14 DAY TRIAL // When going on vacation these days all portable devices of the household get filled to the brim with media to entertain you on the road. Watching movies on the road is by far the most popular activity, especially if there is nothing to see on the window. And in order to reach this point during your journey, some ripping has to be done.
The amount of programs advertising incredible ease of use, straightforward interface and quick file processing when it comes to readying DVDs for a specific platform is incredible. Although there is also a fair share of freebies that can apply for the job, we took the Platinum version of WinX DVD Ripper for a test. Priced at $29.95, the program is billed as one of the easiest DVD ripping solutions on the market. You can test its abilities for free for as long as you want if you comply with the 5-minute conversion restriction.
As soon as the installation is over (it won’t take more than one minute and you won’t bump into unnecessary requests) you will find a straightforward interface, with no bells and whistles on board, just the essential functions. WinX DVD Ripper Platinum automatically detects the DVD in the optical drive and loads contents. It is easy to find your way around since in the upper part there are displayed all the titles available on the inserted media, while in the lower part you get to choose the conversion format (or the portable device) and make the necessary settings for the best output result.
For each of the titles displayed you can adjust output settings such as audio, pick the subtitle to be included in the final result as well as the storage path. There is also the possibility to select only a specific part of the video by specifying the start and end time, if you want to be accurate. The preview window on the left hand side comes in handy in this case as it permits you to view the first and last frame. It would be nice to have more control over trimming in this window with functions like moving through the video frame by frame, or having buttons for pause/play and navigation forward and back.
As far as the ripping capabilities of the software are concerned, WinX DVD Ripper Platinum allows you to save a 1:1 copy of the movie, convert it to AVI, MP4, MPEG, WMV, FLV or to MP3 (lose the video and preserve the sound). Or you can get it ready for devices such as iPod, iPad, iPhone, Apple TV, PSP, mobile phones (3GP), Microsoft’s Zune or Zen devices. To make it an extraordinarily easy process for you, the application comes prepared with sets of profiles for you to choose from according to how good you want the quality of the resulting file to be.
These profiles depend on the device you select and can be adjusted to suit your needs. However, having predefined settings makes the program very appealing, especially for beginner users. This can also have a positive impact for advanced users as they can create and use their own profiles.
Regardless of the output result you choose for the ripping process, you have total control over audio settings (bitrate, sample rate, volume and format in some cases), video settings (bitrate, frame rate and resolution). As advanced settings you have the possibility to pick the number of cores you want to be used during the conversion process, enable deinterlacing and force audio/video synchronization if you notice delay.
All the options have been reduced to minimum so that the conversion turns into a comfortable process for any sort of user. The entire operation will not keep you waiting for too long. If the inserted disc is in good shape and so is the computer, the conversion should be pretty swift. During our tests a 1h41’ long video was ready to play on a PSP device in about 40 minutes. The same disc was used to convert the DVD to AVI format, MPEG and MP4 preserving aspect ratio and selecting a resolution of 720x404. The total duration for these cases was similar to the conversion to PSP format, about 40 minutes. Resources used in the process were not as high as one would imagine, with CPU usage being maintained to a value around 50% and RAM averaging somewhere around 135MB on a 2GHz Core2Duo, 2GB RAM configuration.
The application lets you schedule two actions at the end of the conversion process: shutdown the computer and open the output folder. However, in the case of PSP you are presented with the possibility to upload the result to the console instead of viewing the contents of the storage location. Unfortunately, although WinX DVD Ripper Platinum detects the PSP drive on the system, it fails to place the file in the VIDEO location. So in the end you will have to move it yourself in order to play the clip on the PSP console.
The Good
WinX DVD Ripper Platinum offers a comfortable interface with straightforward functions and preset profiles to carry out DVD ripping operations as easy as possible. It covers the most popular formats and portable devices.
The application completes the conversion pretty fast and with little impact on system resources compared to software of the same kind. You have the possibility to customize conversion profiles.
The Bad A little more control over the preview window would expand the functionality of the application and would also give you the possibility to easier pick the part of the video to be converted.
In our case it did not place the resulting file in the right location so that it can be played on a PSP console. Instead of uploading it to the VIDEO folder the clip was placed in the root folder of the PSP drive.
The Truth DVD ripping is carried out very fast, you have total control over the quality of the resulting file and profiles allow you to easily skip setup procedure. WinX DVD Ripper Platinum offers support for the most popular video formats and portable devices in a straightforward interface.
This article is also available in Spanish: Convierte DVDs con perfiles predeterminados
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