{rw_text}Giveaway of the day for May 13, 2009 is:

Extra DVD Ripper Professional

Version reviewed:

v6.43

Software description as per GOTD:

Extra DVD Ripper Professional is a DVD ripping tool to rip your favorite DVD movies to popular iPod, MP4, AVI, Divx, XviD, VCD, SVCD, PSP, Mobile 3GP and Pocket PC video formats. With Extra DVD Ripper Professional, you can choose which titles, audio tracks and subtitle tracks of the DVD you want to rip. You can also set the video size, bit-rate, frame-rate and aspect ratio, and audio bit-rate and sample. Extra DVD Ripper has a user-friendly interface and you can rip a DVD with only a few clicks. Enjoy it!

Key features in Extra DVD Ripper Professional:

• Convert DVD movies to AVI DivX and XviD formats.
• Convert DVD movies to VCD-PAL, VCD-NTSC, SVCD-PAL, SVCD-NTSC MPEG formats.
• Convert DVD movies to Apple iPod MP4 format.
• Convert DVD movies to Sony PSP Video file.
• Convert DVD movies to Mobile 3GP formats.
• Convert DVD movies to Pocket PC.

Ashraf’s Note:

If GOTD gives away another DVD related program I may have to hurt someone.

Also, all information, tips and advice given in this post should only be used within the constraints of the law. In other words if you  do anything illegal with Extra DVD Ripper Professional I am not responsible!

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{rw_good}

• Can rip DVDs from disc or local folder.
• Can rip DVDs to AVI, MP4 (iPod/PSP/iPhone), VCD, SVCD, and 3GP
• You have control over your output video settings (audio/video bitrate, video size, fps, etc.)
• Has a DVD standards video size!
• Can bypass DRM protection. (?)
• Not too bad on computer resources.
• Not too slow in converting/ripping.
• Excellent output quality.

{/rw_good} –>

{rw_bad}

• No play button for “Preview video”.
• “Preview video” is kind of buggy.
• No WMV support.
• Interface is a little buggy.
• You can’t choose the name of your output file.
• No settings to open output folder after ripping is finished.
• Bitrates for AVI could be higher.

{/rw_bad} –>

{rw_score}
{for=”Features as Described” value=”9″}From the description it said you would be able to use DviX codec for AVI – I only see XviD. Otherwise everything works just fine.
{/for}
{for=”Ease of Use” value=”10″}Load a DVD, select your settings and go.
{/for}
{for=”Performance” value=”10″}Not too slow in converting, not too heavy on resources, output quality is good.
{/for}
{for=”Usefulness” value=”9″}Sure more supported output formats would have been nice but it covers all its bases – can be used for ripping DVD to computer or hand held devices – therefore very useful.
{/for}
{for=”Arbitrary Equalizer” value=”9″}This category reflects an arbitrary number that does not specifically stand for anything. Rather this number is used to reflect my overall rating/verdict of the program in which I considered all the features and free alternatives.
{/for}
{/rw_score} –>

{rw_verdict}[tupr]
{/rw_verdict} –>

Registration and installation went fine. You have to manually enter your registration information.

Extra DVD Ripper Professional is a program that allows you to easily rip DVDs to AVI, MP4 (iPod/PSP/iPhone), VCD, SCVD, and 3GP formats.

This is what Extra DVD Ripper Professional looks like:

Using EDRP (Extra DVD Ripper Professional) is very easy. First you click on to load your DVD. You can load from either an actual CD or you can load from a folder on your computer:

Once you have loaded your DVD click on to choose your output format, output settings and output folder:

You can choose AVI, MP4, VCD, SCVD, or 3GP by selecting one of the follow categories:

iPod, PSP, and iPhone create MP4s and Pocket PC creates AVIs.

Once you have decided upon your format, just change the settings accordingly. Under “Profile Settings” you will find a handful of “profiles” to select from for each format but after you select a format you can fully customize it (i.e. change any of the other settings) as you please. One thing worth noticing is that the video size has DVD standards compatible sizes (i.e. 720×480) which is really nice because most other programs did not have this.

Once everything is set how you please, just hit . When you are back at the main program window, you can preview your input source/output settings:

When you are ready to rip the DVD just hit to start the ripping:

When your ripping is finished you will be told so:

As for the actual performance of this program:

• Sitting idle with “preview DVD” off it only uses ~3.1 MB of RAM; with “preview DVD” on it uses ~14.2 MB of RAM.
• During conversion it only used ~35 MB of RAM and ~40-50% CPU.
• Conversion took 2:22 mins to convert a 167 MB 4:51 min long DVD to a 896 Kbps video, 128 Kbps audio, 720×480, 25 FPS AVI video.
• Output quality was excellent – not DVD quality (duh you are converting to a lesser format) but excellent nonetheless.
• Output file size was ~35 MB.

If you want to see the output quality for yourself, you can download the original DVD I used from here (for free – 100% legit) and compare it to the AVI version I created (click here to download AVI version).

One last thing I would like to mention before I go on to the cons of this program is I believe Extra DVD Ripper Professional is able to bypass DRM protection just like all the other Extra DVD programs because it uses the same recording technique. However I am not sure because 1) the developer’s website usually mentions the need for DVD43 but it does not for Extra DVD Ripper Professional and 2) the interface for this program is a little different than all the other programs. I don’t have any DRM protected DVDs so if anyone can test it out for me to confirm I would greatly appreciate it. For now I am going to go on the assumption it can until someone proves to me it can’t. That being said, you will probably need DVD43 to break region lock also.

Okay so overall I give Extra DVD Ripper Professional a thumbs up. Sure it could do with more output formats, but it is a good DVD ripping program. There are a few minor cons with this program however:

• Under settings there is an option . What this option does is it allows you to preview you DVD after you load it (like watch it in real time). The only problem is there is no “play” button – only forward/rewind and a bar to allow you to scroll through parts of the DVD:

If you try to preview the video by pressing the green play button, the DVD will start ripping – it won’t play the DVD.

• EDRP crashed a few times when I tried to preview the DVD and/or turn the option on/off.
• You can’t output WMV videos.
• Interface is a little buggy – text is often outside of its designated area:

• You can’t choose the name of your output file. However, unlike Extra’s last program, you will be prompted before any file of the same name in the same output folder is overwritten.
• There is no way to automatically open the output folder after ripping has finished.
• Someone on GOTD complained about how “bitrates (audio and video) were too low” for this program. Well for iPod, PSP, iPhone, 3GP and Pocket PC the bitrates are just fine. I say just fine because the higher the bitrate the higher the file size. When you are putting a DVD on a mobile/hand held device file size is a concern and you need to try to keep it as low as possible. Also on such a small screen, the bitrate difference is not even noticeable.

For AVI, since AVI will be stored on a computer and file size is not as much of an issue, I do agree the bitrates could be a little higher. The maximum bitrate for AVI is 1024 Kbps video and 128 Kbps audio. One thing to keep in mind is an AVI will never be DVD quality so the bitrates will never be as high as an actual DVD and while I said I agree that they could be higher, the quality of an AVI video created by EDRP is excellent and watchable – not DVD quality (obviously if you wanted to keep DVD quality don’t rip it) but excellent quality nonetheless.

This review was conducted on a laptop running Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit. The specs of the laptop are as follows: 3GB of RAM, a Radeon HD 2600 512MB graphics card, and an Intel T8300 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor.

{rw_freea}

{/rw_freea} –>

{rw_verdict2}Extra DVD Ripper Professional is an excellent program. It is easy to use, does not hog your computer resources while converting, supports multiple output formats, gives you control over output settings and, best of all, can bypass DRM. Sure it has its cons but overall I give it a thumbs up. I also recommend it. For free alternatives there is always FormatFactory; in terms of being a DVD ripper, FormatFactory is superior to EDRP except that FF can’t bypass DRM.
{/rw_verdict2} –>