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How to rip DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-ray with AnyDVD

Okay, since I know a lot of people visiting this blog are completely new to backing up their media, I thought I would take a couple of minutes to sit down and talk about one of the easier ripping programs to use.

That program is AnyDVD.

Now, it’s not free. It’s about €79.00 or $105.00 for a 2 year subscription (yeah, I know, expensive huh?), but that varies as they have sales all the time. However, for something that is simple, easy to use, and readily updated, it’s a decent deal.

AnyDVD adds a sort of decryption layer to your operating system. What this means is that when you place a disk into your disk drive, AnyDVD will “intercept” the disk, scan it, remove all the protections it can find/handle, and present a “clean” disk to the operating system.

This then means that you can completely drag and drop the files from the disk onto your desktop and you have fully decrypted files just sitting there in your folder for you. Well almost. Sometimes there comes a time when you actually need to perform a full on rip, and for that you need to use the “Rip to hard disk” option of AnyDVD.

Here is how you do it, and for those of you who like screencasts, click here.

1)

First, place the disk into your disk drive. Make sure that AnyDVD is actually running. You will see a small window appear like this:

anydvd_disc_loading

2)

After it has finished scanning your disk, the bubble will fade away. You can check to make sure that the disk is actually decrypted by hovering your mouse over the fox icon. You will see something like this:

anydvd_disc_loaded

Note: The “On: 1″ part is telling you that you have 1 disk that is ready and decrypted sitting in your drive.

3)

Next, right click on the fox icon. You will see a menu like the one below. Click on the “Rip Video DVD to Hard Disk” option.

anydvd_rip_selection

4)

Once you have clicked the “Rip Video DVD to Hard Disk” option, you will be presented will a small, simple dialog box. Select your output directory by clicking on the folder icon like so:

anydvd_dir_selection5)

You will be presented with another dialog box. Use it to navigate to your desired folder.

anydvd_dir_selection_expanded2

6)

Next, click the “Copy DVD” button.

anydvd_copy_button

7)

The rip begins!! You can abort at any time if you so desire, and at the end of the progress bar, you should have a full fledged, working copy of your disk waiting on your hard drive.

anydvd_copy_go

That’s it! Simple huh?

AnyDVD really is an excellent program for what it does. It doesn’t have a lot of feature bloat, and can be incredibly fast.

Related posts:

  1. AnyDVD HD Settings Explained
  2. Using AnyDVD through DVD Decrypter
  3. Burn Single Layer Video DVD’s With IMGBurn


  1. Victor on Tuesday 5, 2009

    What about the Settings option?

  2. Adub on Tuesday 5, 2009

    Well, the point of this post was to act as a sort of “Quick Start”. You can actually leave the settings of AnyDVD at default and everything should work fine.

    Do you guys want me to go into depth about the different settings of AnyDVD?

    Edit: Well, I have! I made an in-depth explanation of AnyDVD HD’s settings, and here it is!

  3. Phyute on Monday 13, 2009

    Wow, that was easy !!! My question now is, how do I play it back with my WinDvd8 ???
    Thanks in advance.

  4. Adub on Wednesday 22, 2009

    There should be a ‘Open DVD from Hard Disk’ option in WinDVD. Look near the area that you would normally use to select a movie.

  5. david on Tuesday 17, 2009

    any dvd keeps quiting on me when i try ripping the 5th element.
    it gets to about 1% then stops, and i dont know why

  6. Adub on Tuesday 17, 2009

    Make sure that you are using the latest version. Also, a clean install may be necessary if you continue to encounter problems. Check the quality of the disk as well. You want to look for smudges, scratches, etc…

  7. david on Wednesday 18, 2009

    ok so ive done all of that and tried ripping it again and i got the erroe device not ready.
    any ideas

  8. Devin on Tuesday 22, 2009

    Why would I want to use this instead of Ripit4me and DVD Decryptor? Just curious if there was any advantage to using this program. I’ve only had a few DVD’s that it couldnt’ rip, namely Disney DVD’s.

  9. Adub on Tuesday 22, 2009

    Pretty much for the reason you mentioned. Newer DVDs have forms of protection that DVD Decrypter can’t handle. AnyDVD can handle these and more. Plus the HD edition offers Bluray support. And there service updates are extremely fast. So in short, you get what you pay for. Yes, DVD Decrypter is great, and it does work on most DVDs, but not all. This is where AnyDVD comes in.

  10. Gary on Sunday 27, 2009

    I’m trying to burn an iso file in ImgBurn… Write mode in ImgBurn. But it won’t work, I get the “Device not ready (Medium not present) What should I do to fix this? Any help would be very appreciated.

  11. Adub on Sunday 27, 2009

    Make sure that you have a disk in your destination drive and that the drive is properly selected in the destination drop down menu.

  12. Ron on Sunday 27, 2009

    I have ripped movies with AnyDVD to my hard disk that I would like to burn into a BD-R disc. What type of burning software should be used? I would like is a step-by-step instruction on how to achieve my purpose. Thanks in advance for your Advice.

  13. Adub on Sunday 27, 2009

    I suggest you look at my Bluray Backup post. If your main movie is small enough, you can use BD Rebuilder to rebuild a Blu-ray structure out of your original rip, and then use IMGBurn to burn the resulting files.

    Since I don’t have a Blu-ray burner myself yet, I can’t provide a fully accurate guide to burning a Blu-ray disk. However, the author of IMGBurn (which is free by the way) had put together his own guide here.

    Let me know if you need more help!

  14. Sri on Monday 11, 2010

    I install anydvd; after windows reboot, it scans all my 750GB hard disc. It takes hours and then it hangs.. I don’t have control during scanning process, even for opening task manager.. This software is suck.

  15. Adub on Monday 11, 2010

    That is extremely odd, as AnyDVD HD was designed for disk drives, not harddisks. Are you sure that you didn’t install a beta version that is still in testing? I have used AnyDVD for years and not once has it mistaken a harddrive as a disk drive.

  16. Rebecca on Saturday 19, 2010

    I installed AnyDVD and it says that “No DVD drive detected” and then when I open it from the tray the status says, “AnyDVD is disabled for Drive E:!
    TEAC DVD+-RW DVW28SLC A.06″, which is obviously my DVD drive so it won’t work. I’ve restarted my computer several times and even uninstalled and then reinstalled. Any solutions?

  17. Adub on Tuesday 22, 2010

    This is a very strange error, Rebecca. Since your drive isn’t very common, I can only suggest that you check to see if there is an update to your drivers or an update to the drive’s firmware.