The Ultimate Guide to Rip and Convert Blu-ray Disc with HandBrake

If you want to rip Blu-ray movies to digital devices, or back up them on computer, HandBrake is the open-source free Blu-ray ripper to convert Blu-ray files to video formats or presets for Apple devices.

The article shares the detailed process for ripping Blu-ray with HandBrake, just read on the article to get the desired information now.

• Part 1. What You’ll Need to Rip Blu-ray
• Part 2. How to Rip Blu-ray Movies with HandBrake
• Part 3. Why Can’t Rip Blu-ray Discs in HandBrake
• Part 4. Best HandBrake Alternative to Rip Blu-ray for Free
• Part 5. Comparison between HandBrake and Alternative
• Part 6. FAQs of Ripping Blu-ray with HandBrake

Part 1. What You’ll Need to Rip Blu-ray

You had better make some preparations before starting ripping to ensure a successful conversion. Just read the following notices to check whether your computer is well-prepared to rip Blu-ray.

1. Verify Blu-ray Drive Compatibility

Make sure that your computer has a Blu-ray drive and that your Blu-ray drive is compatible with your computer. Only in this way can the computer read the disc on the drive.

2. Check Disc Encryption.

Check the type of your Blu-ray disc and assess whether it is encrypted and protected. Only a few rippers can handle encrypted discs, so it’s crucial to select a region-free ripper if your Blu-ray disc has protection measures in place.

3. Select a Blu-ray Ripping Software.

Choose a Blu-ray ripper after verifying the type of your Blu-ray, and you can also take a comprehensive consideration of its output formats, output quality, menu formats, conversion speed, price, etc.

4. Check Available Storage Space.

Make sure that your computer has enough space to store the converted Blu-ray copies. Blu-ray files can be large, especially at higher resolutions.

5. Stable internet connection

Some rippers may require a stable internet connection for activation or to fetch the latest decryption keys. You should ensure that your computer is well connected to the internet.

Part 2. How to Rip Blu-ray Movies with HandBrake

The latest version of HandBrake Blu-ray Ripper 1.2.0 was released in December 2018, which added hardware acceleration support for NVENC and AMD VCE. Moreover, there are more presets for HEVC MKV, 4K TVs, and other website formats. Here is the detailed process of using HandBrake to rip Blu-ray movies, as shown below.

Step 1.Install HandBrake

Install HandBrake Blu-ray Ripper. This software is compatible with both Windows and Mac computers, and you can install either version as you like. Here, we will take HandBrake for PC as an example to show you the detailed steps. For ripping Blu-ray with HandBrake on Mac, the steps work similarly.

Insert your Blu-ray disc into the Blu-ray drive on your computer. Launch the program, and your Blu-ray file will shown on the left side of the screen. Click it to load your Blu-ray.

Note: After that, the program can scan the whole Blu-ray movie. It takes about 15 minutes for a BD25 Blu-ray disc and 30 minutes for a BD50 one.

Step 2. Select MKV or MP4 for Blu-ray

After loading a disc, a window will automatically pop up, and the basic information of your Blu-ray is analyzed, including Title, Angle, Range, and Duration. You can check detailed information on your Blu-ray here.

Click the drop-down list of “Format” to choose MKV, MP4, or WebM for the original Blu-ray. Go to “Destination” and click “Browse” to select the destination folder for the Blu-ray movie. Make sure there is enough space for the output file.

Step 3. Edit Blu-ray optionally

You can make the settings for the output video and audio format. Here, you can adjust the “Dimensions,” “Filters,” “Video,” “Audio,” “Subtitle,” and “Chapter” for ripping Blu-ray movies with HandBrake.

Step 4. Rip Blu-ray to MKV/MP4 in HandBrake

After all settings are well done, click the “Start” button on the top bar to rip the Blu-ray disc to MP4 or MKV with HandBrake. You can click the same button again to stop the ripping. It will take a period of time to convert Blu-ray M2TS video to the chosen high-quality video format. After that, you can enjoy the movies on any digital device.

HandBrake can rip Blu-ray discs. However, it cannot rip any encrypted Blu-ray files. Moreover, the output formats are limited to MP4 (.M4V) and MKV. To rip these files, you have to install the Blu-ray decrypter for HandBrake, “libdvdcss” add-on, which is another story.

Part 3. Why Can’t Rip Blu-ray Discs in HandBrake

Ripping Blu-ray discs can be challenging for several reasons, and the failure to rip Blu-ray discs might be due to one or more of the following factors:

1. Encryption and Copy Protection.

Most commercial Blu-ray discs are encrypted and protected to prevent unauthorized copying. Ripping software needs to decrypt these discs. However, not all software has the ability to do so, such as HandBrake and MakeMKV. Therefore, the reason your HandBrake can’t rip Blu-ray is that your Blu-ray is encrypted. You can choose a ripper that is not limited to encryption and copy protection, like the Free Blu-ray Ripper.

2. Lack of Decryption Libraries.

Some ripping software relies on external decryption libraries, such as libdvdcss for DVDs. If the software you’re using lacks the necessary decryption libraries for Blu-ray, it won’t be able to decrypt and rip the content.

3. Unsupported Formats.

Some Blu-ray discs may use formats or codecs that are not supported by the ripping software. Different discs may have varying encryption methods and structures.

4. Outdated Software.

Ripping software may need updates to support the latest encryption methods. If your software is outdated, it might not be able to handle newer Blu-ray discs.

Part 4. Best HandBrake Alternative to Rip Blu-ray for Free

When you want to convert the Blu-ray movies with a high quality or even convert 3D Blu-ray movies for most of the devices, you can also find the best free Blu-ray ripper alternative. Free Blu-ray Ripper is a free and all-in-one Blu-ray ripper that convert and rip any type of Blu-ray movies to over 300 formats.

Moreover, you can benefit from the following points:

• Convert Blu-ray with the desired video and audio settings.
• Rip Blu-ray movies from 4K, 3D and other common video formats.
• Support various video codecs, H.265 (x265 and QuickSync), H.264(x264 and QuickSync), H.265 MPEG-4 and MPEG-2, VP8, VP9, etc.
• Edit Blu-ray movies before ripping like rotate, clip, merge, edit subtitle, audio tracks, etc.
• Rip Blu-ray to devices directly like Xbox 360, PS4, Wii, YouTube, iPad, Android, etc.

Step 1. Load Blu-ray movies to Free Blu-ray Ripper

Download and install the free Blu-Ray ripper as the HandBrake alternative. Launch the program and click the “Load Blu-Ray” button to load the Blu-Ray disc into the program. You can also preview the Blu-Ray movies within the program directly.

Step 2. Select output format for Blu-ray

After that you can click the “Profile” button to choose MP4, MKV, MOV, AVI, or other device presets from the drop-down list. Click the “Settings” to adjust the video codec, bitrate, resolution and more other settings to get the best output video files.

Step 3. Rip encrypted Blu-ray movies

When you confirm all the details, you can choose the destination folder and click the “Convert” button to rip Blu-Ray movies into a digital video format. The Handbrake Blu-Ray ripper alternative uses hardware acceleration to make sure you can get the videos within a short period.

You can also use Blu-ray Master Blu-ray Ripper to rip your encrypted Blu-ray. The pro version can rip Blu-ray movies to any 2D and 3D video and supports exporting videos in 1080p and 4K. Batch conversion is allowed, and it can save much time if you have many Blu-rays to convert.

You can follow 3 easy steps to rip your encrypted Blu-ray without quality loss.

Step 1. Install and launch Blu-ray Ripper from the official website on your computer. Insert your Blu-ray disc into the Blu-ray drive on the computer. Click “Load Blu-ray” to load the Blu-ray disc you want to rip.

Step 2. Choose the format you need by clicking on the drop-down list button.

Step 3.Click the “Rip All” button to begin your ripping.

Part 5. Comparison between HandBrake and Alternative

What should be the major differences between HandBrake and the free Blu-ray ripper alternative? Just check out the details from the comparison chart as below before you can make a decision.

When you upgrade to the HandBrake Blu-ray alternative, you can also convert the Blu-ray movies to 4K video formats, apply the 3D mode for the output video, edit the videos with multiple excellent features and more. It should always be a nice choice if you need to convert and rip a large amount of Blu-ray discs.

Part 6. FAQs of Ripping Blu-ray with HandBrake

• Can I rip a Blu-ray with a DVD drive?

  You can rip DVD or CD with a Blu-ray drive, but you cannot rip Blu-ray with a DVD drive.

• How to extract subtitles from Blu-ray with HandBrake?

  HandBrake does not support encrypted Blu-ray ripping, and you can follow the steps below to extract the subtitles from Blu-ray with HandBrake. Step 1. Open HandBrake and click Source to add Blu-ray disc. Step 2. Go to the Subtitles tab and select the subtitle language and set the output directory. Step 3. Click Start Encode to rip the subtitles from Blu-ray with HandBrake. But you should notice that HandBrake can only read Blu-ray PGS soft subtitles and you extract only one subtitle from MP4 and multiple PGS subtitles from MKV.

• What are the best settings for HandBrake ripping a DVD?

  One of the most important elements of ripping a DVD you should notice is the video size. For reducing the video size to store on your computer or upload online, you should select MPEG-4 from Handbrake supported H.264, H.265, MPEG-4 and MPEG-2 encoders. Surely, you do not mind the file size, just select the best video quality by using the H.264 codec.

• Can Handbrake convert Blu-ray to DVD?

  No. HandBrake can only help you rip Blu-ray and DVD to the digital formats. For converting Blu-ray to DVD, you should need another DVD burner to create the ripped Bly-ray files into DVD. Read the detailed guide to convert Blu-ray to DVD.

Wrapping up

It is a tutorial about how to rip Blu-ray movies with HandBrake and best alternative. As an open-source Blu-ray ripper, you can find many limited features and filters, especially for the protection Blu-ray discs. When you want more features, Free Blu-ray Ripper is the choice you have to take into consideration.