Do you have DVDs that you want to back up or take portable? Of course you do. Well, ripping those DVDs doesn’t have to be a major chore.

In fact, ripping DVDs can be quite easy. If you’re a Linux user, you have a number of excellent options. And you can turn to the command line or go GUI. Going GUI can be a bit easier, especially if you only rip DVD once in a blue moon. With a GUI application, you don’t have to worry about remembering (or forgetting) lengthy command strings.

Presented for your consideration OGMRip. It’s an easy-to-use and efficient GUI application for ripping DVDs. Let’s take a look at how to use it.

Getting Up and Running

You can install OGMRip from sources, or you can download installation packages. Links to both the source files and the installers are available on the software’s download page.

OGMRip also requires a set of libraries and executables. You can find a list here. Chances are you have many (if not all of them) installed on your system. If you’re using a Debian-based Linux distro then your package manager will install the additional libraries and software.

Once you’ve installed OGMRip, look for it in your menu. In Ubuntu, for example, you can find it under Applications -> Sound & Video -> DVD Encoder OGMRip.

And if you’re a die-hard command line warrior, there’s also a command line client called shRip. You can download it here.

Let’s Get Ripping

To start off, just pop a DVD into your computer’s optical drive. Then fire up OGMRip.

Click the Load button, and in the Open DVD Disk window click Load.

It only takes about a second to load a DVD. Once the DVD is loaded, you can go ahead and rip it or select the chapters that you want to rip. That’s useful when, say, you’re ripping a DVD of a TV series and only want to extract certain episodes. To do that, click the checkbox beside the name of the chapter.

Then, click the Extract button. The Options window pops up. You can either click Extract to start the process, or select an output target from the Profile list. The default is Ogg Video, which should be good enough for most purposes. Remember, though, certain formats will take longer to rip than others.

After you click Extract, OGMRip rips your DVD in several steps. First, it extracts the video and audio. This can take 30 minutes or more, depending on the length of the DVD.

Next, OGMRip does a test to see by how much it can compress the video. You can turn off this test by clicking a checkbox in the Options window when you start the ripping process.

Finally, OGMRip encodes the video and saves it to your hard drive. Again, depending on the length of the DVD and the profile that you selected, this can take quite a long time.

Is That All It Can Do?

For those who need more features, OGMRip has them. You can also:

  • Add subtitles from a file to your video
  • Add audio from an external file
  • Crop and scale the video

If you need more information, check the manual.

Extending OGMRip

The out-of-the-box settings for OGMRip are fine for most of your needs. But if you need to, you can easily extend the application using plugins and profiles. Let’s talk about those for a moment.

The plugins for OGMRip enable you to output video to several other formats. Those include AC3, Dirac, and MPEG-1 and MPEG-2. The plugins are distributed as source code, so you’ll need to download and compile the sources if you want to use the plugins.

Profiles, on the other hand, help OGMRip target video for various devices. Have an XBox 360 or an iPhone or an Archos device? Well, by installing a profile you can. To install a profile, download the one you want to use. It’s file with the extension .xml. Then select Edit -> Profiles in OGMRip. In the Edit Profiles window, click Import. Find the file that you downloaded, and then click Open.

Ripping DVDs doesn’t have to be difficult. OGMRip does a good job of making the process as easy and painless as possible.

Photo credit: wax115

Scott is a writer of various things – documentation, articles, essays, and reviews – based in Toronto, Canada. He loves to play with tech, and to write about it too. Scott hasn’t snagged that elusive book contract. Yet.

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