How to Rip Blu-ray with Handbrake (Unprotected and Protected)

You may find that some Blu-ray discs are unreadable with no reasons. If you have a large Blu-ray collection, you had better digitalize Blu-ray movies for backup. Thus, you can watch Blu-ray playback on your computer, iPhone, iPad, Android and other portable devices directly. The ripped Blu-ray disc movies can be saved into cloud storage space or external hard drives.

Handbrake is a free and open source video transcoder that can rip unprotected Blu-ray discs on Windows, Mac and Linux. You can use Handbrake to rip Blu-ray for free on your computer and laptop. As for extracting movies from commercial Blu-ray discs, you need to use professional Blu-ray ripping software instead.

Whatever, you can rip Blu-ray with Handbrake and its professional alternative from the following paragraphs. No matter you want to digitalize or backup Blu-ray content, you can get the complete tutorial here. Just read and follow.

Part 1: How to Rip Unprotected Blu-ray with Handbrake

Handbrake is a well-known transcoder available for DVD and Blu-ray ripping. You can rip Blu-ray movies with HandBrake and save it as MKV or MP4 format. There are some Handbrake Blu-ray settings you can use.

However, Handbrake cannot rip decrypted commercial Blu-ray movies. Even though you install libdvdcss to remove DRM from Blu-ray, the Handbrake Blu-ray ripping success rate is still not high. In a word, you had better use Handbrake to rip Blu-ray without copy protection.

Before ripping Blu-ray with Handbrake, you need to prepare an external Blu-ray reader. Actually, the disc drive in your computer can read DVD only. You need to use a Blu-ray reader to rip Blu-ray discs.

Step 1: Download and install the latest Handbrake software. Put your Blu-ray disc into the external Blu-ray reader that can be read by your computer.

Step 2: Unfold the Source list on the top left corner of the Handbrake window. Choose your Blu-ray disc from the drop-down list. Handbrake will scan the inserted Blu-ray disc immediately.

Step 3: Click Browse next to Destination to change the output folder for Blu-ray movies. Make sure there is enough storage space, especially when you want to use Handbrake to rip Blu-ray with high resolution.

Step 4: Unfold Container under Output Settings. You can rip Blu-ray to MKV or MP4 with Handbrake.

Step 5: Switch to the Pictures section to adjust Handbrake Blu-ray ripping settings. Here you can keep the full resolution of Blu-ray movies. Use Cropping to crop a Blu-ray video to the custom display size. Moreover, you can head to Filters, Videos, Audios and Subtitles to change Blu-ray video and audio settings.

Step 6: After customizing Handbrake Blu-ray settings, click Start on the top toolbar to convert Blu-ray with Handbrake in HD quality.

Note: The Handbrake Blu-ray ripping process takes a long time. Because Handbrake need to decode Blu-ray M2TS video and then encode it to the MKV or MP4 format. Thus, you had better plug your computer into the power source while ripping Blu-ray disc with Handbrake.

Part 2: How to Rip Protected Blu-ray with Handbrake Alternative

Then how about converting Blu-ray discs with DRM protection? To rip commercial Blu-ray to compatible formats, it is highly recommended to use Vidmore Blu-ray Monster as your best Handbrake alternative. You can easily rip a copy-protected Blu-ray movie to a video or audio file with no quality loss. Thus, you can watch your Blu-ray collection on any device, regardless of the region restriction and disc kind. Moreover, Vidmore Blu-ray Monster also provides a built-in video editor. You can edit and personalize Blu-ray movies as you wish.

1. Rip Blu-ray disc and folder to all 4K and 1080p video formats and common audio formats, as well as optimized presets.
2. Remove DRM protection from all Blu-ray discs automatically.
3. Extract audio streams from your Blu-ray movie.
4. Keep 100% original quality and structure while converting Blu-ray movies.
5. 6x faster Blu-ray ripping speed than Handbrake.
6. Edit Blu-ray movies by clipping, merging, cropping, rotating, adding watermark and adjusting Blu-ray effects.
7. Safe, clean and intuitive interface.

Step 1: Download and install Vidmore Blu-ray Monster. Insert your Blu-ray disc into the external Blu-ray drive. Then connect it with your computer.

Step 2: Choose Load Blu-ray Disc from the Load Blu-ray dropping-down list. Choose the name of your Blu-ray disc to load the Blu-ray content.

Step 3: If you see the Blu-ray main movie only, you can click View/Select Title to access all small videos within the Blu-ray disc. Select the preferred Blu-ray title and click OK to confirm.

Step 4: MKV lossless is the default output format for Blu-ray ripping. If you want to edit and convert Blu-ray to other formats, you can select the target format from all listed videos. It is supported to convert Blu-ray movies to different output formats at the same time. Click Settings to adjust Blu-ray profile settings.

Step 5: To edit a Blu-ray video, you can click the scissor or magic stick icon on the right side of your Blu-ray file. Here you can edit and preview Blu-ray segment freely.

Step 6: Click Rip All to rip Blu-ray to HD MKV, MP4 or other formats. The Blu-ray conversion can be finished in a short time.

Part 3: The Comparison of Handbrake and Vidmore Blu-ray Monster

Whether to rip a Blu-ray disc with Handbrake or Vidmore Blu-ray Monster is a hard question. If you have no idea what you can get from the above Blu-ray ripping software, you can get the direct comparison from the following list.

Briefly speaking, you can rip encrypted Blu-ray discs with Vidmore Blu-ray Monster only. Both old and new Blu-ray discs can be decrypted and converted to any video or audio format. if you want to keep the original quality of your Blu-ray files, Handbrake is not a good choice. Because Handbrake will compress the ripped MKV files automatically. The Handbrake Blu-ray video quality will be reduced.

Furthermore, Vidmore Blu-ray Monster has 6x faster speed than Handbrake on Blu-ray ripping. If you want to save time on converting Blu-ray discs, you can use Vidmore Blu-ray Monster to rip all kinds of Blu-ray discs at fast speed while keeping a low CPU usage. You can also get more customizable Blu-ray converting and editing features from the program.

That’s all to rip Blu-ray with Handbrake. You can extract Blu-ray movie to MP4 or MKV format for playback on portable devices. If you want to rip the Blu-ray discs bought from online and local stores, you need to use professional Blu-ray ripper software instead of Handbrake. Handbrake does not support the decryption of Blu-ray discs directly. All in all, you can download Handbrake and Vidmore Blu-ray Monster to digitalize your Blu-ray collection without limitation right now.