Movie buffs and downright digital junkies know the importance of backups. For if one hard drive fails, a backup can mean the difference between endless tears and a simple swap of a drive, and continuing of your life. While media pundits and rights holders continually fight against consumers and deem personal backups as some how illegal, it’s nice knowing that there are still ways to get the job done, and keep your content safe. I’ve used plenty of DVD ripping software in the past, though on my new Windows 7 rig, I haven’t had too much exposure to more updated titles. Thankfully, Digiarty was kind enough to drop a line and offer a review sample of WinX DVD Ripper Platinum. After ripping a solid three dozen movies over the last couple of hours, what do I think? Jump in to find out…
WinX DVD Ripper Platinum (from here on out, WXP) isn’t the most beautiful Windows DVD ripping software I’ve seen. Then again, “beauty isn’t exactly one of Windows’ strong suits. But I digress. The real meat of this story is in the function. What WXP lacks in beauty it more than makes up for in function. When you first open the app, you’re greeted with a screen ripe with options. Admittingly, to more novice computer users, WXP’s menu can look a bit daunting. There’s tabs all over the place. If there’s one place that stands out as needing obvious improvement, this is it. At the same time, you don’t really have to drill down into any menu to get from start to finish. Simply select the tab that has the video format you’d like to copy your DVD to, select the DVD source and output destinations, and tweak a few of the encoding/copy settings and you’re done.
On my system, I’m rockin’ an overclocked Core i7 940 humming along at 4.1GHz. So when setting WXP to utilize all 4 cores, entire 1:1 DVD rips were taking me no more than 4-6 minutes on average (depending on whatever else I was doing in the background). The program itself is rather efficient even at high system resource settings. I was able to rip Avatar in its entirety in a little over 20 minutes (a two hour and forty-one minute long movie) while also playing Dirt 2 in Eyefinity mode at 6,144 x 1,152 without so much as a stutter anywhere in the game. Mind you, the CrossfireX (and heavily overclocked) ATI 5850′s do more of the games heavy lifting, but Dirt 2 also taps into the proc pretty hard too.
Over the course of three dozen movies, I only had one movie that after three attempts kept failing at a certain point. A quick check of the disc didn’t return any scratches or blemishes, so I checked the “Safe Mode” box. Sure enough, it allowed the rip to complete, but at the expense of speed. What would have taken roughly five and a half minutes in normal mode took a touch over ten in Safe Mode. But in the end, I had a working copy so it was well worth it.
Looks aside, WinX DVD Ripper Platinum is a great value at $29.99. When backing up large collections of movies, having the speed and options at your finger tips that WXP provides is a monumental help. Sure, I could go grab a few freebie apps. But they don’t offer the robust set of video formats or speed. Everything from your older standard 320 x 240 mp3 player/phone format to straight iPhone-rips to 1:1 perfect DVD rips, WinX DVD Ripper Ultimate has a format and option just for you. For me, that alone is worth the $30 bucks. Don’t take my word for it though. Digiarty was kind enough to give me 20 free copies of WinX DVD Ripper Platinum for Gadgetsteria readers. All you’ve got to do is drop a line below and you’re entered. Be sure to either leave an email address below or email me directly at: [email protected] First 20 to comment get a free copy….
What are you waiting for?! Get to it!!
**Mac Users:
Don’t worry. There’s plenty of fun to be had on your side of the fence too. From now until July 14th, Digitary is giving away WinX DVD Ripper for Mac completely FREE! In order to pick up your free copy, point your browser to: http://www.winxdvd.com/dvd-ripper-for-mac/.
