Five Ultimate Freeware Apps for CD/DVD Ripping/Burning/Futzing
Five Ultimate Freeware Apps for CD/DVD Ripping/Burning/Futzing
Posted 03/23/2009 at 9:00am
| by David Murphy
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I just picked up a new netbook the other day. And you know what that netbook had? A lot of things, but "optical drive" wasn't on the list. So there I sat, staring at a stack of CDs all full of my most critical applications, games, and movies. Then I had a brainstorm: Rather than run down to the local electronics store to buy a lame external optical drive, I figured I would convert all of my optical media and slap it onto one of the external hard drives I have sitting around.
To do that, I turned to a suite of applications to rip, burn, encode, convert, and create all sorts of image files. It was a daunting task at first, but it sure beat shelling out for more hardware. Based on my troubles, I've come up with a list of five of the must-have applications for your CD manipulation needs. And these aren't just a list of applications for new netbook enthusiasts. These free apps have a universal appeal for anyone who's ever had to interact with their optical drive at any point. I would assume that this would make up 99% of all computer users--the one percent being anyone who just bought a new netbook without any kind of secondary system in their house. Whoops!
One caveat before I get started. How you use these applications is up to you. I'm not going to tell you how to break copy protection for your games or movies. I'm just going to assume that anything you do with these powerful tools is fully on the up-and-up--like ripping home movies of you as a child, or copying over the contents of. Um. A game. You created yourself. Right-o.
Handbrake
What it does: Why does Handbrake continue to rock? Because it's an all-in-one tool that takes you from DVD ripping to file encoding without forcing you to muck around with external programs, complicated settings, or a treasure trove of codecs. If you've never taken the time and effort to convert ripped DVD files to playable media before... don't bother. Unless you're a complete audio/video snob, Handbrake should be sufficient for all of your needs. The only downfall? Well, if your movies happen to have some kind of copy protection, you'll need a little more elbow grease before you can commence the conversion.
Download it here!
DVDFab HD
What it does: Okay. We've long talked about how AnyDVD is the end-all be-all of decryption mechanisms for DVDs and Blu-ray titles. No questions about that; it's an awesome program. It also costs you money. If you want to take a cheaper, possibly less functional route, then give DVDFab HD a try. This application (ideally) strips the copy protection out of your DVD, HD-DVD, and Blu-ray titles before ripping the contents of the CD right to your hard drive. You can then take that file and convert it to your heart's content. Of course, we're not sure why you put copy protection on your home movies to begin with, but, well, there it is.
Download it here!
Free ISO Creator
What it does: The name is pretty self-explanatory, but we'll throw out a description anyway. If you have a ton of files you're looking to smash onto a CD or DVD, then Free ISO Creator is your ticket. If you're new to the CD- or DVD-creation game, here's what this means. An ISO file is a giant archive of data that CD burning applications use to read and write a disc. When you create an ISO file, it's like you're mashing all of the files--and the directory structure--into a single file. You can normally do this through the CD burning program itself. This is just an easier way to create archives you know you'll always want to keep on-hand and possibly even use to make multiple discs. Maybe you want to create an Ultimate Application CD of your very own, or make copies of your high school photography album for all of your friends. Create an ISO once; burn it forever. And no, we did not steal that line from any infomercials.
Download it here:
ImgBurn
What it does: Once you've finished creating your ISO file--or assuming that you have a wide variety of burnable disc images on-hand--you'll want to turn to ImgBurn to pull these files from the digital world into physical reality. This program is a slim, easy-to-use disc burning application that packs a lot of functionality under its small roof. Best of all, it supports video disc burning as well. It doesn't hog your system resources or install 35 other programs like other applications we've use. That, plus its price, makes ImgBurn one of the must-have PC applications, period.
Download it here!
QuickPar
What it does: It's not directly tied to the disc-creation process, but QuickPar can be an integral part of protecting the contents of your media from age-based corruption. Here's how it works. When you want to burn files to a CD or DVD, calculate how much space that's going to take up and use QuickPar to generate parity files that fill the rest of the free space. A parity file verifies and, in some cases, can help you recover the information from a file or group of files. If you scratch or otherwise screw up your disc, you can try to dump the disc's readable contents to your hard drive. If you're in luck, you'll catch enough parity files to be able to recreate the contents of your original files. Lifehacker has the complete how-to if you're interested. We recommend you check it out, as there's nothing more frustrating than losing your critical data to a scratch-filled disc.
Download it here!
More like this
junian116
July 21, 2011 at 1:23am
Handbrake is always the best one in dvd ripping besides copy protection. DVDFab is a pretty nice alternative to costly ANYDVD. when it comes to copy protection, DVDFab can deal with the newest protection without any problem, most importantly, there is a free version out there,cheers.free drm removal drm removal software
Anne12
June 17, 2011 at 11:51pm
What about dvd flick, it's also a free dvd burning software drm removal
windbellring
July 12, 2011 at 4:11am
Handbrake is a little bit complicated for green hands. I'd prefer some apps which is easy to use.
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DVD
February 15, 2011 at 11:58pm
DVDFab is a cool software with all-in-one package for copying Blu-ray, [url=http://www.easydvdburning.com]DVD[/url] and converting video files.
bumfguy
December 16, 2010 at 9:46pm
Supplementary free dvd ripper:
- DVD43
- DVDshrink
- Winx free dvd ripper
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greentea010
November 24, 2010 at 12:01am
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Isaiah7300
October 11, 2009 at 6:15pm
I looked at downloading dvdfab, and in the Licence Agreement, it said you were only allowed a "30 day trial period" of the product before you had to purchase a key. How is that free? (or was this article written before it went Pay-2-Play?) OR is the freeware that they're referring to the 30-day trial (i don't wanna look like an idiot, so I posted all of the options i could think of... #X^d)
Also, i'd like to add that sometimes i read peoples signature's thinking it's still part of the post. I bet I'm like the only person that does that. #8^D
theblur05
November 16, 2009 at 11:23pm
there is the free rip to hard disk feature mixed with other 30-day trial functionalities.
check out this link on their website forums
EliC
September 08, 2009 at 9:46am
I would recommend ICE ECC over QuickPar.
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alan1476
April 11, 2009 at 4:52pm
Software Editor and Moderator @ cdfreaks.com Imgburn is the best DVD Burning software coded today. Besides the fact that it is freeware, ( I would have gladly paid for it, I donated to LUK many times, ) Its just the best. Nothing else comes close.IMO.
junian116
July 21, 2011 at 1:18am
when it comes to copy protection, DVDFab can deal with the newest protection without any problem, most importantly, there is a free version out there,cheers
Techie714
March 24, 2009 at 12:07pm
I love this this site & mag, this is why I come here for great articles like these.
nekollx
March 23, 2009 at 4:47pm
semi related: What's a good program fro mextracting frames from a movie DVD. At my office i get requests for that all time time. My bosses have a DVD movie but for some reason or another need a standalone frame. Ive made do with print screen and photoshop/gimp but their has to be a better way, a MaximumPC way.
tdowg1
March 23, 2009 at 1:14pm
One of the deciding factors for me to use ImgBurn was taht it supported scripting. I've leveraged that functionality for myself when performing multi-disk backups... FULLY AUTOMATED, I dont have to pick and choose files and tell the program to start... do this 20+ times while I am backing up to dvd/cd/bd-r's... and waste all day (and make my arm hurt!).
If you're interested, when you download it, to get more information: give the command line switch: /h or /help to see all it's scripting functionality
dimitdim
March 23, 2009 at 11:07am
Ummm DVD fab suposedly has a virus according to McAfee. If this is true, i dont think it should be recommended...
RedAnt751
March 23, 2009 at 8:09pm
I have been useing DVDFab since Ver.3 (they are up to Ver.5) and it has been one of the best Software purchases I have ever made.I cant stress how good this software is, in the 2 + years I have used it I have never had any problems with viruses or spyware with this product (and there Customer service is second to none).
Marsel
March 24, 2009 at 11:51am
Yeah i agreei've been using it for several years, without any antivirus program, computer is still good as new.
That's Right. YOU GOT PoWNeD! (not)
Proud owner of a Dell Demension E521, Ipod Touch 2g, and a PSP slim.
anonuser
March 23, 2009 at 10:23am
ImgBurn can create ISO, too.
A bit redundant to have two programs that do the same thing.
TheMurph
March 23, 2009 at 10:36am
Okay. What if you're on a netbook, which has no CD drive, and you just want to create image files of some of the contents of your hard drives? Why would you install ImgBurn.
The two programs offer similar functionality for the ISO creation part of the equation, but that's not to say that one should always be used in place of the other. Just givin' you options here. :D
uknowit90
March 23, 2009 at 9:26am
So...
Once the files have been violently ripped from their formerly lovely abode of a CD or DVD, they're just copied onto a thumb drive, plugged into said netbook, and run from it like from a CD (in the case of a an application, like, um... Norton Internet Security...) ??
DerfMcWoowoo
March 23, 2009 at 7:41am
Great article. Great content. Good to hear from the Murph again!
But I have to ask...
What the HELL are you doing with a NETBOOK? Perhaps you got drunk and thought you were buying a really cool laptop...???
I expected so much more from you...
I actually miss hearing you on the podcast. Maybe you can drop by sometime and let us hear your heavily breathing voice again.
Keep up the great work and best of luck with your new career. It's always good to see you drop an article into the mix. Your stuff has always been worth reading.
TheMurph
March 23, 2009 at 9:03am
Wellll... I already have a pretty souped-up laptop, and I kind of wanted something that was less back-breaking for my morning commute. Hence a netbook. That, and I love the battery life -- I can jam my word processor for, what, 6 or more hours? That's a lot better than lugging around a heavy laptop that can barely get to three on a full charge.
I would love to heavily breathe on a podcast guest appearance. You should start an online petition or something. ;)
Thanks for the kudos, by the way. I'll keep bringing you free software as long as there's free software to... bring! That was very Braveheart-y, in hindsight.
Keith E. Whisman
March 23, 2009 at 9:21am
Murph did your netbook come with a NullModem cable so you could connect your netbook to your laptop through the network ports? That would be about the easiest thing to do to transfer files back and forth.
TheMurph
March 23, 2009 at 10:37am
Negative. Wireless only.
And to be honest, the netbook introduction was just a way to tell the story in a better fashion than saying, "oh hey, look, CD burning applications." In a perfect world, I'd just tell everyone to rip their files into ISOs and mount them with Daemon Tools. But that's not for everyone, you know?
Bender2000
March 23, 2009 at 7:18am
Get back to me when you get all those programs onto the 4-8GB SSDs that netbooks come with. And when you try to run some games on them. Or even trying to run h.264 video. Other than the setup, this was an excellent article.
horzo
March 23, 2009 at 7:09am
I'd just buy a cheap external DVD-ROM, too. But if you insist on going this route, you'd need software to actually mount the .iso files, eh? I use Daemon Tools Lite for this.
TheMurph
March 23, 2009 at 9:08am
Bingo. Great piece of software. I would have mentioned it, but I didn't want to double-up (as I've highlighted it pretty recently)
Keith E. Whisman
March 23, 2009 at 6:26am
If your doing this so you'll have an easier and speedier time of it later on in life yeah I would do all this too, But.
But if I had alot of programs on DVD and CD it is infinately faster to purchase a $40dollar external USB DVD/CD Burner and plug it into the Netbook. But as I said if you have alot of time because this will take up alot of your time to do if you hava a lot of software to convert to ISO and Other formats to work be installable from a hard drive.
JAshtonX
March 23, 2009 at 6:23am
Lol Instead of doing all that just share a cd-rom or somthing from another computer. unless you need the cd's on hand at all times.
GFC
March 23, 2009 at 12:24am
Ahhh man.. i was messing with ISO burning applications all day yesterday. >.<
alan1476
April 20, 2009 at 3:12pm
Software Editor and Moderator @ cdfreaks.com This is by far the best burning software application, paid or freeware available on the market today, the author Lightning UK is an extremely talented coder and give his time to better the community. You have nothing to lose, try it, I am sure you will like it.
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