Any good freeware alternatives to AnyDVD?

[Videogamer555]

What makes AnyDVD so useful is that it decrypts disks on the fly, by actually running as a driver in your computer so as to make the content of encrypted DVDs readable in normal Windows Explorer. No other DVD decryptors let you do this, at least none that I have found. They are programs that just decrypt the VOBs and then rip the movie portion of the DVDs, and not even by copying the VOB files. Usually they read MPEG2 video and AC3 audio from the VOB files, and automatically run an MP4 video compressor that recompresses the video with h264 codec and recompresses the audio with AAC codec, in order to make smaller files. Unfortunately reencoding inevitably makes a situation where the video and audio are lower quality than the source material.

So directly dumping the files from the DVD directly is much better, and this is possible with AnyDVD. Unfortunately it has a pretty steep price. Now I already bought it, but I hope for the sake of others looking for a good free alternative to AnyDVD, who maybe don't want to spend $100 or more for their DVD ripper, that maybe someone here could recommend an alternative free driver that decrypts DVDs on the fly. Of course, it the would need to be signed by MS (as AnyDVD is), as most people don't want to go through the trouble of making Windows allow unsigned drivers (a process involving booting the computer in an insecure mode by reconfiguring the BIOS settings, and then running a command from the command line to reconfigure Windows to allow test-signed drivers, and then installing MS Visual Studio and using that to test-sign the driver). Hopefully there's already a free MS-signed driver out there that will decrypt DVDs on the fly as they are accessed by any software capable of such access (whether VLC Player for direct disk playback, or Windows Explorer for copying files to your harddrive).

[october262]

have a look at dvdfab or makemkv.

[usually_quiet]

As far as I know, DVDFab Passkey Lite is the only free software for decrypting/copying DVDs which runs in the background as if it were a driver. However, it can't deal with all forms of protection.

DVD Decrypter supposedly still works for making full-disc backups of some DVDs and the free version of DVDFab HD Decrypter sometimes works for making full-disc backups when DVD Decrypter doesn't. MakeMKV can decrypt DVDs but it doesn't make full disc backup. MakeMKV can only create MKV files containing the original video, audio, and subtitles when used for a DVD.

[Ai Haibara]

I noticed Xreveal in the Tools section, recently. It's listed as freeware, but I haven't tried it, so I don't know how well (or if) it works. Apparently, you have to have grabbed the decryption keys or key database from elsewhere to be able to use it.

[fooledagain]

Makemkv is absolutely the best. It does a great job on DVDs and Blu-ray. It's free but I highly suggest paying the $60 bucks for lifetime and getting one of the hackable external blu-ray drives so you can decrypt 4k UHD discs.

[Videogamer555]

Makemkv is absolutely the best. It does a great job on DVDs and Blu-ray. It's free but I highly suggest paying the $60 bucks for lifetime and getting one of the hackable external blu-ray drives so you can decrypt 4k UHD discs.

Is makemkv free? If not, then I'm not really interested. I am hoping to find a free alternative to AnyDVD for full disk backups (either ISOs or directly copying the folder structure).

[Videogamer555]

As far as I know, DVDFab Passkey Lite is the only free software for decrypting/copying DVDs which runs in the background as if it were a driver. However, it can't deal with all forms of protection.

I don't necesarily need it to be a driver so as to allow Windows Explorer to access the content of the disk, but what it does need to do be able to do for sure is itself perform DVD decryption and file copying, so as to allow (even if only from within its own interface) the copying of the folder structure of the DVD to the harddrive, or alternatively dump it all to an ISO (which I can use other software later to extract individual files from the ISO). Can you think of freeware software that would fit that description? And no, I don't mean DVD Decryptor. That doesn't work with most modern DVDs, which have additional types of encryption that it can't handle. And MakeMKV won't work because that only copies the video/audio/subtitle streams from the VOB files into MKV files. Most other DVD ripping software fully transcodes the DVDs to MP4, so those are also out of the question. What I need is something I can recommend to people who want something for copying the exact files off of the DVD to their harddrive. It may or may not be a background driver. That's not important. It's just important to be able to get the files off of the disk, even if Windows Explorer won't be able to do the copying, and instead will depend on the DVD decryption software to do the copying itself.

[usually_quiet]

As far as I know, DVDFab Passkey Lite is the only free software for decrypting/copying DVDs which runs in the background as if it were a driver. However, it can't deal with all forms of protection.

I don't necesarily need it to be a driver so as to allow Windows Explorer to access the content of the disk, but what it does need to do be able to do for sure is itself perform DVD decryption and file copying, so as to allow (even if only from within its own interface) the copying of the folder structure of the DVD to the harddrive, or alternatively dump it all to an ISO (which I can use other software later to extract individual files from the ISO). Can you think of freeware software that would fit that description? And no, I don't mean DVD Decryptor. That doesn't work with most modern DVDs, which have additional types of encryption that it can't handle. And MakeMKV won't work because that only copies the video/audio/subtitle streams from the VOB files into MKV files. Most other DVD ripping software fully transcodes the DVDs to MP4, so those are also out of the question. What I need is something I can recommend to people who want something for copying the exact files off of the DVD to their harddrive. It may or may not be a background driver. That's not important. It's just important to be able to get the files off of the disk, even if Windows Explorer won't be able to do the copying, and instead will depend on the DVD decryption software to do the copying itself.

Sorry. I don't know of anything free that I can guarantee for reliably copying recent DVD releases as files and folders or ISOs. Maybe Xreveal would work but I don't know where to obtain the required decryption libraries or keys.

[october262]

Makemkv is absolutely the best. It does a great job on DVDs and Blu-ray. It's free but I highly suggest paying the $60 bucks for lifetime and getting one of the hackable external blu-ray drives so you can decrypt 4k UHD discs.

Is makemkv free? If not, then I'm not really interested. I am hoping to find a free alternative to AnyDVD for full disk backups (either ISOs or directly copying the folder structure).

MakeMKV is FREE while in beta - https://www.videohelp.com/software/MakeMKV

[fooledagain]

Makemkv is absolutely the best. It does a great job on DVDs and Blu-ray. It's free but I highly suggest paying the $60 bucks for lifetime and getting one of the hackable external blu-ray drives so you can decrypt 4k UHD discs.

Is makemkv free? If not, then I'm not really interested. I am hoping to find a free alternative to AnyDVD for full disk backups (either ISOs or directly copying the folder structure).

MakeMKV is FREE while in beta - https://www.videohelp.com/software/MakeMKV

And it's been in beta for years. I used it free for an embarrassingly long time before purchasing. It's well worth it and the support is excellent.