RIPIT  We're looking into this. It seems to be happening very consistently for a few people, and not at all for others. We'll have a fix as soon as we're confident that we've found the problem. We apologize for the inconvenience.

-

Customer Service

support@ripitapp.com

http://ripitapp.com/  
(Version 1.2.10)

RIPIT  DVDRemaster recompresses the movie, introducing artifacts and decreasing image/sound quality -- by how much, depends on the settings and the way that the disc was mastered to begin with. It won't deal with complicated DRM/Copy-Protection.

RipIt produces disc images with no image/sound quality degradation. It will deal with compliated DRM/Copy-Protection. For some discs, it's best to use RipIt before using DVDRemaster.

-

Customer Service  
(Version 1.2.9)

RIPIT  Thanks for taking the time to report this! :) (We respond a little faster through the support channel at support@ripitapp.com.)

The most recent version of Handbrake fully supports the .dvdmedia package. We chose to use the .dvdmedia in order to make the user experience a little more friendly for people, since we all think of a movie as... well, a coherent "thing" and not a collection of files. Also, Apple's own DVD Player fully supports the .dvdmedia package, so on Leopard, double-clicking a .dvdmedia will open the movie in DVD Player and begin playing... pretty much what you'd expect to happen.

-

Jason

Customer Service  
(Version 1.2.5)

RIPIT  @xenophile: We fix things. We don't always get it right on the first try, but try we do. :) If you find problems, let us know at support@ripitapp.com -- We're here to help.

-

Jason

Customer Service  
(Version 1.2.3)

RIPIT  As of v1.2.3, there are no compatibility problems (that we know of) with Toast, or other disc-burning software. The VIDEO_TS folders that are emitted by RipIt are solid and trustworthy. :)

-

Jason

Customer Service  
(Version 1.2.3)

RIPIT  Update: Harry, please contact us through our support channel at support@ripitapp.com -- We're here to help! :)

- Customer Service  
(Version 1.2.1)

RIPIT  Hi Harry! :) By all means download the new trial from our website. We reset things when a new version is released so that everyone can give our newest stuff a go. If you have any problems, any at all -- don't hesitate to contact us at support@ripitapp.com -- we're here to help! :)

-

Customer Service

support@ripitapp.com

http://ripitapp.com/  
(Version 1.2)

RIPIT  This is true. The encryption methods are a constant... otherwise, DVD players out in the field would break. With newer discs, the manufacturers have resorted to building "creatively broken" movies that have intentionally complicated structures, meant to confuse disc processing software.  
(Version 1.1.5)

RIPIT  Reposted/Updated:

For some, older movies you'll be able to get away with that, but for many modern discs -- "Stranger than Fiction," for example, but there are many, many others -- that approach won't work at all.

You see, the manufacturers have for years been placing blocks of intentionally bad sectors within unused portions of the files, so that naive ripping techniques (like you describe) would hit them as they copy and error out, or best-case, take hours and hours to complete. More recently, with discs like "Leatherheads," there appear to be 40GB of files on the disc. Obviously, this is not actually the case, but the technique you describe would not be able to copy this movie without requiring 40GB on the target disc -- hardly acceptable.

RipIt emulates a DVD player, down to the registers and instructions -- interpreting the movie's program to determine the sections of the files that are legally accessible to a real DVD player, copying blocks instead of playing them. By processing the disc in this way, we are guaranteed to copy everything that is playable and smoothly bypass all of the structural booby traps that are placed there by the DVD manufacturer. On over 35,000 unique discs, RipIt's success rate is better than 99.995%.  
(Version 1.1.5)

RIPIT  By all means, get in touch with us at support@ripitapp.com. :)  
(Version 1.1.5)

RIPIT  Quite right. We're here to help! :) If you could supply us with the UPC/Barcode from the back of the box (to be sure we're looking at the *exact* same thing), we'll source the problem discs and get a fix out in the next release. No need for single-star reviews.

support@ripitapp.com  
(Version 1.1.5)

RIPIT  Great feedback! We listen to our users, and we try to build what the people want. ;)

Insofar as points 1 and 2, we're working on that... but we want to do it "right." -- MacTheRipper has entirely too many knobs and levers that must be frequently fiddled-with to get the best possible results for a particular movie. This just isn't satisfying to us... we'd prefer something a little more automatic. As for your last point, we've just introduced a new option in our preferences panel that will cause RipIt to output bare-folders.  
(Version 1.1.4)

RIPIT  Actually, the open source projects being used are licensed under the GPL (v2) -- and that version of the GPL explicitly states that, "You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License." ( read more at: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html )

In short, if you use *any* GPL'd code into your app, your entire app falls under the terms of the GPL. This is exactly why the GPL is described as a "viral" license. MacTheRipper is violating the spirit as well as the legal terms of the license, plain and simple.

In contrast, Apple uses "BSD" licensed open source code, which contains no such viral provision, and "LGPL" code, which is basically the GPL but without the viral provisions for users of libraries and such.  
(Version 2.6.6)

RIPIT  Well, that's not exactly true. For some, older movies you'll be able to get away with that, but for many modern discs -- "Stranger than Fiction," for example, but there are many, many others -- that approach won't work at all.

You see, the manufacturers have for years been placing blocks of intentionally bad sectors within unused portions of the files, so that naive ripping techniques (like you describe) would hit them as they copy and error out, or best-case, take hours and hours to complete. More recently, with discs like "Leatherheads," there appear to be 40GB of files on the disc. Obviously, this is not actually the case, but the technique you describe would not be able to copy this movie without requiring 40GB on the target disc -- hardly acceptable.

RipIt emulates a DVD player, down to the registers and instructions -- interpreting the movie's program to determine the sections of the files that are legally accessible to a real DVD player, copying blocks instead of playing them. By processing the disc in this way, we are guaranteed to copy everything that is playable and smoothly bypass all of the structural booby traps that are placed there by the DVD manufacturer. On over 13,500 unique discs, RipIt's success rate is better than 99.95%.

If your technique works well for you, cool... but realize it's not for every disc, or everybody.  
(Version 1.1.3)

RIPIT  If you could contact us (at support@ripitapp.com) with the UPC/EAN code of the movie you're having trouble with, we'd be glad to source a copy and figure out what could be causing your problem.  
(Version 1.1.3)

RIPIT  ATTENTION -- Licensed users that are have had their copies of RipIt revert to demo status with the latest update... there was a problem with our auto update system that caused this to occur for some users. This has been fixed, but will require you to use your download link in order to retrieve your licensed copy. There are three ways to do get your link:

1) From the post-purchase email.

2) From the retrieval form at http://ripitapp.com/download/retrieve/

3) Contact us at support@ripitapp.com, we'll gladly lookup and send your link.

We apologize for the inconvenience.  
(Version 1.1.3)

RIPIT  Wow. That answer ended up in the wrong place... ;) It was intended to answer a question by BNORDAN2, reposed here for clarity:

"What version of Toast did you use to burn a Ripit file?"  
(Version 1.1.2.1)

RIPIT  We've used 8 and 9, with varying degrees of success. Toast isn't terribly bright, and is easily confused by the (intentionally confusing) advanced structural protections that are encoded into most modern movies. RipIt copies the movie bit-for-bit, so the rule of thumb would be: If Toast (etc.) would have problems with the original, it'll probably have issues with a *very* good copy of that original.

We've open-sourced the portions of RipIt that read and interpret the disc, and we'd be happy to work with the developers of Toast to bring them up to speed with respect to the tricks and traps that are built into modern discs. So far, no takers. :(  
(Version 1.1.2.1)

RIPIT  4006680034744 seems to be the EAN for the german version of "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", and 2781522200608 doesn't appear to be a valid EAN at all (the check digit is wrong.)

If you could contact us at support@ripitapp.com, we'd love to get to the bottom of this.  
(Version 1.1.2.1)

RIPIT  By all means contact us at support@ripitapp.com -- We'd love to get to the bottom of this for you, and everyone else this may be affecting. We're here to help! :)  
(Version 1.1.2)

RIPIT  Fails on Mr. Woodcock (#794043106620)  
(Version 1.0.1.1)

RIPIT  Fails on Leatherheads (UPC#025195012935)  
(Version 1.0.1.1)

RIPIT  Ah. Feel free to contact us at any time at support@ripitapp.com - We're here to help! :)  
(Version 1.1)

RIPIT  This problem has been located and fixed with 1.1.1, available immediately. Please select "Check for Updates..." from the "RipIt" menu to apply the update. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.  
(Version 1.1)

RIPIT  Interesting. We haven't had any failures with Sony BMG titles reported through RipIt's feedback feature. If you would contact our customer service team (support@ripitapp.com) with the UPC/EAN code (or codes) of the discs that cause the issue, we'll be more than happy to diagnose and fix whatever problems we find. We're here to help! :)  
(Version 1.0.9)

RIPIT  If you buy in now, you'll be good all the way up to, but not including, 2.0.   
(Version 1.0.9)

RIPIT  Thanks for the report! We've sourced a copy of Rendition (#794043112928), and our engineers are taking a look at it. We should have this disc (as well as other similarly encoded/obfuscated discs) fixed with the next minor release. Keep those broken discs coming! :)  
(Version 1.0.8)

RIPIT  We regularly test troublesome discs against the latest version of MacTheRipper 3. We have a long list of titles that will fail on MTR during full disc extraction, but that RipIt can process without issue.  
(Version 1.0.7)

RIPIT  Certainly. We'd love to look into any problems that you might be having. You can contact us at support@ripitapp.com  
(Version 1.0.7)

RIPIT  They do some funky stuff these days on the more popular discs.... sprinkling in blocks of intentional bad sectors, among other tricks. If you try to just copy the files from tip-to-tail, you'll run into these dead blocks that an actual DVD player would never encounter -- depending on the software, the disc may take a long time to copy, or just error out. RipIt uses a much more sophisticated approach: It contains a complete DVD player simulator/emulator, running the program embedded on the DVD and copying blocks that would otherwise be played. Since RipIt only processes blocks that are legitimately reachable through the DVD's program, it can identify and easily skip the dead regions of the disc.  
(Version 1.0.6)

RIPIT  Fairmount does nothing for discs that are encoded with ARccOS or RipGuard. For additional details on these two technologies, I'll defer to the detailed articles at Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARccOS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RipGuard  
(Version 1.0.5)

RIPIT  It's on a 7-day trial. If you like it, consider purchasing a copy when the trial expires. The trial isn't crippled in any way, other than the expiration.  
(Version 1.0.5)

RIPIT  Not as of yet. The goal of the 1.0 series is stability and compatibility... Trying to get as many discs working as possible, without trying to modify them. The major goal of the 1.1 series will be to make these kinds of changes to the movie as it's being ripped. Stay tuned. ;)  
(Version 1.0.4)

RIPIT  Thanks for reporting this. We're working to source a copy of this disc (#4011976851066) so that we can further diagnose the problem, but from what RipIt collected when you filed the failure-report, this looks to be an instance of our largest remaining known-issue: It appears that RipIt's low-level UDF reading code has a bug that occasionally prevents it from finding the partition that contains the movie.

If you'd be willing to help us test possible fixes against this disc, by all means contact us via support@ripitapp.com -- For your trouble, we'd be happy to supply you with a fully registered copy free of charge.  
(Version 1.0.4)

RIPIT  Sure! I've add that to our team's to-do list. ;)  
(Version 1.0.4)

RIPIT  @SMTIPS: We build quality software, and we stand behind the work that we do. That being said, it is entirely possible that the problem lies not with the disc but with RipIt.

In the interest of determining which is which, I'd like to extend our previous offer to pay the postage (and return, if need be) for a few of these problem discs so that we can examine them and fix any problems with our software that we might find as a result. If these discs uncover an issue with RipIt, then we'd be more than happy to supply you with a fully registered copy of the next release, free of charge.

By all means, contact us at support@ripitapp.com to arrange the details. We're here to help.  
(Version 1.0.3)

RIPIT  @SMTIPS: You're right, in that RipIt was designed primarily to shift retail movies that you've purchased to your computer for convenient use/backup there. As such, when a problem occurs, we ask for the barcode so that we can track down another copy of the same movie for our engineers to diagnose and fix the problem.

DVD-R and user-burned media present a special difficulty to us, in that defects in mastering (that would almost never occur in a retail disc) can and are introduced by buggy or non-compliant mastering software. This problem is compounded for us in that it's nearly impossible for us to reproduce (and then fix) problems with home-made DVD-R media because we have no access to the problem disc -- unless you could be convinced to send us one. ;) (We'd more than happily work out the postage, if you'd contact us at support@ripitapp.com)

@PAXTON: The trial-period has been extended to seven days.

@PXL: There *are* discs that MacTheRipper just won't handle, right? ;) ( http://www.ripdifferent.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=40 ) Isn't there room in the toolbox for both RipIt *and* MacTheRipper? (We're big fans, by the way.)  
(Version 1.0.3)

RIPIT  .dvdmedia "files" are actually just folders that OSX treats specially. If you "ctrl-click" on one, and select "Show Package Contents" you'll see that all of the files from the DVD are there, as you'd expect. As such, .dvdmedia are completely compatible with PCs running Linux or Windows.  
(Version 1.0b5)

RIPIT  Fair enough. ;)

support@ripitapp.com

We look forward to working through this problem with you.  
(Version 1.0b4)

RIPIT  We have a new feedback forum at http://feedback.ripitapp.com -- If you find that you're having problems with RipIt (a disc that won't rip, etc.) then *please* report it. We'd love an opportunity to diagnose/fix your problem, and make our product better in the process.

TIP: When reporting a problem disc, remember to include both the Title and the UPC code (the number under the bar-code on the box.)  
(Version 1.0b4)

RIPIT  Would you mind telling us what the Title and UPC code (the number under the bar-code on the box) is?

We'd love an opportunity to diagnose/fix this problem.   
(Version 1.0b4)

RIPIT  .dvdmedia "files" are really special folders defined by Apple's DVD player. A clever trick, really, to make messy VIDEO_TS folders easier to play on the Mac. Right-click on one, and pick "Show Package Contents..." and you'll see exactly what I mean.  
(Version 1.0b3)