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Author Topic: WinX DVD Ripper Platium - free for the rest of Sept.  (Read 15876 times)

MilesAhead

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WinX DVD Ripper Platium - free for the rest of Sept.
« on: September 16, 2009, 01:19 PM »
GHacks has an article for WinX DVD Ripper Platinum:
http://www.ghacks.ne...ee-offer/#more-16392

I haven't tried it myself yet but I downloaded it.  The download page gives the impression no registration is required.  May be worth a look.

cyberdiva

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Re: WinX DVD Ripper Platium - free for the rest of Sept.
« Reply #1 on: September 16, 2009, 08:00 PM »
Thanks, Miles, for this find.  It looks really interesting.  I've now downloaded it and hope to try it out soon.

Innuendo

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Re: WinX DVD Ripper Platium - free for the rest of Sept.
« Reply #2 on: September 17, 2009, 11:49 AM »
I agree. I hadn't heard of this program before, but a quick search on Google seems to turn up favorable reviews. Not sure what I'd use it for, but I'll download it now....just in case.

MilesAhead

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Re: WinX DVD Ripper Platium - free for the rest of Sept.
« Reply #3 on: September 17, 2009, 12:59 PM »
Thanks, Miles, for this find.  It looks really interesting.  I've now downloaded it and hope to try it out soon.

Please let me know what results you get.  I have some other similar tools but they are a bit long in the tooth.  If this works really well I may opt to uninstall the old stuff.

One thing to consider also, it's my understanding, although I'm not heavy into the subject, that DVD copy prevention schemes use space on the DVD that would otherwise be devoted to data redundancy/recovery/correction whatever you want to call it.  If this is true, then the same video material burned to a DVD blank should be more error tolerant than the original copy protected disc.  It sounds reasonable anyway.  I mean the copy protection stuff must take up some space and go somewhere. :)

Innuendo

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Re: WinX DVD Ripper Platium - free for the rest of Sept.
« Reply #4 on: September 18, 2009, 09:20 AM »
A lot of the copy-protection schemes deliberately deviate from the standards of how a DVD should be authored or written. There will be lots of hinkiness introduced into the file structure leading to all sorts of errors like file links that go nowhere, links to invalid files, etc. All the data checksum data is still there, but a lot of it is wrong because of the errors in the file structure introduced by the copy-protection.

DVD players hooked up to your televisions don't care about these inconsistencies as they are dumb devices that don't care where all the files are on a movie disc and blindly follow where the menu and cell navigation takes them. DVD drives in your PC don't care, either, till you start to do more than just play the movie. Then instead of your DVD software just blindly following the cell navigation instructions something (whether it be the OS or a file manager, or a video editing program, etc.) is trying to access, understand, and sometimes replicate the file structure of the disc. Since these copy-protection routines rely on injecting dummy files into the file structure with error-filled file links, bad data, and lots of other tricks like encryption, just using something like Nero isn't going to copy the disc.

Using a program that backs up a DVD disc that is copy-protected will usually yield you a disc that has no encryption, the file shenanigans removed, and the Region flags stripped from the disc. Since all the bad stuff has been removed the all the checksum data present is actually correct as there's a 100% valid file structure present.

I usually use Slysoft's AnyDVD as my program to remove all the nastiness from a disc. It's the only program I know that you can put a heavily protected movie in your DVD drive and then use the file manager of your choice (Explorer, Total Commander, DOpus, etc.) to just drag all the files on the disc to your hard drive & have a working copy of the movie.

sajman99

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Re: WinX DVD Ripper Platium - free for the rest of Sept.
« Reply #5 on: September 26, 2009, 02:19 PM »
MilesAhead, thanks very much for this notice. This is supposedly a free lifetime license for a commercial software which I've heard good things about. And away I go to download...


Innuendo

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Re: WinX DVD Ripper Platium - free for the rest of Sept.
« Reply #6 on: September 26, 2009, 04:05 PM »
This is supposedly a free lifetime license for a commercial software which I've heard good things about. And away I go to download...

Not exactly a lifetime license. According to the ghacks page:

"A quick chat with one of the representatives of the company revealed that minor updates will be available for free as well while major updates, e.g. a version bump to 6, would not be free but could be purchased for a small amount of money. Updates are not mandatory on the other hand which means that users can work with the version of the DVD ripper for as long as they like."

Still...not bad for free.

sajman99

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Re: WinX DVD Ripper Platium - free for the rest of Sept.
« Reply #7 on: September 26, 2009, 05:22 PM »
Mea culpa, Innuendo. You are 100% correct. I should have stated that this version of WinX DVD Ripper Platinum will work lifetime, but that's clearly distinct from a lifetime license. What can I say, I have my good days and my bad days. :-[

More significantly, I look forward to determining if their "high definition encoding engine" is marketing bull or legitimate terminology.


« Last Edit: September 26, 2009, 05:43 PM by sajman99 »

Innuendo

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Re: WinX DVD Ripper Platium - free for the rest of Sept.
« Reply #8 on: September 26, 2009, 08:13 PM »
Mea culpa, Innuendo. You are 100% correct. I should have stated that this version of WinX DVD Ripper Platinum will work lifetime, but that's clearly distinct from a lifetime license. What can I say, I have my good days and my bad days. :-[

Everybody makes mistakes and this little nugget of info wasn't exactly prominently displayed on either page, either.

More significantly, I look forward to determining if their "high definition encoding engine" is marketing bull or legitimate terminology.

I hope you'll report back and let us know your findings. Quality aside, it looks like a very capable program in its abilities. I don't think there's a freeware equivalent anywhere.

MilesAhead

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Re: WinX DVD Ripper Platium - free for the rest of Sept.
« Reply #9 on: September 27, 2009, 02:18 AM »
I installed this on my 32 bit Windows7 PC(the AMD dual core) and tried a disc. So far I like it.  The movie was on a DVD9, 16x9 video with Japanese audio and English subs.  I put the disc in and the program selected the main movie and output as .avi with divx codec.  I made a few changes, bumped up the bitrate from 1500 to 1800, changed divx to xvid and checked the "high quality engine" box or whatever it was.  Changed the audio track from English to Japanese, audio output from mp3 to ac3, and hit the Start Button.

It ripped and converted on the fly at about 1.5x.  The resulting .avi had the english subs burned in.  The video looked very good and the lips were in sync with the audio.  If all discs come out like this I'll be very glad I got it.  Tomorrow I'll put it on the faster machine and see how it goes.

I could start getting lazy if I don't even have to load AutoGK anymore. :)


MilesAhead

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Re: WinX DVD Ripper Platium - free for the rest of Sept.
« Reply #10 on: September 27, 2009, 01:08 PM »
Looks like it's too soon to throw away AutoGK.  Seems like if you have 16x9 DVD it knows how to convert to .avi but if you have a letterboxed DVD even if the letterboxing is 1:85.1 it doesn't know how to autocrop.  It wants to encode the black bars and give you a 720x540 4x3 .avi file.

Setting the output to NTSC DVD seems to be equivalent to a rip but you just get a .vob file. It doesn't output the VIDEO_TS folder that I can see.  Looks like some experimentation is needed to find out which source will work well for one shot conversion and rip.

edit: if I had to take a guess I'd say it's tuned to 16x9 anamorphic, since that's the thing for standard DVD these days. If you have a disc that can convert the way you want in one shot it looks pretty fast.  On the fly convert to .avi was running a bit better than 3x on my quad core with the "high quality" setting checked.

« Last Edit: September 27, 2009, 03:31 PM by MilesAhead »

yzf888

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Re: WinX DVD Ripper Platium - free for the rest of Sept.
« Reply #11 on: September 28, 2009, 07:03 AM »

I prefer freeware. Two free yet professional DVD rippers:

* Free DVD Ripper (easiest DVD ripper that I ever try.)
* HandBrake (very good open source in my opinion)

4FreeTeam

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Re: WinX DVD Ripper Platium - free for the rest of Sept.
« Reply #12 on: September 28, 2009, 01:37 PM »
There is another giveaway which ends on October 31 here:

http://www.winxdvd.c...ialoffer/sep0902.htm

Marc - 4 Free Team

MilesAhead

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Re: WinX DVD Ripper Platium - free for the rest of Sept.
« Reply #13 on: September 28, 2009, 02:21 PM »
I prefer freeware. Two free yet professional DVD rippers:

* Free DVD Ripper (easiest DVD ripper that I ever try.)
* HandBrake (very good open source in my opinion)

Free DVD Ripper looks interesting.  I downloaded.  Can you tell me is there an option to just rip to VIDEO_TS folder without encoding?  This WinX one I'm trying doesn't seem to do that.

sajman99

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Re: WinX DVD Ripper Platium - free for the rest of Sept.
« Reply #14 on: September 29, 2009, 02:03 PM »
Darn, I too was disappointed to discover this WinX DVD Ripper Platinum doesn't (AFAIK) rip to a VIDEO_TS folder. If it would do that in one step, then the decrypted files would be available for processing in a separate step and the software would be much more useful (ie. DVD to DVD). But I guess another commercial WinX software (WinX DVD Copy?) is required for that functionality.

Perhaps the WinX folks will have a giveaway/promo on WinX DVD Copy some day. Hey, one can always hope, right?


MilesAhead

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Re: WinX DVD Ripper Platium - free for the rest of Sept.
« Reply #15 on: September 29, 2009, 03:26 PM »
Hmmm, rip and convert on the fly seems to be the trend. I tried Free DVD Ripper as yzf888 suggested.  Unless I missed an option, that one insists you rip from a physical disc(guess you could use one of those image mounters but still) and I didn't see a way to cut of a slice to see what the output would look like.

A lot of my movies are letter boxed Asian films I bought before everything was 16x9.  They didn't look bad on my 4x3 TV but now that my TVs have 16x9 mode I want to convert them to anamorphic 16x9 without getting people with wide heads.  Rip to VIDEO_TS folder gives you the best chance to mess around with tools until you get the best result you can, esp. when trying to reformat or autocrop.


Carol Haynes

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Re: WinX DVD Ripper Platium - free for the rest of Sept.
« Reply #16 on: September 29, 2009, 06:48 PM »
DVDFab lets you rip and convert. It also lets you rip to VIDEO_TS, direct to another DVD (both DVD5 and DVD9 and also transcode DVD9 to DVD5) and will even copy discs 'as is' maintaining the exact structure and protection of the source if you want it to.

sajman99

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Re: WinX DVD Ripper Platium - free for the rest of Sept.
« Reply #17 on: October 01, 2009, 01:23 PM »
DVDFab lets you rip and convert. It also lets you rip to VIDEO_TS, direct to another DVD (both DVD5 and DVD9 and also transcode DVD9 to DVD5) and will even copy discs 'as is' maintaining the exact structure and protection of the source if you want it to.
Agreed, the free version of DVDFab (ie. rip only) is what I use for DVD to DVD and it's very good software. But I guess I cannot help myself, I'm always looking for alternatives even if I'm presently satisfied. I'm reluctant to characterize DVDFab as bloatware, but it has certainly grown significantly in the last couple of years. 



Carol Haynes

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Re: WinX DVD Ripper Platium - free for the rest of Sept.
« Reply #18 on: October 01, 2009, 05:01 PM »
I'm reluctant to characterize DVDFab as bloatware, but it has certainly grown significantly in the last couple of years. 

I haven't seen much appear in DVDFab that is beyond reasonable core functionality (and I am running the latest paid version).

OK they have added things like rip and move files to various media players etc. but they seem like reasonable options to offer and you don't pay for those if you don't want them.

If you do want that extra functionality is is pretty well integrated and slick to use.

MilesAhead

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Re: WinX DVD Ripper Platium - free for the rest of Sept.
« Reply #19 on: October 01, 2009, 05:41 PM »
Another good idea, if you are like me and hate motion menus, is MenuShrink. Converts motion menus to stills and optionally strips the audio.  Sometimes it's able to skip over the warning screen and get right to the main menu upon player insertion. As they add more languages to the copy warning, and not let you skip over it, unless you rework the disc you'll be making a sandwich for 8 minutes while that stuff shows the same message in various tongues.  They should just have a copy symbol with the circle with line through for 5 seconds.  Everyone would get the idea!

I know in many of these rippers you can select Main Movie to strip out the menus, but sometimes for subtitles you need to keep the menu.  Some tools that reprocess mpg don't always leave the remote subtitle button action as desired.  That can drive you nuts trying to get that to work!! Easier just to leave the shrunk menus.


MilesAhead

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Re: WinX DVD Ripper Platium - free for the rest of Sept.
« Reply #20 on: October 02, 2009, 07:14 PM »
DVDFab lets you rip and convert. It also lets you rip to VIDEO_TS, direct to another DVD (both DVD5 and DVD9 and also transcode DVD9 to DVD5) and will even copy discs 'as is' maintaining the exact structure and protection of the source if you want it to.

I downloaded the latest beta. So far so good.