MacX DVD Ripper Pro: faster, more features, and maybe free.

Recently I did a review of the Free Edition of MacX DVD Ripper, and alluded to the fact I would give the Pro version (which is available for both Windows and Mac) a looksee later.  Well, later is here.

The nice people over at MacX sent me a license code to take this puppy out for a spin, and speaking of those nice people, they also sent me an additional 40 licenses to give away  FREE.  20 Mac licenses AND 20 Windows licenses.  I’ll explain more about that at the end of the post.

If you wanna see a little more indepth info about the program, check out the developers website at http://www.macxdvd.com/mac-dvd-ripper-pro/, I won’t bother regurgitating the specs and features since they do a pretty thorough job of it.

I’m referring to the Mac version, since its what i use whenever possible, but there is also a Windows version that looks pretty much the same and is just as feature packed.  It is available as a digital download, as are so many programs nowadays, and its a small one weighing in at just over 22 meg which is only a little bit larger than the free edition version, but you get a ton more features.  Basically, you get the added ability to easily rip to iPod, iPhone or iPad using the presets in the tabs, or create a copy of your DVD, or, and this is the part I like best, rip to AVI.  Yeah, I know some of you are thinking AVI is old and outdated, but its my preferred format and the one i have the least number of problems with when it comes to moving the files around from device to device.

The list of features as i mentioned is pretty impressive.  I’m not sure how they can advertise getting rid of the copy protection, but its in there. From their website…

MacX DVD Ripper Pro Main Features:

• Backup protected DVD movies by removing Disney DVD protection, CSS, ARccOS, RCE.
• Support rip DVD to 13+ different formats , including H264, FLV, MP4, MOV, AVI, MP3 and so on.
• Rip and Transfer DVD to iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad, iPod, Apple TV, iTunes, PSP, YouTube, etc.
• Blazing fast DVD ripping solution offers up to 8x real time converting speed on Mac OS.
• Backup DVD to single MPEG-2 file with original Video and 5.1-channles AC3/DTS Dolby Audio.

One other thing is the ability to check for newer versions, this isn’t an option in the free version.  The interface looks pretty much the same as the Free Edition, but with a number of extra buttons.

the Pro edition settings

I noticed the mention of speed on the website so I wanted to test that out as compared to the Free Edition, just to see if it is in fact faster.  I used the same parameters as with the Free edition and even the same movie, but didn’t notice much speed increase with the Pro version. Still took 18 mins to rip a 96 min movie, as opposed to the 21mins for the free version. Ripping to avi was 23 mins.  Its not much faster than the Free version, but that doesn’t make either one slow by any means.

All in all, the added features are quite handy and go a long way to making ripping DVDs regardless of copy protection to just about any device or format easy, and for some, Free.

So how do you get your hands on one of the Free licenses?  Thats easy.  Just email me your name and email address and which version (Mac or Windows) you want (use the Contact TCG tab at the top of any page), or send me a message on Twitter (use the bird at the top of the sidebar to connect with me) with that info, and i’ll put you in the proverbial hat that the recipients of the licenses will be drawn from.

One caveat, the licenses must be activated before the end of the month (March) so i’ll be drawing the names up to the 18th of March and alerting the lucky recipients via email.  Good luck, and happy ripping.

tcg