Because of the many streaming services that are currently available, for music, but also for your favorite films and series, CDs and DVDs are actually out of date. If you still have a few, you may be able to rip them. Then you have your music and films digital immediately and you can dispose of your discs. That clears up!
Tip 01: Disk space
Before we get started, it’s important to make sure you have enough disk space. Music doesn’t take up much space, but movies of course do. If you are going to digitize a collection of films, you really need a few hundred GB. We therefore recommend that you use an external hard drive or a nas. The latter is also extra handy because many NAS’s have a built-in media server, so that a smart TV has easy access to all films, series and music files on your NAS.
Tip 02: Illegal?
There is still a lot of uncertainty about whether or not you can make a copy of a CD or DVD for your own use. Fortunately, the rules are pretty clear. Stichting Brein says about this: ‘You can make a copy of music or film (CD or DVD) if it is for no commercial purpose and is exclusively intended for yourself. You are not allowed to make a copy of a computer game or other software, not even for your own use. ‘ It should be noted, however, that if a CD or DVD is protected against copying or ripping (conversion to a digital file), this protection may not be circumvented or disabled, not even for making your own copy. Now the question is of course who will ever find out if you do not share the files, but it is good to know the rules.
If you make a mistake, it can cost you dearly. If you intentionally infringe copyright, it is punishable as a crime. Punishments can be up to 4 years in prison and a fine of 45,000 euros, according to Stichting Brein.
Insert a CD and iTunes will know exactly what to do
Tip 03: Set up iTunes
iTunes may not be the most loved software in the world (to put it mildly), but it is a great program for ripping your music CDs. Before we put the program to work, it is important that we first adjust a number of settings. Launch iTunes, then click at the top of the menu edit and in the drop-down menu on Preferences. In the tab General you will see the option When inserting a CD. Click on the drop-down menu and select Import and eject CD. Normally that is very annoying, but if you want to convert your collection quickly, this is ideal. click on Import settings and decide whether you want your music in aac format (.m4a) or mp3 format. Aac is qualitatively better, but you may be more familiar with MP3. Finally click at Institution in the drop-down menu Adjusted and indicate what sound quality you want. Note, the higher the bit rate, the larger the file. If you have no idea what all this means, you can join Institution also just opt ​​for High quality (128 kbps). click on OK and again OK to apply the settings.
iTunes no longer works for products running macOS Catalina. iTunes will still work on older versions of macOS and Windows computers.
Tip 04: Insert a CD
The nice thing about this setup is that you don’t have to do much other than insert the CD and watch iTunes convert it to a digital file. The great thing about iTunes is that the program has access to a gigantic database, through which album, artist and track names are automatically retrieved, just like the album cover. Now there is a chance that iTunes will not find Father Mouscron’s Hyper the Pipe Hurray, but in that case you can fill in the information yourself. Once the information is loaded, iTunes will immediately begin converting the CD to digital files. A separate file is created for each song. The converted files are stored in the iTunes folder within the Music library on your hard drive.
Tip 05: Library
The fact that it all works so easily is not the only reason why we chose iTunes as our music converting program. While ripping, iTunes also immediately adds the music to your iTunes library, meaning that everything is neatly organized. In the program you will see your library in the left pane, which you can click on Artists, Albums, Numbers, Genres and so on. iTunes has a terrible reputation, but this is what the program is really good at.
Tip 06: Download software
While ripping a CD has always been fairly easy, it was different for DVD for a long time. Still, if you search for DVD ripping software, you will find a lot of junk. The program we recommend is WinX DVD Ripper. We immediately say: this program is not free. We have used several free programs over the years and always run into the same problems: they are buggy, extremely slow, crash every now and then and / or put a logo over your video unless you choose the paid version. WinX DVD Ripper costs 30 euros and that is a huge price if you only want to convert one DVD (in that case a slow program is no problem). However, we go for your entire DVD collection and then good software is simply important. WinX DVD Ripper also easily bypasses most DRM thresholds (which is actually not allowed) and that saves you a lot of hassle. Please note, purchase the product via this url and not via the homepage, otherwise you pay $ 60 instead of $ 30.
Free programs are often buggy, slow, crash or put a logo over your video
Tip 07: Set up software
Just like with iTunes, we will first adjust the settings to make sure that the video file is generated exactly as we want it to be. Launch WinX DVD Ripper and then click at the top Options. You can now specify the language in which you want the audio file ripped from your DVD by default, but don’t worry, you can do this later during the actual ripping. More important here is that you can indicate where exactly you want the file to be saved. This is especially important if you don’t have enough space on your hard drive to rip a DVD first before copying it to your external hard drive or NAS. In that case, you can immediately choose the right location here. In addition, you can indicate whether you want your PC or laptop to be shut down when the ripping is finished. This is interesting, because ripping can take some time. Thanks to this option, you can go to sleep once the ripping has started.
Tip 08: Select profile
Now it is time to put the DVD you want to rip into the DVD player. Unlike iTunes, WinX DVD Ripper will not take any action itself. When you have inserted the DVD, click the button at the top left Disc. Then you indicate how you want to design the file. If you would like to rip the films to watch on your smartphone, you can indicate this. The file will then be smaller (but the quality will also be slightly less). We go for it MP4 Video, because we can then decide for ourselves on which device we watch the video and the maximum quality is kept. You can then also indicate exactly how high you want the quality to be with the profile you choose using a slider. The higher the quality, the longer the software will take. Once you have made your choice, click on OK.
Tip 09: Select tracks
What’s important to know is that a DVD contains a lot more than just the movie you’re watching. The front pieces, the bloopers, and all the other bonus material are all separate tracks on a DVD, just like songs are tracks on a CD. It is of course important that you choose the track of the movie and not the bonus material and so on. Fortunately, you can easily recognize that track, because it is the longest track on the DVD. Place a check in front of that. You will then see two drop-down menus in that track. The left menu is for the audio, the right menu is for the subtitle. Choose the language you want in both menus or choose Subtitle disabled if you don’t want subtitles. If you now click on Set tag, then you can give the DVD a name and fill in some additional information so that the program you are going to watch the video in can show some more information. When you have set everything up, click Run to actually rip the file. And now you will see exactly why we are so excited about WinX DVD Ripper, because where other software takes half an hour to sometimes an hour to rip a DVD, this program gets the job done in ten minutes (unless you have Lord of the Rings rips).
