Best Software For Ripping Blu Ray Mac

We've already covered how to digitize your DVDs, but their high-def cousins need a little extra help — and often, a lot more time. Here's everything you need to get started, and a few pointers to avoid aggravation along the way.

Why digitize your discs?

It's easy to buy movies from iTunes, or get digital copies bundled with a Blu-ray. But not all discs come with a digital copy. Older discs that did may have cheaped out with a rinky-dink standard-def version. (Booooo.) Some, but not all, discs are eligible for a $2 digital copy through Vudu/Movies Anywhere, but that's still extra expense for a film you already bought. You shouldn't have to pay twice for the same movie in HD.

This Free Blu-ray Ripper is the best and most wonderful Free Blu-ray ripping software, which can help users rip Blu-ray movie to videos like MP4, MKV, MOV, AVI, WMV and even the high definition MP4, MKV, etc. With fast speed and excellent quality. Dec 23, 2018 Step 3: Get ripping. Plug in your Blu-ray drive, pop in a disc, and open MakeMKV. It'll take a few seconds to recognize the disc. Once it does, click the big, animated Blu-ray drive button to read that disc's contents, which may take another few minutes. Rip and Convert Blu-ray/DVD to Video/Audio in 180+ Formats on Mac. As a professional Mac Blu-ray ripping program, Leawo Blu-ray Ripper for Mac allows users to rip and convert Blu-ray content to video in various formats like MP4, MOV, MKV, FLV, F4V, AVI, etc., to extract audio content from source Blu-ray content and save as MP3, AAC, AC3, etc. Mar 25, 2020 2. DVDFab Blu-ray Copy – Ripping 3D Blu-ray Movies. DVDFab Blu-ray Copy is the full-featured Blu-ray burning software for Window or Mac. You can burn HD or SD videos to Blu-ray disc easily. It can easily burn Blu-ray files with any videos, including MP4, MKV, MOV, WMA, AVI, FLV, 3GP, and more.

And while movies from iTunes and other stores cost $15-$20 outside of occasional sales, Blu-rays sometimes cost a lot less. Buying and ripping cheaper discs gives you a first-rate digital copy at a significant discount, without the hassles of DRM.

Step 1: Don't be a jerk

If you're making digital copies of movies you own, for your personal use and no one else's, the Feds likely won't bother kicking down your door.

However, if you're thinking about using this guide to steal movies you don't actually own, kindly close this window, shut down your computer, and go sit in the nearest corner to contemplate your life choices.

Step 2: Assemble your team

To move your movies from disc to disk, you'll need:

An external Blu-ray drive

I used an older Samsung SE-506, which sells for around $100 and worked great. But The Wirecutter has a good roundup of more recent drives that cost less and may perform even better.

MakeMKV

This free-while-in-beta program shrugs off Blu-rays' copy protection and bundles their contents into handy, if hefty, files. (Remember, use those awesome powers only for good.) You'll need a new beta key for MakeMKV roughly every two months, which you can find here. For a deeper dive into MakeMKV, consult this Macworld article.

HandBrake

To squeeze those massive files into svelter shape, you'll need this free, popular Mac app. Just make sure you verify the checksum of Handbrake's .dmg file before you install it – a way to make sure that no sneaky hackers have replaced your legit copy with a nasty lookalike, which briefly happened to Handbrake in 2017.

Plex

You can always convert your movies into MP4 files and pop them into iTunes or VLC. But Plex offers three big advantages:

  1. Unlike iTunes, Plex plays Matroksa, or MKV, files. (I'll explain later why that's good.)
  2. Plex automatically pulls in your movies' poster art and other metadata, whereas iTunes requires an additional program called Subler.
  3. As long as you have an always-on, internet-connected computer or NAS drive running your Plex server, you can stream all your movies to your iPhone, iPad, AppleTV, Mac, or a host of other devices, anywhere you go. And while Plex charges for its live TV and DVR features, you can use it to store and stream movies for free, minus a one-time $5 unlock fee for its iOS apps.

Step 3: Get ripping

Plug in your Blu-ray drive, pop in a disc, and open MakeMKV. It'll take a few seconds to recognize the disc. Once it does, click the big, animated Blu-ray drive button to read that disc's contents, which may take another few minutes.

MakeMKV will list the disc's titles (video files) and their accompanying audio and subtitle tracks. Every title's selected by default; right-click any of the check boxes and choose 'Unselect All' to clear out the clutter, then pick the titles you want. The titles aren't labeled, but the one with the biggest file size and most chapters is almost always the movie.

Click the arrow next to that title to expand its audio and subtitle tracks. (The 'Unselect All' trick mentioned above comes in handy here, too.) You'll probably want at least the very first audio track — usually English language and 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound.

Audio commentary tracks are often in stereo English, below the foreign languages. Discs with multiple commentaries usually list them in the same order they're mentioned on the back of the Blu-ray's packaging. That's helpful if you want to keep the director's commentary but skip the cast's, or vice versa.

Select any subtitle tracks you want. It's okay to keep both the regular subtitles (all the dialogue) and the 'forced only' subtitles, which some discs use only when characters speak in foreign or fictional languages.

Choose an output folder — I recommend one on your local hard drive, for faster conversion — then hit the 'MakeMKV' button.

Converting your chosen titles often takes an hour or more. When you're done, you'll have a jumbo-sized MKV file for each title you selected.

Why is MKV a good thing? While MP4 files can support multiple audio tracks, by default they can't work with more than one subtitle track, and that track has to be burned in to the video permanently. Adding more subtitles demands a lengthy, complicated process of exporting and importing subtitle files in different formats.

In contrast, MKV files can easily juggle multiple audio and subtitle tracks, and don't need to burn in subtitles. That makes MKV a more powerful, flexible format than MP4 — albeit one that iTunes can't play. If you're crunched for disk space, MKV files also tend to be slightly smaller than equivalent MP4s.

Step 4: To HEVC, or not to HEVC?

Before you continue, decide how you'll compress your videos: 'old, faster, and pretty good,' or 'new, slower, and even better.'

Tried-and-true H.264 converts relatively quickly, and it can squeeze a high-def Blu-ray file onto a DVD's worth of space or less. H.265 or HEVC, the new hotness baked into macOS High Sierra and iOS 11, makes files even smaller — but requires hefty processing power to crunch the necessary numbers.

In my tests, both H.264 and HEVC looked remarkably close to the original, even on a big TV screen. And HEVC held up no matter what I threw at it, from animated movies to black-and-white classics to films with lots of fast action and bright colors.

If you don't have a Mac made from 2017 onward, stick with H.264. Older Macs can play HEVC files just fine, but only the newest models have chips fast enough to encode HEVC decently.

With Handbrake 1.2.0 and later, users of post-2017 Macs can take full advantage of Apple's VideoToolbox technology to dramatically speed up HEVC encoding .. but there's a slight catch. (Big thanks to transcoding wizardDon Melton for his expertise on this next part.)

Blu Ray Ripper Software

To make a very, very long story short, you have two options when compressing a video with H.264 or HEVC. Constant quality asks you how close to the original, uncompressed file you want the compressed version to look. Then it adjusts how much compression it applies scene-by-scene to hit that quality mark. This results in smaller final file sizes - but while it looked pretty good to my untrained eye, the resulting picture quality might not match that of your second option.

Average bitrate keeps the amount of compression within a much smaller range, hovering around a target you set. Basically, the higher the bitrate, the better your video looks, and the bigger the resulting file is. At the same bitrate and file size, HEVC looks better than H.264. At the same general quality, HEVC produces smaller files than H.264.

Handbrake can only do constant quality encoding in software. If you want the smallest possible file size with HEVC, you'll have to wait a looooong time, even with a fast new Mac. VideoToolbox's hardware-accelerated compression is a whole lot faster, ranging from 'impressively' for HEVC to 'insanely' for H.264, but it can only use average bitrate. (As I write this, it's not clear whether that limitation comes from the chips themselves, or the software talking to them.)

Here's a quick comparison of approximate file sizes using different compression methods, plus encode times relative to the actual length of the original clip. Remember, those speeds will vary based on your own hardware – I used a 2017 5K iMac – but the numbers below can give you a rough idea of what to expect:

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  • Original: 1.25GB

  • H.264, software encoding: 1x real time, 239.5MB

  • HEVC, software encoding: 1.6x real time, 50.3MB (.. no, that's not a typo. But on average, constant-quality HEVC runs about 35% smaller than equivalent H.264.)

  • H.264, VideoToolbox, 6000kbps: 0.2x real time, 286.8 MB

  • HEVC, VideoToolbox, 4000kbps: 0.4x real time, 205.6 MB

Good news for folks with older hardware: You can't use VideoToolbox for HEVC, but you can use it for H.264. Even on an aging 2012 Mac mini, I still got compression speeds between 0.25x and 0.33x real time. And you'll still get great-looking results, and much smaller files, with H.264 compression.

Step 5: Compress for success

Close MakeMKV, fire up Handbrake, and open the MKV file you just created. In the Presets pulldown menu, select General > Fast 1080p 30 or Very Fast 1080p 30 (to make an MP4 file), or Matroska > H.264 MKV 1080p 30 or H.265 MKV 1080p 30 (to create an MKV).

In the main window, go to the Video tab. If you want to use VideoToolbox with either H.264 or HEVC, make sure you select that option from the list of encoders, then set your desired bitrate. 6000kbps gets good results for H.264. For HEVC, 4000kbps gets perfectly good results at a smaller file size, while 6000kbps will get you a picture closer to that of the original, with a file size roughly one-third larger.

If you're using software encoding, you can tinker with Handbrake's quality presets -- 17 for H.264, 22 for HEVC -- but they served me well enough. Smaller numbers mean less compression, higher quality, and bigger file sizes, and vice versa.

Under the Audio tab, click the Tracks dropdown menu, then select Add All Tracks. Track 0 will be the default; you can specify a certain track for that spot using the pulldown menus in the list of tracks.

Follow the same steps in the Subtitles tab. If you're making an MP4, you can only pick one track, and it'll be burned into the video. For an MKV, set Track 0 to 'Foreign Audio Search,' and leave 'Forced Only' and 'Burned In' checked. If your movie has any scenes where non-English dialogue gets subtitled, this should ensure those subtitles show up – though for whatever reason, Handbrake's not always great at doing this. If you always want a subtitle track to automatically appear when you're watching a film – say, if it's a foreign language – check 'Default' next to that track.

Under 'Save As,' make sure the resulting file has the name you want. Even if you'll be storing your movies on an external hard drive, I recommend creating the compressed files on your local drive. Handbrake will work much faster, even when you factor in the time needed to copy them over later.

Some TV shows on Blu-ray cram all their episodes into a single title, divvied up into chapters. Luckily, Handbrake lets you specify beginning and ending chapters for a compressed video.

Open the original MKV file in VLC to see where each episode begins and ends. Then specify those chapters, give each episode the correct file name, and click HandBrake's 'Add to Queue' button. When you're done, just start the queue, and HandBrake will process all the waiting files.

This trick also works if you've got multiple different MKV files lying around waiting to be compressed. Open a source, add audio and subtitle tracks, name the file, add to queue, and repeat with the next source.

Step 6: Popcorn, anyone?

To drop your MP4 movies into iTunes, just drag them into the Movies window alongside your other titles. Right-click the file and select 'Movie Info' to add your own title, synopsis, and other metadata. Under the 'Options' tab, change the media from 'Home Video' to 'Movies.' In the 'Artwork' tab, you can paste in poster art.

In Plex, adding MP4 or MKV movies is as simple as dropping them into whatever Movies folder you've specified on your server. You can turn on or off your desired audio or subtitle tracks from each movie's page in Plex, or from Playback Options (the icon that looks like little slider bars) while watching the movie.

Note that if your movie has the same title as other films — as Kenneth Branagh's 1993 Much Ado About Nothing did for me — Plex may pull in metadata from the wrong movie. To fix this, move the offending file out of your Plex Movies folder. Add the year it was made, in parentheses, to the end of its name — Much Ado About Nothing (1993).mkv, for instance. Then drop it back in where Plex can find it, and watch the correct metadata roll in.

One more fun Plex tip: If you don't like the poster art Plex provides, change it! From a movie's info page, click the pencil icon in the upper right to edit metadata. Select Poster in the resulting window, and a gallery of different options will appear.

It was the pictures that got small

Don't let your favorite hi-def movies waste away in little blue mausoleums. Ripping your Blu-rays — again, emphasis on your Blu-rays — will give you a great-looking, relatively compact library of beloved flicks that you can watch even when you're far from your TV.

Got any tips, tricks, or best practices I've missed? Share your ripping recommendations in the comments below.

Updated December 2018: Updated with new information about Handbrake's latest update.

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A Blu-ray Ripper is a software application which is used to rip the content of a copyrighted or protected Blu-ray onto a hard disk, or rip it to any video formats. Here in this article we are going to discuss about the top 5 Blu-ray ripper software for Mac available on the market. Have a look at together.

There are many reasons to use a Blu-ray ripper software to pull the content of a copyrighted or protected Blu-ray onto a hard drive, or rip it to any digital video formats for playing on more portable devices or media players. So, if you've lots of Blu-rays waiting to be ripped on your Mac, we've got 5 best free and paid Blu-ray ripper software and apps for macOS in 2020 to help you digitize your Blu-ray collection.

What makes for good Blu-ray Ripper software

There are lots of free and paid tools out there that allow you to rip and convert Blu-rays, as well as edit the resulting files, but they vary greatly in terms of performance, features, and price. When deciding on the best Blu-ray rippers for Mac, we looked for tools that met most of the following criteria.

• Intuitive and easy for beginners to handle
• Large selection of output formats and conversion choices
• High-quality video output and a manageable size
• Advanced customization tools
• Reasonably priced
• Timely customer service (help and support)

The 5 Best Blu-ray Rippers for Mac in 2020

Here's our list of the best Blu-ray rippers for Mac:

1. LosslessCopy - Best Blu-ray Ripper for Mac overall

Works on: Mac, Windows Region Free: Yes Blu-ray Ripping: Yes DVD Ripping: Yes

LosslessCopy is a lightweight tool by EaseFab studio, and it tops our list of the best Blu-ray rippers for MacOS. You can download a free trial version of this software, but you'll have to pay an annual subscription fee to use it for ripping Blu-ray or DVD discs longer than three minutes.

Having to pay for Blu-ray ripping software isn't all bad though. It means you don't have to contend with in-app ads and upsells, and you get advanced features you wouldn't find in free Blu-ray rippers. Plus, LosslessCopy's price tag is fairly low, and we definitely think it's worth it.

Although LosslessCopy is lightweight, it doesn't hold back on performance. It can read all kinds of Blu-ray and DVD sources: protected and unprotected Blu-ray Disc, BDMV folder, BD ISO, physical DVD, VIDEO_TS folder, DVD ISO and IFO file. As a professional and powerful all-in-one Blu-ray/DVD disc handling tool, LosslessCopy integrates DVD/Blu-ray ripping, conversion, and backup in one place. Using it is as simple as loading the disk, selecting the output folder, and pressing the big, blue 'Convert' button. The straightforward navigation makes it suitable for beginners and advanced users.

There really isn't much more to it, LosslessCopy is one of the best Blu-ray ripping programs on Mac for this reason. It has the ability of backing up Blu-ray/DVD collection to multi-track MKV which can store multiple video/audio tracks with all meta-information and chapters. And it can also rip BD/DVD movies to MP4 and MOV with multiple audio streams. This is an unique feature that most Mac Blu-ray ripper softwares that don't provide.

Besides the multi-track outputs, LosslessCopy also has the avility to convert Blu-rays into virtually any popular video and audio format such as H.265, H.264, MP4, MOV, MKV and AVI. If you don't know what settings to use, not to worry, as there are more than 200 pre-configured device profiles to choose from. Additional tools include split, trim, slip, merge, adding audio and subtitles, and snapshot, among others.

What's more, LosslessCopy provides two methods to help your backup your Blu-ray discs. Using the 'Full Disc Copy' feature, you can copy Blu-ray/DVD's original file structure to BDMV/Video_TS folder with all subs tracks, audio streams and chapter information included. Besides, you can also save 100% intact M2TS main movie from your Blu-ray Disc without any quality loss to get perfect backup from BD 50 to BD 50 or BD 25 to BD 25.

With LosslessCopy, you will instantly experience the latest and most advanced technologies, including but not limited to Passthrough, HEVC, 4K, etc., and it will always keep updating to support the newest releases and devices. LosslessCopy comes with tutorials, FAQs and a knowledgebase on its official website. And EaseFab provides timely and excellent customer support service, including lifetime free upgrade of product and technical support.

Price: You can try out LosslessCopy for free, but you can only convert 3 minutes worth of a Blu-ray movie at a time. The use the full version on one Mac for one year, you'll pay $27.57.

Pros:

+ Very fast rips
+ Loads of profiles besides lossless MKV output
+ Easy-to-use application
+ No annoying ads
+ Contains an editor
+ Excellent customer service

Cons:

- Although the interface is easy to understant, it need to be improved.

2. MakeMKV

Works on: Windows, Mac, Linux Region free: Yes Blu-ray ripping: Yes DVD Ripping: Yes

If you have no idea which program you should employ to rip episodes from a Blu-ray on Mac, the MakeMKV will do the job brilliantly. It's a cross-platform and free Mac Blu-ray ripping application that lets you remove the protection on Blu-ray & DVD and convert contents to a nice big MKV file, without compromising the video quality. But it won't feature with many video or audio option for tweaking the quality of the resulting MKV file. One caveat is that you need to ensure there's enough free storage space on the hard drive to save the ripped file. If you want to compress ripped files to make room on your HDD, you should combine it with Handbrake, to get this functionality.

Blu Ray Ripping Software Free

Price: At the time of writing, MakeMKV is in beta and is free. It gets regular updates, and displays a rather blunt message telling you to download the new version before quitting - you can't use an outdated version of the app unless you've paid for a registration key. Once the beta is over, the developers say the DVD ripping functionality will remain free, with a charge of just over $55 to continue using the program's Blu-ray ripping capabilities

Pros:

+ Simple to use
+ Rips Blu-rays
+ FREE for a 30-days limitation in Blu-ray ripping

Cons:

- Lack of personalization in editing and clipping.
- Overall process is slow
- Lacks compression

3. Handbrake

Works on: Windows, Mac, Linux Region free: Yes Blu-ray ripping: Yes but for unprotected discs DVD Ripping: Yes

Handbrake is a powerful and open source video transcoding application. You can rip some protected DVDs using Handbrake with a decoder called libdvdcss. And it can also rip unprotected Blu-ray discs and convert them into videos of any format working on your mobile phones, PCs, browsers and game console. While it is not designed with a superficial interface and not specified to newbies, it really caters to those who want to dig into making their own customized videos from Blu-ray.

Pros:

+ Support a large number of output formats.
+ Full features to use for advanced computer users.
+ Support batch conversion and chapter markers.

Cons:

Best Blu Ray Ripping Software For Mac

Mac

- Unable to rip copyrighted Blu-ray discs.
- Sophisticated for newbies in many detailed parts.

4. Leawo Blu-ray Ripper

Works on: Windows, Mac Region free: Yes Blu-ray ripping: Yes DVD Ripping: No

Like the above professional Mac Blu-ray ripping solutions, Leawo Blu-ray Ripper has the same full ripping features to copy Blu-ray disc or the Blu-ray folders into any video formats with no quality loss. Powered by its excellent decryption technology, it easily removes common Blu-ray copy protections and region codes that block the copy of the disc. Multiple additional ripping functions are easy in touch, including subtitle and audio tracks selecting, 2D to 3D converting and practical video editing. It is suitable for Windows users while providing a counterpart for Mac users.

Price: To use the full version on one Mac for one year, you'll pay $44.95 and for lifetime licence, you'll pay $99.95 which is much more expensive than other Mac Blu-ray ripping tools on the market.

Pros:

+ Easy to use in a straightforward program interface.
+ Powerful in removing Blu-ray copy protection: AACS, BD+ and the latest MKB, and ripping CSS-DVD discs easily.
+ Support queuing up ripping lists and load multiple Blu-ray movies at a time.

Cons:

- Unable to recognize ISO file (Windows version) or forced subtitles (if there is).
- Lower conversion speed compared with other professional Blu-ray rippers.
- No backup option for keeping original movie quality.

5. VLC

Works on: Windows, Mac, Linux Region free: Yes Blu-ray ripping: Yes DVD Ripping: Yes

While there are loads of video playback apps, VLC remains one of the most popular and feature-rich media players. VLC Player rightfully earned its reputation for being able to play virtually any video format you want to watch. Although it’s commonly considered the go-to for media playback, you can also use VLC to rip a Blu-ray or a DVD.

Choose what you want to be converted, select No disc menus if you don’t want menus, point VLC to the disc drive on your computer, then click Convert/Save. Ripping can take quite some time, though. Some users have reported it taking up to two hours.

In fact, not all the Blu-ray discs are supported. VlC can only deal with discs which its library has the corresponding AACS keys. However, for legal reasons, AACS and BD+ DRM libraries and keys still are not shipped. Besides, VLC doesn't have as many controls for choosing exactly the right format or adjusting the quality of your rip to save storage space.

Blu Ray Copy Software

Conclusion of The Best Tools for Ripping Blu-rays on Mac

We've evaluated the best five feature-packed Mac Blu-ray ripping program based on functionalities and features that each software owns. Best mac 2d cad software. Of course, which Blu-ray ripper utility you employ to rip and convert your Blu-ray/ DVD movies on Mac is best determined by your actual needs, the platform of your machine and basically your budget. With these factors in mind, you should get the suitable ripper as well as converter in hand.

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