Jake Ludington's Digital Lifestyle

"How do I rip a DVD?" or sometimes, "how do I copy a DVD to my hard drive?"

These are two of the most frequently asked questions I receive on a weekly basis. Whether you're making a backup copy of your DVDs to keep the original from getting scratched or trying to build a library of movies on your hard drive to create your own personal movie jukebox, I find Xilisoft DVD Ripper Platinum to be one of the most comprehensive solutions around. The software is optimized for automatically creating versions of your DVDs playable on your PC, iPod, PSP, or simply for playing on a burned DVD. For foreign movies, you can even add the subtitles to versions for portable players so you can easily follow along while you're traveling.

The steps required to rip a DVD with Xilisoft DVD Ripper Platinum are simple:

Select the DVD Click Open, select Open DVD Folder option, and then select a DVD folder from the list of choices. Load the DVD file. Once the DVD is loaded you'll see list of available chapter information for the DVD.

Select output format Select one or more files in the list of available chapters. Click the Profile drop-down button and select the output format you want from the dropdown list of choices. You can tweak these settings by reviewing the detailed parameters of each format (in most cases you won't need these).

Choose output folder Click the Browse button in the settings panel, select a destination folder for your file and click OK.

Extract file After completing the initial steps, you're ready to rip the DVD. Once the settings are configured, make sure the file you want to extract from the DVD is checked and click the Start button to begin ripping the DVD.