We recently published news of a Digiarty giveaway where you can get your hands on a lifetime license for the latest version of WinX DVD Ripper Platinum for free, and I took advantage of the giveaway to test the software. For the uninitiated, a DVD ripper allows users to convert the contents of a DVD into a digital file.
The giveaway version includes two limitations that I need to explain first:
- Limitation on supported DVDs. The giveaway version will rip all homemade DVDs plus all commercial DVDs produced before November 2024. This limitation is imposed to keep faith with customers who have forked out for the full version, which is fair enough in my book
- Limitation on ripping speed. I wasn’t sure just how limited the ripping speed might be so this played a major role in my testing
Testing WinX DVD Ripper Platinum
- Ease Of Use: I would rate the software as very easy to use with just a few logical steps to get started. I am sure that even novice users would have no trouble ripping DVDs with this software
- Speed: I tested the software by ripping an old commercial DVD – “The Cowboy Way” (circa 1994) – to MP4 format at default settings, including “Medium” quality output. The movie’s running time is a little over 1:42:00 and the job was completed in 25 minutes, which I thought was perfectly acceptable, certainly surpassing my expectations. Considering the giveaway version’s stated limitation on speed, the full paid-for version would surely complete the rip in even less time
- Quality: Was very good, but not perfect by any means. So I tested the same rip again, this time with the quality slider set all the way to “High Quality” and the option to “Use High-Quality Engine” enabled. To my surprise the rip took no longer than with the “Medium Quality” setting, completing in 25 minutes. I had anticipated it might take longer.
The output quality with the higher quality settings enabled resulted in a very high-quality MP4 file, even surpassing the quality of the original DVD and, again, far surpassing expectations.
To be clear, output quality bears a direct relationship to file size – the higher the quality, the larger the resulting file size. For example, the initial test rip at “Medium Quality” produced a 976MB MP4 file. The second rip, at “High Quality”, produced a 1.88GB MP4 file – almost twice the size.
This was probably a consideration in the early days when storage devices came with limited capacity. However, with modern storage devices now providing much larger capacities I doubt this would be a consideration for most.
BOTTOM LINE:
WinX DVD Ripper Platinum really is very easy to use and surprised me both in terms of speed and amazing output quality.
For anyone who wants to rip an existing DVD collection to digital files, the giveaway version is more than adequate. However, for those who plan to continue expanding their DVD collection into the future, the obvious choice would be the full paid-for version which will continue to overcome new protection methods.
Finally, and for what it’s worth, if I were ripping my DVD collection to digital files I would definitely do so using the high-quality settings.
**Just a reminder that both the giveaway version and full paid-for version are available on special until 30th November – the former obviously for free and the latter priced at just $39.95US for a lifetime license. For more details check out: WinX DVD Ripper Platinum Giveaway
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