Solutions to Rip DVDs for free playback in HTPC via XBMC

“I am trying to join the world of XBMC recently, but what I would like some help on is what are people’s best practice for ripping DVDs that they play via XBMC in HTPC? What software do you use? What format preserves picture quality and multi-channel sound? Do you have to do something special when you are ripping the DVDs?”



Before we start to solve this issue, we have to know something about XBMC first. The full name of XBMC is XBOX Media Center. It is a free cross-platform media player software and entertainment system application framework for Linux, Mac, and Windows. The program’s interface is very simple and easy to use. Almost all of the video files are supported, even FLV and MKV can be played without any problems.Details about the formats supported by XBMC

Video formats: MPEG-1, MPEG-2, H.263, MPEG-4 SP and ASP, MPEG-4 AVC (H.264), HuffYUV, Indeo, MJPEG, RealVideo, RMVB, Sorenson, WMV, Cinepak.
Audio formats: MIDI, AIFF, WAV/WAVE, AIFF, MP2, MP3, AAC, AACplus (AAC+), Vorbis, AC3, DTS, ALAC, AMR, FLAC, Monkey’s Audio (APE), RealAudio, SHN, WavPack, MPC/Musepack/Mpeg+, Shorten, Speex, WMA, IT, S3M, MOD (Amiga Module), XM, NSF (NES Sound Format), SPC (SNES), GYM (Genesis), SID (Commodore 64), Adlib, YM (Atari ST), ADPCM (Nintendo GameCube), and CD-DA.


Unlike some free DVD ripping tools like Handbrake and MakeMKV, Pavtube ByteCopy is an easy-to-use yet professional software to help you to solve the issue by giving us the ability to store our purchased physical Blu-rayand DVD discs to local computer, hard drive then add to XBMC for smooth playback in HTPC on Windows. It’s powerful in ripping and converting Blu-ray/DVD discs, Blu-ray/DVD ISO image, Blu-ray/DVD copies and more. And it will also help you save the time looking for them from the cardboard with ease.  Mac version is here.

Free download this best DVD Converter for XBMC:

     

Brief step-by-step guide to rip DVDs to XBMC for freely playback in HTPC

Step 1. Load the DVD movies to this DVD to XBMC converter. Just remind you here that an external hard drive to backup the output videos are needed.



Step 2. Click “Format” and select an optional format. There are customized formats for different devices and application. Here you can choose “Lossless/encoded Multi-track MKV(*.mkv)” to output multi-track audio video. It also can output the subtitle file of the movie for you.



Tips:

Click “Settings” button, the “Multi-task Settings” windows pops up, on which you need to set the audio codec to ac3. This ensures your output videos to be encoded with ac3 codec. Apart from changing audio codec, you are also allowed to reset video resolution, video bit rate, frame rate, audio bit rate and sample rate on this window. If you don’t agree the “Encode”, that means the output movie is lossless quality.

Step 3. Click “Convert” icon and this DVD ripper to convert DVD videos to XBMC will start to do the conversion from DVD to MKV immediately. With just a click on “Open output folder”, you can locate the export video quickly. Now you can easily backup DVDs to XBMC for playing on HTPC with ease.

What’s more?

For Mac user, please learn how to watch DVD on Mac Mini HTPC via XBMC.
This DVD ripper for XBMC can support you to copy the entire disc or the backup main DVD movie for watching on XBMC.
Also learn how to view iTunes Movie via XBMC.