What is a DVD ripper?

A DVD ripper is a software program used to extract the data from a DVD video disc and store it onto a hard drive. There are many DVD ripper programs available, including free DVD ripper software.

Once a DVD ripper program has ripped the data onto the hard drive, the extracted data may optionally be compressed. Video compression may be desirable in order to take up less space on the hard drive, or fit the data of a dual layer DVD onto a single layer blank disc.

Some DVD ripper software can also convert the data into other video formats such as VCD, SVCD, AVI, MPEG-4 (DivX, Xvid), etc. This process typically requires significant compression, resulting in severe loss of video quality, but allows viewing the resulting files on other devices such as an iPod or older DVD player which does not support DVD-ROM format.

Typically, the ripped DVD video image produced by a DVD ripper, whether compressed or not, would be burned onto a recordable DVD using DVD burning software. Alternatively, the image could simply be left on the hard drive for later viewing using DVD viewer software such as Windows Media Player™ available with all versions of Microsoft Windows™.