That’s why most CD owners – especially those who are always on the go – prefer to rip their collections to digital format. There are many CD ripper applications out there, but here are three best alternatives that (I think) will provide you with dead simple way to rip CDs.

iTunes

Love it or hate it, iTunes is one of the most popular media players today. It’s also a great CD ripper. If you are an iOS device owner who wants to put the songs from your CDs to your device(s), iTunes is your one stop station.

We’ve covered iTunes many times before, we even published an ebook about it, so I won’t go too far about this one. Basically, every time you put an audio CD in your computer disc tray, iTunes will show it on the sidebar, grab the song information from CDDB, and offer you to rip it to digital format.

You can choose which digital format that you want to use from the “Edit – Preferences – General” menu. Click the “Import Settings” and you’ll see all the available formats. To retain the CD quality, choose lossless format; while for the best compatibility, choose MP3.

CDex

This one is an app specifically built to rip CDs. It supports more digital music formats than iTunes and uses a different online CD database. CDex would be perfect for those who manage their digital music player manually. We’ve covered the older version of the app back in 2009.

A little note for the paranoids: you need to fill in your email address before you can connect to the CD database to retrieve album/songs information. But you can use a fake email address and everything will still work just fine. I’ve tried it.

fre:ac

This one is a relatively unknown open source app. What makes fre:ac different from tons of other CD rippers out there is its speed. The encoder is designed to utilize multiple-core environment. While those with older generation machines will not see the differences, the ripping process will be a lot faster under dual/quad core processors.

The app will auto detect audio CDs and look for their information on the net. The information will be tagged into the result files and users can customize how the information is going to be displayed. And since fre:ac also supports Unicode characters, it can handle non-Latin song name.

To choose the encoder that you want to use to rip your CDs, go to General settings and pick the Encoders tab. This is also the place to determine where you want to save the conversion result later.

Choosing the format can also be done from the main interface. They can be accessed from the small arrows next to the play button.

What makes fre:ac different from many other similar applications, is that it comes with everything inside. So you don’t have to download several different elements/plug-ins just to make the app works.

There are many other alternatives to dead simple CD rippers. If your personal favorite is different, please share it (and why you love it) using the comment below.

Image credit: Gabyu

WinX DVD Ripper Platinum extracts (rips) a DVD and converts it to a popular format of your choice. Pick one from the 15 available formats. Then, the DVD ripper easily creates 1:1 DVD backups, without quality loss in video or audio. The backup job from source to a copy will take just 5 minutes. Even the copy protection technology of today’s DVDs doesn’t stump the ripping powers of WinXDVD Ripper as it comes with support for CSS protected DVDs. No worries too for Sony ArccOS DVDs and all Region 1-6 DVDs.

This week, we will be giving away 10 copies of this software, worth almost $300 in total. But first let’s take a short tour and get acquainted with the app.

A Slick Easy To Grasp Interface

Whether it’s a plain and simple DVD copy or a rip to any of the popular formats, WinX DVD Ripper Platinum does it in three steps. Thanks to the intuitive interface, it comes down to just selecting the source disc, picking the output format, and clicking on the Start button.

All Popular Formats Find a Place

1. Rip to popular video formats (AVI, WMV, MOV, MPEG1/2, MP4 and FLV).
2. Rip to popular portable device and device formats (iPod, iPhone, iPad, PSP, Zune, Apple TV, Zune, Zen, and 3GP).
3. Rip DVD audio track to MP3.

Each format gets a tab of its own with customizable output settings for picture perfect conversions. You can pick selections from the dropdown to vary audio-video quality, volume levels, sample rates, video resolution, aspect ratio, and more. The DVD ripping tool allows you to selectively trim any segment and optimize it for the output device or for an archive. A simple cropping tool removes unwanted areas around a frame to get full screen images.

A Slew of Intelligent Capabilities

With support for multi-core CPUs, you can streamline the performance of WinX DVD Ripper Platinum for high-speed ripping and conversion.

The app has several distinctive features: the Advanced De-interlaced Accelerator helps to improve the picture quality by progressively scanning the movie and smoothening out distortions. WinX DVD Ripper Platinum has an Intelligent A/V Synchronizer which automatically syncs the DVD’s audio with the movie. A conversion process can stutter due to many reasons. The Safe Mode prevents any problems during conversion by running at a slower but surer speed. A one-click screen capture button is there next to the preview screen if you want to take quick JPEG/BMP screenshots.

WinX DVD Ripper Platinum is a good thing and worth every byte of its 9.4MB download. WinX DVD Ripper Platinum is supported by Windows 98, NT, 2000, 2003, XP, Vista (32 & 64 bit), Windows 7 (32 & 64 bit).

The clinching argument for a software is whether it can be used alike by the rookie and the expert. WinX DVD Ripper Platinum’s user friendliness answers that.

How do I win a copy?

It’s simple, just follow the instructions.

This giveaway begins now and ends Friday, October 15th at 2100hrs PST. The winners will be selected at random and announced via email.

Spread the word to your friends and have fun!

MakeUseOf would like to thank the team at Digiarty Software for their generosity while participating in this giveaway. Interesting in sponsoring? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via email.

There are other good video converters out there too. Some manage to get their name known, while some are still flying below the radar. Two of them are DVD Ripper and Video Converter from MacX. The combination of these two will be able to fulfill the ripping and converting needs of every movie lover who uses a Mac.

Rip & Backup

The first member of the dynamic duo is a DVD ripping app. As the name suggests, this one will help you rip and back up your DVD movie collection. But it is no ordinary DVD ripper, because it allows you not only to rip but also to convert the result into the format that you want. So you can go directly from a DVD disc to an iPhone compatible file without any additional effort.

The first step in using the app is to click the “DVD Disc” button at the top left of the window. A small window will appear, letting you choose what disc you want to rip from the drop down menu.

The app will analyze your disc and display all the available segments. The app will also automatically choose the recommended segment to rip (usually this would be the longest part).

From my experiment I can safely say that this app handles copy protected DVDs better than Handbrake. While both apps can handle ordinary DVDs just fine, Handbrake freezes with most of the copy protected ones.

Aside from the available segments, there are other settings that you can tweak from the interface such as audio settings, subtitles, start and end time, and also the location where the conversion result should be saved.

The next step is to choose the video output settings. There are some pre-configured settings available for users to choose from: MP4, iTunes, MOV, Music, MPEG, and FLV. Even though you have to upgrade to the Pro version to have more ready to use settings, the available ones on the free version are enough to cater to our daily needs. Moreover, the available settings are also adjustable should you find the need to change.

But please note that changing the settings are not advisable if you don’t know what you are doing. After everything is set, click the “Start” button.

A small progress window will appear, giving you overall information about the ripping process. There are also options to shut down the computer and open the output folder after the process is complete. All that’s left for you to do is wait for the conversion to finish.

Another bonus feature of the app is the ability to view and take screenshot(s) from the movie. Just move the slider to the position that you want and click the camera button to the right of the slider.

Convert Video Files

The second member of the team is the Video Converter. This one specifically handles file to file conversion and will be especially useful for those who want to bring their movies to mobile devices. The working principle is basically the same with the DVD Ripper; but instead of choosing a DVD to rip, this one will ask you to find video files to convert.

From my simple experiment, I found that the conversion process took more or less the same time as Handbrake. There are some cases where Handbrake is slightly faster than the Video Converter.

Another difference between the Video Converter and the DVD Ripper are the number of pre-configured settings. There are options in the Video Converter that are not present in the DVD Ripper, such as: iPhone, iPod, iPad, Blackberry and Android.

The Good, The Bad & The Verdict

To sum up, I will try to quickly compare the DVD Ripper – Video Converter combo with Handbrake.

First, the good. As I’ve mentioned above, DVD Ripper handles copy-protected DVDs better than Handbrake while Video Converter has more pre-configured settings than Handbrake.

Second, the bad. I personally think that the developer could just combine the two apps into one, so users could do everything using just one app – just like Handbrake. As for the conversion speed, we could say that Handbrake is faster – even though the difference is not too significant.

And for the verdict, I think it’s up to the end users to choose which app they prefer to use. But whatever the choice is, it’s always good to have options.

This week we will be looking at MP3 & audio software. These are the apps that we use to convert, organize or listen to our digital audio files as well as rip physical music to a digital format. There are some awesome applications on this list.

1. JetAudio Basic
	With almost 16 million downloads of all time this application gives you a lot of options. You can rip a CD directly to your file format of choice as well as play around with its cross fader, reverb and MP3 tags. It has a built in alarm clock and a tool to seek out lyrics from your favorite tracks.
2. FreeRip MP3
	This application does a very good job at ripping CD’s. You can rip to almost any format including Vorbis, FLAC, and WMA. It comes with a built in multitrack ripping option and a feature rich audio converter. So not only can you rip your tracks but you can convert them as well.
3. Apple iTunes
	Ah who doesn’t know what iTunes is? iTunes is Apple’s flagship audio product. It links up your iPod’s or your iPhone’s with your music. Even my mother has used iTunes before. And seeing that most people download this from Apple, 6 million downloads in the last year is very impressive.
4. Free MP3 WMA Converter
	Can you guess what this application does from its name alone? You sure can! You can convert audio files to your hearts content . The name suggests it only works on MP3′s and WMA’s but it does do WAV and OGG as well. Converting is a easy task. All you need to do is drag and drop the files to the applications window.
5. Windows Media Player
	The Windows version of iTunes. I happen to use Windows Media Player a lot and it is the heart of the Windows Media Center. You can use it to play, burn and rip your music. You can also rate your tracks and so much more. I said before everyone has used iTunes before and the same goes for WMP!

6. Tiny Youtube Converter Have you ever wanted to convert just the audio from a youTube video to MP3? Well now you can easily and for free.
7. Burn4Free CD and DVD With over 7 million downloads this CD burning application does it all but beware of the toolbar it tries to install on installation.
8. Media Player Classic A lightweight audio and video player.
9. BurnAware Free Create and burn audio disks in addition to DVD’s and being able to burn disk images.
10. Apple QuickTime Quicktime plays MPEG4 videos with AAC sound as well as audio files. It is Apple’s video player of choice and it does what it does well.

If you have other personal favorites let us know in the comments. We want to hear about everything from music players, to rippers and back to applications that help you manage your audio collection. Put us on below.

After downloading and using MergeMP3 I got a call that they also wanted to split several music tracks into smaller pieces. I found several tools that do these jobs. I figured that I would share my research with you guys.

Let’s take a look at the applications that I found.

We will start off with an application called Slice. The whole download was only 233KB and when I started to install it, I saw that it also had other utilities you can install including a CD ripper, CD burner and others. But for now let’s take a look at Slice.

The application is very straightforward. You click on the add files button to add files. This is how you choose the audio files that you would like to split. Then on the right hand side of the interface you will see options to split the file into x equal parts or to split the audio file after a specified duration.

You choose your sliced folder at the bottom of the window and then click slice. The application will do all the heavy lifting for you and you can add multiple files at a time to do large batches.

Next up we have an application that can split audio & video files. This application is called Media Convert and it is online. You can use this in a pinch if your initial files are not huge or you have a fast Internet connection.

There are a few really good features that I saw in Media Convert. Besides being able to handle ALL audio and video formats it also handles ALL ringtone formats. You can convert your files to something else but you can also convert it to the same format using the split feature.

Simply visit their website, upload your file at the top of the page and select your setting towards the bottom. You can select the input and output format to be the same. In the above screenshot it is set to MP3. Then at the bottom of the screen you can check the check box to split the file into xKB chunks.

Then simply click the I accept the terms button and you will be able to download your converted file. I have also found that this application can split ZIP or RAR files as well.

Our third free program to edit music is called Media MP3 Joiner 1.2. The download was 1.5 MB and installed very quickly. When the application opened it was pretty easy to figure out and use.

I clicked on the plus button to add my tracks. Then you can click the up and down arrows to move around the order of your tracks. Then simply hit the play button to start your merge. It will prompt you to create a filename for the new merged track. It will then merge them. You can then open the merged track and listen to it.

And last but not least we have MergeMP3 which we covered here previously. You can download the application from the authors homepage. The application was a tiny 719KB file. Just like the other applications we need to add our tracks to the program. You can drag and drop or use the File ““> Open feature to get your songs in there. Then you can move the tracks up or down in the order that they will be played with the up and down arrows. Click on the music notes button selected in the shot below to merge your songs into one file.

You will be prompted for the new file name and then the program will assemble your newly merged file.

Do you have a favorite application that allows you to split or merge music tracks? If so we would love to hear about it in the comments!

The thing with DVDs, as with all kind of optical media, is that they are pretty easy to damage. DVD players need the DVD to be in a specific format. Computers don’t have such restrictions and you can easily play content from your hard drive without needing the DVDs every time.

The obvious solution, at least for playing them back on your computer would be to copy the content of the DVD onto the hard drive and play back the copied content instead of the actual DVD. The problem with this approach is that even if you are able to copy the contents, the files are oddly named and require more disk space.

Av even better option is to actually rip the DVD to the hard drive in a file format of your choice. What’s more, you can tweak various options so that you are able to view the file on your iPod and mobile phones.

Before we go any further, keep in mind that people have been ripping DVDs for the wrong reasons as well. So most DVDs are copy-protected, meaning that copying or ripping its content is rendered more difficult. While you can circumvent such restrictions, that is not the topic of discussion here. Let’s quickly jump over to ripping DVDs.

A number of software are available that will let you rip DVDs with ease. I prefer Handbrake for the simple reason that it is easy to use and available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Handbrake also requires you to have VLC installed on your computer. So if you don’t already have the awesome media player, go ahead and download it as well.

Install Handbrake (+ VLC) and get ready with the DVD you want to rip. Insert the DVD and fire up Handbrake.

Point Handbrake to the DVD you just inserted. Handbrake will now scan the DVD’s content and get back to you after it has scanned the entire disc, offering you suggestions as to what you might want to rip to your hard drive.

Choose whatever it is that you wish to rip. Generally, the movies and/or shows are longer in durations and are much larger in size; making them easier to identify as opposed to other trailers and menu screens.

Choose where to store the ripped files and choose from among the various presets if you want to rip the video for iPhones or PSPs. You can also specify custom settings such as cropping the picture, applying video filters, adding or removing subtitles or audio tracks and much more. If you don’t know what all these mean, just choose a preset and you are good to go!

Hit Start to begin the encoding process. This might take some time depending on your computer’s hardware and the length of the video file. You might also experience high CPU usage during the encoding process, which will make it difficult to use your computer during the process. So go and enjoy a cup of coffee!

Do you rip your DVD collection to a hard drive to keep them safe? What are your favorite applications for the task?