If you’ve got a sizable collection of Blu-ray discs gathering dust, you might have considered digitizing them so that you can conveniently watch them on your phone, tablet or other devices anywhere, any time without toughing the original Blu-ray disc. The process isn’t that complicated, what you need is a Blu-ray Ripper application. The following article will take a brief review of the top 3 Blu-ray Ripper software: MakeMKV, ByteCopy and DVDFab.
User feedback from Emby community
MakeMKV – Seems to be a solid and very popular program
You can use MakeMKV if you don’t mind the large file size (as no re-encoding takes place). Sometimes, it misses forced subtitles.
DVDFab – Option rich, but not cheap
DVDFab is now in lawsuite – apparently DVDFab will only be available to life time lic holders as a result. In addition, there aren’t any document on its website say that it will do lossless MKV copy from Blu-ray movies
ByteCopy – Very fast, it can do the rip and re-encoding in one step
ByteCopy not only offers such kind of lossless BD/DVD to MKV backup with all subtitles and audio tracks preserved, but also allows for transcoding options for video, audio and subtitle streams separately.
Simple introduction of MakeMKV, ByteCopy and DVDFab
MakeMKV: MakeMKV is available for both Windows and macOS. The program uses built-in decryption tools that circumvent digital rights management from Blu-ray disc, you can then rip your Blu-ray movies to an MKV file without any limitation. The produced MKV file is very large in size, which can be over 20 or 30GB in size. MakeMKV offers a free beta that works for 30 days. Every month, you can either download the latest version of the beta or activate the application using the latest beta key in the forums.
Related article: Best Mac MakeMKV Alternative | MakeMKV 1.10.4 Review
ByteCopy: Just like MakeMKV, Pavtube ByteCopy also offers a powerful built-in disc decrypter to assist you to automatically bypass the Blu-ray copy protection and region code in the background. However, Pavtube ByteCopy is superior to MakeMKV in many aspects: firstly, it not only allows you to make a lossless multi-track MKV copy from Blu-ray movies, but also offer other Blu-ray copy mode such as 1:1 full disc copy, main movie copy, etc to satisfy your different needs. What’s more, you can also use the program to rip Blu-ray to other popular digital file formats or hot devices and applications preset profile formats as you like. You can also choose to compress the file size, adjust other profile settings as you like to get better output video and audio quality.
DVDFab: DVDFab Blu-ray Ripper is the first full-featured Blu-ray ripper software that is enhanced to be able to rip any 2D/3D Blu-rays to popular 2D or 3D videos, even including H.265 and 4K videos, with various format choices efficiently and effortlessly. DVDFab Blu-ray Ripper also supports Linux operating system, and you can click the “Linux” tab below to download or buy the Linux version.
Related article: DVDFab Blu-ray Ripper Alternative for Mac
Comparison of MakeMKV, ByteCopy and MakeMKV
| Software | Pavtube ByteCopy | DVDFab Blu-ray Ripper | MakeMKV |
|
Input File Formats
|
|||
| Blu-ray Discs,Blu-ray Folder,Blu-ray ISO Image File |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
| DVDs, DVD Folder, DVD IFO File, DVD ISO Image File |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
Output File Formats
|
|||
| MP4, MKV, AVI,WMV | Yes | Yes | No |
| M4V, F4V, MOV, FLV | Yes | Yes | No |
| H.265,H.264,DivX,XviD |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
| 3D AVI/MP4/MOV/MKV |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
| M3U8 |
Yes |
No |
No |
| Lossless Multi-track MKV |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
| Multi-track MP4/MOV/AVI |
Yes |
No |
No |
| Multi-track ProRes |
Yes |
No |
No |
|
Other Advanced Functions
|
|||
| Add SRT subtitle |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
| Extract SRT Subtitle |
Yes |
No |
No |
| Merge & Split Video |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
| Trim & Crop Video |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
| NVIDIA CUDA Acceleration |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
MakeMKV vs. DVDfab vs. Pavtube ByteCopy FAQ
MakeMKV and ByteCopy are good for lossless Blu-ray and DVD backup, while DVDfab focuses on ripping Blu-ray to popular digital file formats for convenient device and application playback.
Q: Which Blu-ray ripper keeps Blu-ray movie structure (including chapters)?
A: MakeMKV and ByteCopy
Q: Which Blu-ray ripper keeps multiple audio tracks and subtitles?
A: MakeMKV and ByteCopy
Q: What about the ripping speed of the three Blu-ray Rippers?
A: MakeMKV = ByteCopy (lossless copy) > DVDfab
Q: Which en-decodes Blu-ray with NVIDIA’s CUDA support (GPU computing)?
A: ByteCopy and DVDfab (Tip: CUDA works only when exporting H.264 encoded videos)
Q: Which does better on Blu-ray hacking/cracking?
A: Not a Blu-ray ripper is able to crack all the Blu-ray Discs as decryption always falls behind encryption. So it’s a question of upgrade and tech support. All the three updates their software along with the come up of new BD+ keys. MakeMKV and Pavtube ByteCopy charge free for update while DVDfab asks you pay extra money for the updates.
