In today's day and age, we have so many video types and formats that you need the ability to convert or rip DVDs to all sorts of other formats. For example, let's say you have your wedding on DVD, the birth of your child or some other momentous occasion that you would like to share with others over the Internet or on your video-enabled cell phone, iPod, Zune, PSP, iPhone or some other portable device. Depending on the device or delivery mechanism you choose, the DVD might need to be converted to a format like:
To make this conversion happen, you will need to download a software program called a DVD video converter (also referred to as a DVD Ripper Software). There are many programs available to get this job done. A Quick Google search will reveal many different choices when it comes to this form of program. You are encouraged to read reviews, try out demo versions and test freeware to find the right program for you.
For the sake of this tutorial, we're going to use the iSofter DVD Ripper Platinum. We chose this particular program because it covers all of the video types we mentioned above. Some programs have certain limitations and will only rip DVD to iPod format or some other. The iSofter DVD Ripper Platinum can convert DVD to just about any video format (and it comes with a full-featured free trial download so you can try everything out without having to spend one cent!). After you have downloaded the software, installed it on your computer and opened it on your Desktop you will need to insert the DVD to wish to convert in your computer's DVD-ROM drive. The iSofter program should immediately recognize the DVD and it will list the video and audio files located on it. From here you will select the individual files that you wish to convert. To do this, you simply select a check mark next to the file's name. Next you will select the output format of the video you wish to convert. Let's say you want to convert the DVD to MPEG format, you will simply choose MPEG from the drop down box. Once you have selected the files to be converted and the output format, you will need to select a location on your computer where to output converted files will be saved on your computer. Make sure this is a location you will remember. A good rule of thumb is to setup a "videos converted" folder in your My Documents folder.
Your next and final step is to click the "start" button. This will begin the file conversion process. Depending on the size and length of the video being converted, this could last a few minutes or up to a half hour or more. That's it! It's really that simple to convert your DVD home movies to other video formats. Most DVD ripping and converter programs work much in the same way as this tutorial so you should be able to get it done.
FreeMac DVDRipper is a top-grade application to rip DVD on Mac. It provides a fast and easy way to convert your DVD movies or just the parts of the movie that you want. With this program enables you to make high-quality copies from DVD movies and saves them as files on your hard disk to the most popular formats such as AVI, WMV, HD, MP4 (iPod, PSP, Apple TV, and MP4 Player), DivX, 3GP, MPEG, Xvid, MOV, FLV, MKV, etc. wmv to mp4
