{rw_text}Giveaway of the day for August 28, 2009 is:

Wondershare DVD to 3GP Ripper

Version reviewed:

v4.2.0.17

System Requirements:

Windows NT4/2000/2003/XP and Windows Vista; >750MHz Intel or AMD CPU; 100 MB HD space; 256 MB RAM

Software description as per GOTD:

Wondershare DVD to 3GP Ripper is a professional 3GP Converter that is designed for cell phone users to convert DVD to 3GP video for playback on their cell phones with fast conversion speed and excellent output quality. It also helps cell phone users extract audio from DVD to MP3, WMA and M4A audio to make custom ringtone for cell phones such as Nokia, Motorola, and Sony Ericsson, etc.Besides, Wondershare DVD to 3GP Ripper provides users powerful editing performances to crop, trim, adjust video effect, add watermark, etc to get the ideal 3GP video. Furthermore, it offers users adjustable video/audio output parameters such as resolution, bit rate, frame rate, etc. to get tailor-made video/audio for cell phones such as Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, etc.

Key Features:

• Convert DVD to 3GP video for different cell phones such as Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, etc.
• Extract audio from DVD movie to MP3, WMA and M4A audio to make custom ringtone for cell phones.
• Allow you to resize output video by selecting aspect ratio from 4:3, 16:9 or Keep Original.
• Allow you to get special effect of video by adjusting brightness, contrast, saturation etc.
• Allow you to coin and color your video by adding and editing either image or text watermark in a personalized way.
• The snapshot function allows you to capture any picture from video and save as jpeg or bmp format.
• Two real time preview windows allow you have a full control of 3GP video effects.
• High level customization of output video settings enables you to adjust output video/audio parameters as Resolution, Bit Rate, Frame Rate, etc. to produce exactly 3GP video for cell phone.

Ashraf’s note:

Please note this article is for informative and educational purposes only. I am in no way encouraging piracy or any other sort of illegal action. Please only use Wondershare DVD To 3GP Ripper within the laws of your country. I am not responsible for any illegal activities done by Wondershare DVD To 3GP Ripper.

————————-{/rw_text} –>

{rw_good}

{/rw_good} –>

{rw_bad}

• Audio can only be ripped to .MP3, .M4a, and .WMA.
• Lacking the ability to “smart detect” which titles are the actual DVD and which are not.
• A “reverse selection” button would have been nice.
• If there is an output file of the same name/file type in the same folder, you can only overwrite or not convert – no option to rename automatically as something like “SummerVideo_1.mp4” instead of “SummerVideo.mp4”.
• No ability to change “processing priority”.
• Does not support batch processing.
• Quality of output could be very slightly improved upon.

{/rw_bad} –>

{rw_score}
{for=”Ease of Use” value=”9″}Point and click for the most part. However when DVD is loaded all the titles are selected by default. With a lack of a “reverse selection” button, if you don’t want all the titles you have to manually uncheck them all.
{/for}
{for=”Performance” value=”9″}Good conversion speed, not too bad on computer resources, and end file size is acceptable. However video quality is slightly lacking when compared to FormatFactory.
{/for}
{for=”Usefulness” value=”5″}Eh. Many people will not be interested in turning a DVD into 3GP because of the loss in quality.
{/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} –>

Wondershare DVD to 3GP Ripper in a program that allows you to rip your DVDs (directly from disk, from DVD files on your computer, from .ISOs, and .IFOs) to .3GP and .3G2 video allowing you to put your DVDs on mobile devices, such as your cell phone. Additionally it allows you to rip the audio from DVDs to .MP3, .M4A, and, .WMA.

In terms of form, Wondershare DVD to 3GP Ripper is just like all the other Wondershare video products, such as Wondershare Video Converter Platinum. The interfaces are the same, how they work is the same, the editing features are the same, etc. The only difference is in function (input/output formats).

I personally do not like the fact that Wondershare is creating thousands of different variants of their software by only changing the supported input/output formats but hey what can I do? I am only little ole Ashraf.

This is what Wondershare DVD to 3GP Ripper looks like:

When you first run WDt3R (Wondshare DVD to 3GP Ripper) directions on how to use it are written right on the program:

Fairly straightforward and generic; all video converters basically work this way. A couple of things to note however:

• WDt3R allows you to rip DVDs directly from the disk, from DVD files already on your computer, from .ISOs, and .IFOs. By default if you click on “Add…” you will be asked to browse your computer and find your DVD ripping source. Clicking the arrow next to “Add…” gives you more specific options on where to find your source.
• WDt3R supports drag + drop so in addition to being able to add DVD file by pressing the “Add…” button you can drag + drop your DVDs into WDt3R. Obviously you won’t be able to drag + drop your disk DVD but if you have DVD files on your computer, .ISOs, or .IFOs, you can drag + drop them.
• With WDt3R you are not forced to rip your whole DVD. You may choose certain chapters or titles to rip individually.

As the name of the program suggests, this program is not for ripping DVDs into all kinds of videos; rather it only rips to .3GP and .3G2. However it does have different types of .3GP and .3G2 you can rip to:

As per my experience, the two different types of .3GP/.3G2 outputs have the same video quality, same end file size, and rip at the same speed. What is the difference between I am not 100% sure (besides the default settings which you can always change).

In addition to ripping DVDs to .3GP/3G2 you can rip the audio from DVDs to .MP3, .M4A, and .WMA.

One really nice feature of WDt3R is that you can do some edits to your DVDs before you turn them into .3GP/3G2. You can crop, trim, add a watermark, edit the brightness, contrast, saturation, or flip (vertically/horizontally). The editing is done in a window with two preview windows side by side (one of the video as it is and one of the video with the changes you make) so it is very easy to compare and see how the video looks before you make your edits and how it will look after:

A few more things I would like to point out:

• By default your output file is set to be the same name as your input file (with just the change of extension). If you want to change the name of your output file, click on the file name under “Destination File” and change the name to whatever you want:

• You can merge all your titles into one output instead of each title being a different output:

• These are the “Settings” that you can change for each conversion:

“Format Preset” is just selecting your output format (you don’t have many to choose from obviously).

• WDt3R can bypass DRM. Now Wondershare does not officially list bypassing DRM on their product page but I was able to turn one of my Jurassic Park DVD into a .3PG movie just fine even though it is DRM protected (CSS/CPPM).

Okay that is basically the whole program. I will mention the major cons of this program before talking about the actual performance:

• Since this is a DVD to 3GP Ripper by name, I can’t see that only being able to rip to 3GP/3G2 is a con. However only being able to rip audio from DVD to MP3, M4A, and WMA is a con.
• WDt3R does not “detect” which of the titles are commercials and which one is the main stream actual DVD. Combine that with the fact that it automatically selects all titles to be ripped…

…and this becomes very annoying. I literally had to unclick 40 titles to only rip my main “DVD title” (the first title). A simple solution to this would be to either only automatically check titles longer than, say, 5 minutes, or to have a “reverse selection” button so someone can easily unselect them all if desired.

• There is no way to change the “processing priority” of WDt3R. Video conversation by nature can, at times, be very demanding on computer resources – especially the CPU. It would have been nice to be able to set WDt3R to “low processing priority” so I can use my computer more smoothly while WDt3R converts without relative lag because my CPU is being used up.

Other not-so-major cons include improving upon the organization of output format/profile selection and allowing automatic renaming of output files:

• When you output a file, if a file of the same name/extension is already located in the output folder you will be asked to either overwrite the file or cancel your conversion. There is no option to automatically rename the file, such as “dotTech.org_Video.avi” to “dotTech.org_Video_1.avi”. Of course you can manually go back and change the outfile name, which is why this is a not-so-major con, but this can get annoying after a while.
• Batch processing is not supported. Now this is a “not-so-major” con because most people only have one DVD drive and the DVD drive will be the major source of DVD rips. However it would have been nice to rip multiple DVDs in one go if you were ripping from DVD files already on your computer, .ISOs, or .IFOs.
• The output quality can be slightly improved upon. I put this in “not-so-major cons” because for a 3GP video (keep in mind by nature 3GP videos will be one of the lesser quality formats) the quality is very good. However when compared to FormatFactory’s output (which I will show you in a second), it is very, very slightly inferior (at default settings).

Okay done with pros, done with cons. Now on to the actual performance.

Sitting idle, WVCP uses ~15 MB of RAM and little to no CPU – not bad. With a DVD is loaded but not playing in the preview window and before conversion, RAM usage jumps to about ~21 MB of RAM but CPU usage has no change; again not bad. During actual conversion CPU usage is ~50% (with positive and negative spikes often and in double digits) and RAM usage is ~50-65 MB (RAM usage slowly increases as the DVD is ripped); this amount of computer resource usage is fairly typical among video converters so again not bad.

Furthermore, conversions are done fairly quickly: it took me about 13 minutes to rip a 92 minute DVD. The quality of the output video is good taking into fact that the output videos are 3GP. Also, the end file size/compression of the DVD is acceptable: it turns my 7.82 GB DVD into a 116 MB 3GP.

Lastly, as frequent dotTech readers know, my program of choice when it comes to file conversions is always FormatFactory. The great thing about FormatFactory is that it also has a DVD ripper. So whenever a program that converts video, audio or image files appears on GOTD I always like to see how it compares to FormatFactory. Since it has a DVD ripper I can also compare it to DVD ripping software. I did the same with WDt3R. Here is what I came up with:

• FormatFactory seems to have trouble bypassing DRM. When trying to rip my DRM protected DVD with FormatFactory, the program just freezes.
• However, after I rip my DVD with DVDSmith and then throw the DVD files into FormatFactory to convert to 3GP, FormatFactory rips slightly faster than WDt3R and computer resource is slightly less but the major point here is the output quality is slightly better:

The left one is ripped via FormatFactory while the right one is ripped via WDt3R. Ignoring the “Evaluation Copy” watermark (remember I use trials for my reviews now), the video on the left is slightly better in quality (both FormatFactory and WDt3R were set to the same output settings including resolution, bitrate and FPS).

So overall I definitely give Wondershare Video Converter Platinum a thumbs up. It is an excellent DVD ripper for those people who want to turn their DVDs into 3GPs and use on their mobile devices. It is easy to use, converts files well and has nice extra features such video editing.

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}

DVDSmith + FormatFactory

DVDSmith is an excellent DVD ripping tool which allows you to… rip your DVDs. Then all you have to do is take your ripped DVD and throw it into FormatFactory to convert it to many output formats including 3GP.

Leawo DVD To 3GP Ripper

This freeware by Leawo allows you to rip DVD to 3GP similar to Wondershare’s DVD to 3GP ripper. However I must warn you that “SeekService” (a proven trojan) comes packed in with Leawo DVD To 3GP Ripper (it is a opt in). “SeekService” is also why I did not link to it.

{/rw_freea} –>

{rw_verdict2}While I am not particularly fond of this business model (as a consumer) of using the same software but changing the input/output formats to gain more sales, I must say Wondershare DVD to 3GP Ripper is good for what it does.; it is fast, makes good quality outputs, and is fair when it comes to computer resources. Thumbs up and recommended if you need it. However personally I will not be keeping this software because I prefer the combination of DVDSmith and FormatFactory. Sure it takes long to do the initial rip of the DVD with DVDSmith but after you have ripped the DVD, FormatFactory allows you to convert the DVD into so many more formats than WDt3R and the output quality is slightly better (when comparing 3GP to 3GP also). I find the DS + FF combo to be more versatile because after the initial rip you can quickly convert the DVD files into any type of video depending on your current needs (i.e. “oh I need to put this on my phone today so go 3GP” or “oh I want it in AVI today”, etc.).
{/rw_verdict2} –>