A DVD ripper is something anyone with loads of DVDs needs to invest in urgently. If you're been trying to digitize DVD movies, then you already know what a big difference a good DVD ripper can make. The best DVD ripper will give you a 1:1 digital copy of your DVD movies and at the same time keep it at a much smaller size.
As a photographer and movie lover, I spent years amassing an extensive DVD collection. I did my own research, asked software developer friends, and tested out popular DVD rippers firsthand to find the 10 best DVD rippers for Mac.
Have no time to try all the 10 DVD rippers? Well, check out these 3 effective solutions:
Convert DVD movies (homemade, commercial, copy-protected) or Blu-ray to MP4, MKV, AVI, MPEG, etc. with fast speed while balancing quality & file size.
Offers a built in video editor for you to optimize and rip certain parts of DVD movies.
Offer other features like compressing, downloading, and converting 4K/8K videos from most sites.
If you need a free DVD ripper that converts your disc for archival copy with original quality, MakeMKV is your best choice.
Though as the name suggests it can only save DVD as MKV. and be prepared that the movies will come in enormous file size.
If you don’t require much output quality and need a DVD ripper that is fast and offer edit function, Macx DVD ripper is what you need.
Best for: Rip any DVD and Blu-ray to popular digital formats: quick, safe, high quality
Compatibility: macOS 15.0 Sequoia, macOS 14.0 Sonoma, macOS 13.0 Ventura, macOS 12.0 Monterey, 11.0 Big Sur, and earlier
Latest version: 8.0.1 released on October 14, 2024
Cisdem Video Converter is the NO.1 best DVD ripper for Mac I would like to recommend. It helps you leisurely rip videos straight from the DVD into 300+ formats without quality and data loss. It does not require technical skills.
Apart from processing unprotected DVDs, this best DVD ripper for Mac can also decrypt any type of DVD encryption, including CSS, RPC, RCE, Disney X-project DRM, UOP, ARccOS, etc.
Cisdem best DVD ripping software for Mac defeated 98% of rivals for its speed, which will greatly save you valuable time. For example, the common DVD ripper may take one hour to rip a movie while Cisdem DVD ripper only takes a quarter.
In addition, it's packed with other superb features such as the ability to convert video & audio, download video, combine video, etc. You can make video conversion among numerous incredibly useful outputs, and tweak video output setting for specific needs.
There is a great array of basic editing tools to enhance & customize videos. For users who need only part of the movie you can use the built-in DVD editor to trim DVD into clips, also you can add your own subtitle, effects or change an interlaced video with deinterlace.
Cisdem DVD Ripper free download on Mac >>
Best for: 1:1 backup all DVD titles into separate MKV files
Compatibility: Mac OS X 10.7 or later
Latest version: 1.17.6 released on January 20, 2024
MakeMKV is ideal for users who need to rip DVD and Blu-ray movies for archiving purposes. It is totally free to use and available for both Mac and Windows.
It doesn't re-encode anything. The app just unpacks the DVD, which will get rid of the disc-specific formatting and menu navigation, but maintain the DVD menu structure and full contents, like meta-data, audio tracks, chapters, and more.
As the name implies, videos ripped from MakeMKV will be in MKV format. It's not good news, because you can't play MKV files on iTunes, QuickTime, Apple TV, iOS, or other Apple devices. The MKV format ensures 1:1 DVD copying, which also means that the files are large.
Although this best DVD ripping software for Mac can read Blu-ray encrypted by AACS and BD+, it takes a very long time and fails to recognize the correct film scenes (merely works with about 15-25% Blu-rays).
If you are very concerned about quality, go with MakeMKV.
If you need to play DVD movies on portable and other devices, and you care about the file size (normally it will provide an MKV in 2-3 times of the size of the original DVD), you just don’t need MakeMKV.
MakeMKV DVD Ripper free download on Mac >>
Best for: Rip unprotected DVDs to MP4 for free
Compatibility: macOS 10.13 or later
Latest version: 1.7.3 released on Febuary 11, 2024
HandBrake is an open-source, free DVD ripper available on multiple platforms - Mac, Windows, Linux, BSD, Xfce.
As a video encoding tool, Handbrake will re-encode the DVD into videos which results in a smaller file but not the original video. So you will observe obvious quality loss.
Unlike other free DVD rippers, Handbrake offers bunches of optimized settings, You can select chapters, add subtitles and change storage size to get a satisfying result. It supports exporting files to MP4, MKV, or WebM.
If you add a copy-protected DVD to Handbrake, it will fail to load the DVD and give you an error notice. This is because HandBrake no longer supports internal DVD decryption since version 0.9.3. To unlock the protected DVDs, you can download and install libdvdcss library from videolan.org, to use together with Handbrake.
NOTE: libdvdcss can only bypass CSS and region codes. If a DVD with more complex structural protections, libdvdcss won’t be effective.
The speed of ripping DVD is not fast enough. Normally, ripping a 2h DVD disc on Mac needs about 3 hours, output in a 2GB around file.
If your movies have multiple titles, Handbrake will automatically load the longest one, most of the time it will help you choose the right one, but sometimes it will mis-choose the wrong title. Plus, HandBrake sometimes closes unexpectedly when ripping DVD videos.
If you are familiar with video formats, bitrate, and codec settings, Handbrake is the best free DVD ripper that offers all the functions you may need.
If however, you don’t want to set video output, and you need to rip copy protected DVD, Handbrake is not a good option for you to choose.
HandBrake DVD Ripper free download on Mac >>
Best for: The best DVD ripper for Mac with fast speed
Compatibility: Mac OS X 10.6+
Latest version: 6.8.2 released on January 10, 2024
MacX DVD Ripper Pro for Mac is a commercial DVD Ripper coming with 16X faster speed and affordable price. It allows you to copy DVDs to your Mac so you can easily view them without wasting your laptop’s battery - life, spinning a disc in your optical drive.
Also, this best DVD ripper for Mac can convert 320+ videos and 50+ audios with encryption formats, like 4K UHD, MKV, AVCHD, M2TS, MP4, AVI, WMV. Altogether it is an all-in-one program that lets you convert your videos to any other format, and play on your iPhone 14 Pro/Max, iPad Air 4/Mini 6, Android, Samsung Galaxy Note 8/9, and so on.
Thanks to its integration of Intel CPU, AMD, and Nvidia GPU techs, MacX DVD Ripper Pro achieves impressive DVD ripping speeds.
However, MacX DVD Ripper Pro doesn’t contain advanced DVD video editing features like Cisdem Video Converter. And the biggest cons is that the output video quality is not high quality at all, you will easily notice the quality decrease.
If you care little about output quality and need a DVD ripper that can handle most of the encryptions and offers a fast DVD ripping speed, MacX DVD Ripper Pro is what suits you most.
MacX DVD Ripper free download on Mac >>
Best for: Lightweight DVD ripper for Macs
Compatibility: OS X 10.11 El Capitan or above
Latest version: 5.4.0 released on December 19, 2023
iFunia DVD Ripper, one of the best DVD rippers for Mac, gives an easy and fast solution to rip both encrypted and unencrypted DVDs without destroying them.
It enables you to rip DVDs to various video formats like AVI, MOV, WMV, MP4, MPEG, 3GP, H.264/MPEG-4, TS, WebM, Motion JPEG, MKV, etc., as well as extract soundtracks from DVD movies to a variety of audio formats.
Nevertheless, iFunia DVD Ripper can only rip DVD video. That is to say, you can’t regard it as a general video converter, converting video from one format to another. Likewise, you are unable to use it to download online video from websites, digitize Blu-ray, duplicate DVD, name to a few.
That is why iFunia best DVD ripping software for Mac is ranked behind Cisdem Video Converter, DVDfab, and other commercial apps.
If you just wish to rip a DVD with decent speed and result and don't need other features, iFunia DVD Ripper is for you.
iFunia DVD Ripper free download on Mac >>
Best for: Powerful DVD ripper with a full DVD feature set for those on a budget
Compatibility: OS X 10.10 - 14
Price: $84.99 Lifetime License
Latest version: 13.0.1.1 released on January 25, 2024
DVDFab 13 is dedicated to the work of DVD/Blu-ray ripping, copy, and creation. It can convert DVDs to MKV.Passthrough and Hi-Fi audio, enhancing your home theatre experience with lossless visual quality. It offers various settings to personalize your DVD outputs, like merging, trimming, customizing subtitles & speed, and more.
It also helps you copy any DVD, clone DVD in 1:1 ratio, copy with compression, and burn videos to blank DVD disc.
DVDFab 13 is free to try (30-day trial). The price is a little bit expensive. Although it has multiple features for dealing with DVDs, each one costs extra. If you buy DVDFab DVD Ripper for Mac only, you'll pay $84.99/lifetime; to unlock all the features, you'll pay $265.99/lifetime. Another negative side is the speed of DVDFab is slower than Cisdem Video Converter and MacX DVD Ripper Pro.
DVDFab DVD Ripper offers a complete DVD ripping feature set. You can convert encrypted DVDs, compress DVD, edit DVD easily, but compared with other software this app is fairly expensive, and it’s DVD processing speed is not that good.
DVDFab DVD Ripper free download on Mac >>
Best for: Solid Mac DVD ripper similar to Any Video Converter Ultimate but lacks recording functionality
Compatibility: OS X 10.6 or above
Latest version: 11.6.7
Aimersoft Video Converter Ultimate is the antepenultimate DVD ripper. In spite of the relatively high selling price, it still made into the 10 best Mac DVD rippers due to its 90X faster.
In addition to ripping DVD video, it can convert video and audio, download video and audio from some popular sites, edit video and burn DVDs as well.
But its interface is too dark to see the text in it clearly. And the output and input of Aimersoft Video Converter Ultimate are not as many as you think. The software may not support some of the popular formats.
What is more, there is always quality loss with 90X faster ripping speed on Mac.
Aimersoft Video Converter Ultimate hasn’t been updated for a long time, and this app has compatibility with Big Sur, also the output quality of Aimersoft Video Converter Ultimate is not that good.
Aimersoft DVD Ripper free download on Mac >>
Best for: Good DVD ripper with DVD burning and recording features, working well on old Mac OS
Compatibility: Mac OS X 10.7 or later
Latest version: 6.2.0
Any Video Converter Ultimate is an amazing DVD ripper that can meet your simple needs within a minimalist interface.
Before going to download this best Mac DVD ripper, make sure your current operating system is compatible. If you are using Mac OS X 10.6, you should download version 5.2.2.
Besides ripping files from discs, Any Video Converter Ultimate can convert plenty of video formats including ASF, AVI, WMV, MOV, MP4, and more. It is also a YouTube video downloader that supports 100+ online video-sharing sites.
But the output format and presets of Any Video Converter Ultimate are a bit outdated. For example, you can only rip DVD to iPhone 6s Plus - the highest version currently supported. The final videos will lose some images. And it took more than 30 minutes to rip an hour-long DVD video. So you have to put up with its imperfection.
Compared with what function it has, this app is a bit pricy and it lacks the ability to rip protected DVD, which is not a good option for most users.
AVC DVD Ripper free download on Mac >>
Best for: Simple and light weight DVD ripper for Mac that exports the entire DVD to .dvdmedia
Compatibility: OS X 10.9+
Latest version: 1.6.9
RipIt, developed by the Little App Factory, is the best DVD ripping software for Mac OS X to archive DVD collections. It supports ripping DVD 10 times for free.
The program enables users to break encryption and create a playable copy of your content. With RipIt, you can also compress the DVD main movie to a small file on Mac. It will save some place for you to keep another video.
However, RipIt is only possible to convert DVD video to .dvdmedia - which contains the contents of a VIDEO_TS folder. It does not have any custom option to remove region codes, nor does it allow the option to select certain titles or chapters for extraction. If you want to do some edition before ripping DVD, you’d better not take RipIt.
RipIt has discontinued upgrading since 2016, hence, it has poor compatibility with macOS Catalina and later operating systems that support 64-bit apps.
So, my advice is If you are just backing up DVDs to Mojave or earlier and playing them with the DVD player app, pick RipIt.
RipIt DVD Ripper free download on Mac >>
Best for: Affordable all-around Mac DVD ripper
Compatibility of version 2.6.6: OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard or previous
Price: Free for version 2.6.6, but for above version you need to send gift for a license
Latest version: 5.4.0.9
MacTheRipper is a fast and free DVD ripper for Mac. It has three most common versions – MacTheRipper 2.6.6, MacTheRipper 3.0, and MRT 4. To use MacTheRipper on macOS Sequoia, Sonoma, Ventura, etc., you have to install MRT 4 or above version. But only MacTheRipper 2.6.6 or lower versions are free.
It helps you to create a playable copy of the contents of a video DVD by defeating the Content Scramble System. During the process, MacTheRipper may optionally modify or disable the DVD region code or the User operation prohibition features of the copied data.
But MacTheRipper is unstable. It may suddenly exit or crash when you rip DVD on Mac OS X system. And the interface is a little confusing at first take it. You need to take time to know the functions. Once you overcome those problems, you could take it as your most reliant DVD ripper.
If you only need a free DVD ripper and failed to use Handbrake, you can have a try with MacTheRipper.
MacTheRipper DVD Ripper free download on Mac >>
To test out which is the best Mac DVD Ripper on the market, I spent dozens of hours researching and testing all the apps people recommend and ask us to have a try. I evaluated ease of use, output quality, speed, and capable of handling different DVD copy protections. We installed each DVD ripper on the same Mac mini running macOS Sequoia. It was powered by Apple M2 and had 8GB of RAM. Also, if a DVD Ripper is boasting about new and amazing features, I will do the test and check it.
| Easy to use | Speed level | Output quality | Supported formats | Edit function | Rip encrypted DVD | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cisdem Video Converter | √ | Fast | Excellent | 300+ | √ | √ |
| MakeMKV | √ | Fast | Excellent | MKV | × | √ |
| Handbrake | √ | Slow | Fair | MP4, MKV, WebM | × | × |
| MacX DVD Ripper Pro | × | Fast | Fair | 120+ | √ | √ |
| iFunia DVD Ripper | √ | Fast | Fair | 50+ | √ | √ |
| DVDFab | × | Slow | Good | 30+ | √ | √ |
| Aimersoft Video Converter | × | Fast | Fair | 120+ | √ | √ |
| Any Video Converter | × | Fair | Fair | 50+ | √ | × |
| RipIt | √ | Slow | Excellent | .dvdmedia | × | √ |
| MacTheRipper | √ | Slow | Fair | 30+ | × | × |
Undoubtedly, Cisdem Video Converter is the best DVD Ripper for Mac. Now, let’s see how to use it to convert hour-long DVD videos in less than 5 minutes.
Download and install Cisdem Video Converter and launch it on your Mac.
Have the DVD inserted into your Mac optical drive. Its icon will show on the Finder.
Just drag the DVD or VIDEO_TS folder to the program interface (“rip” tab). Cisdem best DVD ripper for Mac will load the source immediately.
If you don't wish to rip all the titles, you can click the checkmark in the upper left corner to cancel.
The DVD videos might cover multiple subtitles or audio tracks in different languages. Select your familiar languages.
Click on the format-choosing icon nearby "Convert all tasks to". You will see a wide range of digital formats, devices, and players for you to select. Choose a suitable one and ensure the output location.
At the final step, hit the convert button to rip DVD to file on Mac.
When it comes to choosing the best DVD ripper for Mac, we ought to take the output quality, and the speed of conversion into personal demand. From the review, we know Cisdem Video Converter is superior to other peers in the speed, quality, and availability of encrypted DVDs. All the needs of DVD can be met. Although it's not free, I think Cisdem Video Converter is the best DVD ripper for Mac that deserves your try.
Jenny is a technology editor who has been blogging since she was a student. Since joining Cisdem, she focuses on writing articles about video software and how-to guides. She loves exploring new tools and techniques.
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Robert Ewald
I plan to export the video in the Video_TS file on my computer for editing in Final Cut Pro X. After checking a lot of information, yours is the most satisfactory.
Jasmine
I got this web site from my friend who informed me regarding this web page and now this time I am browsing this website and reading very
David Hays
Unbelievable! The first program extracts 5.1 channels correctly from my DVD.
JKS
Thanks for putting this list together