrake.fr/ and in the repos of most popular Linux distros)
• For Blu-Rays, MakeMKV (available at https://www.makemkv.com/ and free as long as it's in beta)
• For both media and for discs with multiple episodes or copies (i.e. special features in movies or multiple episodes of TV shows), VLC and something to take notes with
• The libdvdcss and libaacs libraries may be required on Linux for disc decryption (most distros will have these in their repos)
• Plenty of drive space; Blu-Ray rips can take upwards of 50GB!
• A good amount of free time

Beginning the Process

Begin by getting the media you want to rip and an optical drive to read the disc with. We will be using a copy of Porco Rosso as our example for this tutorial.

Hook up the drive to your computer, insert the disc, and mount it in your OS (Windows and Mac mount automatically; most Linux distros mount automatically as well).

Decoding Your Blu-Rays with MakeMKV

If you haven't installed MakeMKV yet, do so now and launch it.

If you already inserted your disc into your optical drive, MakeMKV will automatically read it and show its information.

Click the "Backup" icon (it looks like a small folder with a green arrow pointing into it). MakeMKV will ask you where you want to save your disc dump to. Select a location and ensure the "Decrypt video files" checkbox is checked. Once you're ready, click "OK" and MakeMKV will do its thing!

The disc will now be decrypted and written to the backup location. This will take a while, so sit back and relax!

Once the backup is completed, move onto the next step!

Using Handbrake for Decoded Blu-Rays

Now that we have our decrypted Blu-Ray dump, it's time to process it using Handbrake and get our finished movie file. This guide will work in all OSes that run Handbrake.

Begin by clicking "File" and "Open Directory" in the Handbrake menu. Navigate to the folder where your disc dump was copied to and select it. Be sure to make certain that "Recursively scan directories" in the lower left corner is unchecked, otherwise the directory scan will not work properly!

Once scanning is complete, you should see a preview screenshot appear, and the source and title information should be set automatically. If the title doesn't seem right, select the title drop down menu and look for the title which matches the length of the movie you're working with (usually written on the package somewhere). For full length movies, you don't need to change chapter information; just assure the title is the correct one (you can also verify this information via VLC).

Once you have the correct title set, it's time to prepare for the encoding! Select the Dimensions tab and set "Cropping" to "None" (cropping isn't usually needed as it can sometimes mess up aspect ratio).

By default, Handbrake encodes in H.264 video which is functional and fast enough for most devices, so changing it is completely optional. If you wish to use a different video codec, switch to the Video tab and select your favorite video encoder codec from the drop-down menu, then switch to the Audio tab.

This is where it gets slightly tricky: some movies may have multiple audio tracks (either languages or crew commentary), and if you wish to get multiple tracks in your encoded video, you'll have to add the additional ones you want. By default, Handbrake will select the default track for the disc. If you wish to edit the settings of said track, double click it and the above dialogue will appear. From here, you can set the source track you wish to rip, set a name for it (optional), what audio encoder you want to use (by default AAC), the bitrate or quality, and the mix type you want to use (stereo by default). Set your settings and click "Save" once you're satisfied.

Lastly, if you need to add subtitles, switch to the Subtitles tab, click "Tracks", and select "Add All Tracks". This should add any subtitle sets from the disc to your project.

Once you're set with everything, be sure to set the "Save As" field at the bottom to a filename, and click the "To:" button to select the directory where your encoded video will go. Finally, click "Add to Queue" on the top and your project will be added to the queue, which you can view by clicking the "Queue" button in the upper right of the main window.

Check all your settings, and once you're satisfied with everything, click "Start"!

Grab yourself a snack, because the encoding will take quite a bit of time depending on your computer's power and RAM. Handbrake will let you know when it's done!

And done! Enjoy your freshly ripped Blu-Ray disc!

Using Handbrake for DVDs

Ripping DVDs in Handbrake is thankfully a less strenuous process, but there are still a few things we need to make sure are set properly to ensure a good rip of one. This example will focus on ripping a movie from a DVD. Most DVDs can be ripped directly from Handbrake without having to use MakeMKV first to decode the contents.

Ripping Movie DVDs

First, let's focus on a movie DVD. We'll use a DVD of Raiders of the Lost Ark for this example.

Same as before, insert the disc into your drive and mount the volume, then launch Handbrake. As before, go to "File" > "Open Directory" in the Handbrake menu, and navigate to the mountpoint of the DVD, then look for the "VIDEO_TS" folder, double click it (you should see a bunch of files in the folder similar to below), and click "Open". As with the Blu-Ray tutorial above, make sure the "Recursively Scan Directories" checkbox is unchecked, or Handbrake will have difficulty reading the title and chapter information of the disc!

Handbrake will scan the directory and display its preview screenshot and disc info as before. As with the Blu-Ray tutorial, look for the title in the drop-down menu that matches the length of the movie you're ripping (in our case, Title 1 is the main feature.)

From here, you can largely follow along with setting features, cropping, video codec, audio codec, and subtitles largely the same way as with a Blu-Ray rip. DVDs, unlike Blu-Rays, display at a lower 720x480p resolution, so take note of this when setting your cropping and display settings.

As before, make sure to fill out the "Save As:" field with a filename, and set a destination directory by clicking the "To:" button. Once you're ready, click the "Add to Queue" button up top to add the job to the queue, then click the "Queue" button to make sure everything is set the way you want it. Once you're ready, click "Start" and sit back as Handbrake encodes your video!

Once it's done, you can load your encoded video in VLC or your favorite video player to test it out!

Ripping TV Series on DVD

Ripping a TV series that's on DVD is a slightly more involved process. Discs will have multiple episodes and you'll need to figure out identifying episodes, finding the titles that correspond to each episode, and creating jobs in Handbrake for each individual episode so you get multiple videos for each separate episode and not just one large file that's hard to navigate and find start points of each episode for.

For this example, we'll use an Aqua Teen Hunger Force Season 1 set.

Same as before, insert the disc, mount, open in Handbrake just the same as with the above example.

Notice how there are multiple titles on this disc of varying lengths; the longest length track in this case would correspond to the "Play All" feature most TV series DVDs would have, and the smaller length (around 11 minutes each) titles are the individual episodes we want to extract from this disc. In this case, let's say we want to extract one specific episode only from this disc, but we can't identify which one it is simply by the title currently. So let's go over to VLC and look for which title corresponds to the episode we want.

Open VLC, and go to "Media" > "Open Disc" (Ctrl+D on Windows and Linux or Cmd+D on macOS), and select "DVD", then "Play".

From here, let's navigate the menu to "Episodes" and click it.

Let's use "Mayhem of the Mooninites" as the example episode. Click it to start playback, then on the VLC menu, click "Playback" > "Title" and make a note of which title is currently selected; we'll need this info for Handbrake! For our selected episode, it's Title 6 on the disc. Go back to Handbrake, select Title 6 from the drop down menu, and set all your cropping, video codec preferences, audio preferences, and everything else as in previous examples.

Once you're satisfied, add the job to the queue. If you want to add additional episodes to the queue to rip, repeat the process above and locate each title on the disc for each episode, and add them to the queue as well. Be sure to name each output file correctly to prevent issues with overwriting files!

Once you have all the episodes you want to rip in the queue, click "Start" and sit back while your jobs process!

Once all your jobs are done, admire your handiwork with your favorite video player!

Testing your rips

Be sure to run your rips through at least a couple of media players. VLC, mplayer, and mvp are useful for testing, but if you have other players that can support the codecs that Handbrake used for encoding the videos, be sure to test with them, too!

If you find issues or glitches in your rips, you can always go back and try redoing the encoding jobs.

Done!

Congrats! You're now ready to rip your physical DVDs and Blu-Rays like a pro! Get out there and build the best damn library you can!