Since the invention of the video camera, the movie industry has been continuously growing. Today's technology allows us to view high quality movies on our computer in different formats but mostly on DVDs and Blu-ray disks, bringing crystal clear images to our screen. But this kind of storage media deteriorates in time. A convenient way to save your media files is to copy them on your computer.

WinX DVD Ripper is a handy tool that allows you to rip your DVDs with the push of a button. It has a very intuitive interface that helps you convert your DVD movies into more popular video formats in no time. The application is freeware, meaning that you can use it as long as you want without any restriction or fee.

With WinX DVD Ripper, you can easily rip your DVDs into more popular video formats including: AVI, MPEG, MP4, WMV, MOV, FLV and even extract the audio as MP3 from the selected media file.

The main window of WinX DVD Ripper introduces the three steps you need to follow in order to rip your DVDs. Choose the DVD Disc, select the type of format you want for the output video and click the Start button in order to start the conversion process.

After you load your DVD, the application will display the video files found and permits you to select the ones you want to rip. You can quickly select / unselect all or a particular file just by right clicking it.

If you want to rip only a part of a video, WinX DVD Ripper enables you to do just that by providing the right tools. You can either enter the time for the start and finish of your video in the Output Settings section of the main window or drag by the ends of the seekbar in the preview window. If you want to save your video in a different location than the default one, you can do that by changing the Output Folder to suit your needs.

From the preview window, you can take a snapshot of the current position by pressing the Snapshot button and save it as a JPG or BMP on your computer.

The lower part of the main window is the place where you can choose the output format and change the audio and video settings for every format in particular. For the Audio Settings, WinX DVD Ripper lets you change the audio format, quality, sample rate, audio channel and even increase or decrease the volume of your video.

The Video Settings on the other end permits you to adjust the video quality, frame rate, resolution, format (DivX or XviD) and output profile (original size and keep aspect ratio, custom size and keep aspect ratio or custom size with custom aspect ratio). You can enable the use of the High Quality engine, but during our tests, we did not notice any change in quality or duration of the ripping process.

The ripping is quite fast and, during the process, the application shows detailed info like start and stop time of the video, duration of the ripping process, elapsed time, number of frames per second and the current frame that is being processed. The application will also display a progress bar and the percentage of the video file being ripped.

After the ripping process ends, users will have the possibility to choose whether to automatically shut down the computer or open the output folder for a quick access to your files. You can always stop the conversion process by pressing the Stop button from the conversion details window; however, you cannot restart it from the position you stopped, having to restart the process from the beginning.

The quality of the output video depends on that of the input file. If the input file has great quality, the output files will be more qualitative. As for the audio extraction process, the output result is very good (you can adjust the quality up to 320kbps) and the grabbing is done more quickly than for video conversion.

WinX DVD Ripper is fast, reliable, does a great job ripping DVDs but puts some stress on your CPU during the conversion process (sometimes reaching 70% on average computers - Athlon 64 5400+ with 2 GB RAM).

The Good

The application lets you rip your DVDs in an easy and fast way, converting them to popular formats like AVI, MPEG, MP4, WMV, MOV, FLV and even extracts the audio from the source files and saves it as MP3.

It gives you the possibility to convert only a portion of the desired video by adjusting the start and end time, and also lets you adjust the conversion settings for a better control over the process.

The Bad

The only bad thing we found was the name of the output files, WinX DVD Ripper changing it to a number and not preserving the original name or offer a possibility to enter a name for them.

The Truth

WinX DVD Ripper is a handy freeware tool that allows you to rip your DVDs fast and without too much effort. Apart from the naming of the output files, it does a great job and offers even experienced users the tools to alter various parameters for a better result.

Here are some snapshots of the application in action: