As much as the dubious legitimacy associated with this, I would argue that you have every right to make a digital backup (“copy”) of your legally purchased DVDs and Blu-Ray. Disks don’t last forever, so you need to have a digital backup on your hard drive just in case. 

Modern discs often have built-in copy protection, but there is one program that often bypasses this protection and provides a high-quality HD copy of your movie or TV show. This application is called MakeMKV It’s free for DVDs, but for Blu-Rays, you have to pay for an activation key after a 30-day trial period.

 

 

MakeMKV – as the name suggests – generates an MKV file on your disk. MKV stands for “Matroska” and is an open source file format and can be easily played with VLC Player If you want to use a different media player, you will need to install codecs for the file to work.

Another thing to keep in mind about MKV files is that they tend to be very large in size.

For these two reasons, I always convert MKV files to MP4 using Handbrake MP4 makes files smaller and also immediately becomes compatible with more media players.

Now that we know what we are doing, let’s see how MakeMKV works.

When you open MakeMKV, you will see this window.

If the DVD or Blu-Ray is already in the DVD drive, MakeMKV will detect it and show it automatically. However, if you have more than one DVD drive, you may have to expand the Source menu and select the correct one.

But here I only have one. So I’m ready.

Now click on the large DVD drive icon and the program will start scanning the drive.

It will look for possible errors, evaluate copy protection, and delete tiny files that are probably not part of a movie or special features. This process can take several minutes, so you need to be patient. In this case, it took ten minutes. Older drives are usually faster.

When this process completes, all DVD or Blu-Ray “chapters” will be shown.

Common sense now dictates that the largest file is the movie itself. In this case, the first has a clock speed of 33.3 GB. Others in excess of gigabytes are most likely features of the disk. Whether you want to copy them is entirely up to you.

Place the mouse or trackpad arrow anywhere in the chapter box and right-click. Now choose Deselect All. This will uncheck every chapter.

Let’s say you only want a movie. Check the appropriate box to select it, then click the heading to expand the menu and find each version of the movie in every available language.

In my case, I only need English. So choose which version of English you want – as you can see, there are three of them.

Assuming I need subtitles, I scroll down to subtitles and choose which ones I need. But this time I will not choose them.

On the right you will see the Output folder where the finished movie will be placed. If necessary, change it to whatever you want at the end. Then click “Make MKV” on the right.

Now wait. As you know, Blu-Ray takes a long time because the files are very large. Remember, this is over 30 GB. On the other hand, DVDs are smaller and therefore much faster.

When it is finally completed, you will find that your new beautiful MKV file is ready and waiting for you. If you have VLC Player installed, you can play it immediately.

But as I said, I would recommend using Handbrake to convert it to MP4. This makes the file much simpler and more flexible.

And if you decide not to pay for an activation key, just do all of the Blu-ray ripping within a 30-day trial period (which has no limit). But if possible, buy a key to support the developer, as this is an amazing program that I have been using for years.