Stress-free Guide - How to Rip Blu-ray with HandBrake

Updated on Jan 26, 2024

Now everyone should have a ton of Blu-ray discs, we all know that many Blu-ray discs come with digital copies. However, those digital copies that belong to you are subject to expiration after a while, and if you don't take action before the deadline, you'll lose the opportunity to get them. In this case, you have to resort to third-party tools. HandBrake must be the first choice for many people, isn't it?

Part 1. Can HandBrake Rip Blu-ray Discs?

Part 2. How to Rip DRM-free Blu-ray with HandBrake?

Part 3. Can I Rip Commercial Blu-ray Discs with HandBrake?

Can HandBrake Rip Blu-ray Discs?

Rip Blu-ray with HandBrake

Just as VLC will come to most people's minds when speaking of a media player, HandBrake, needless to say, is the most acclaimed video transcoder. Beyond that, many people even use HandBrake as a free DVD ripping program, so the question arises, does HandBrake rip Blu-ray?

Definitely! It has stated clearly in HandBrake Documentation that HandBrake has an exceptional ability to rip DVDs as well as Blu-ray discs. However, quite a few people may overlook the most important information "HandBrake does not defeat or circumvent copy protection of any kind", which means, it only works with recorded/burnt/homemade Blu-ray disks. In the following article, I'll show you how to rip Blu-ray with HandBrake.

How to Rip DRM-free Blu-ray with HandBrake?

Handbrake Rip Blu-ray

For those unprotected Blu-ray discs, HandBrake offers the native support scan and rip them. First of all, update HandBrake to the latest version from the official website. Then follow simple steps below.

Step 1. Insert your DRM-free Blu-ray disc into the BD-ROM Drive. Then launch the HandBrake Blu-ray ripper.

Step 2. Choose BD drive in Source Selection to load your Blu-ray Disc. Please be patient with this procedure as it may take a while to scan the Blu-ray.

Step 3. When the scanning is complete, navigate to Title section and select your desired title you want to rip in the drop-down list. Generally, you may want to select the longest title. Also, you can rip multiple episodes by using "Add to Queue" feature on the top-bar.

Blu-ray HandBrake

Step 4. Select MP4, MKV or WebM as the output video format under the Summary tab. For experienced users, you're able to customize video resolution, deinterlace video, change video/audio encoder, add subtitle, etc. under other tabs.

Step 5. Then select one of presets on the right side for general, web, device or production usage based on your need.

Step 6. Finally, click on Browse button at the bottom to specific a destination folder to save the ripped video file. Then hit the green Start Encode button on top of HandBrake to start the Blu-ray ripping process. It will cost a lot of time since Blu-ray is always oversize. You can see the ripping process on the bottom and wait for its finish.

Can I Rip Commercial Blu-ray Discs with HandBrake?

Most commercial Blu-ray discs are protected by several layers of digital rights management. Compared with DVD CSS and other encryption methods, AACS, BD+ and other copyright protection on Blu-ray discs are much tougher. Unfortunately, HandBrake itself cannot rip commercial Blu-ray, it may display "No valid source or titles found" error message if you import encrypted Blu-ray. But you can achieve your goal with the help of MakeMKV and HandBrake combination. MakeMKV plays a major role in removing the Blu-ray DRM and creating a full-size copy. HandBrake, in this case, is just responsible for format conversion and video compression.

Disclaimer: The following content is offered to back up your own purchased Blu-ray discs ONLY for convenient playback and fair use. WonderFox doesn't advocate ripping copyrighted Blu-ray to illegally sell, distribute and any commercial purpose.

Rip Blu-ray in MakeMKV

Step 1. Insert your commercial Blu-ray disc into BD-ROM Drive.

Step 2. Download and install MakeMKV on your computer. It's a totally free program and you can always get temporary beta key every month on this forum page.

Step 3. Launch MakeMKV, select your BD-ROM Drive and press the big "Open Blu-ray disc" button to scan and process Blu-ray titles automatically for a little while.

Step 4. After that, MakeMKV will list all available titles that contain videos, audio and subtitles on the left side. You can mark the checkboxes according to your preference. I always select the main title to remove those redundant ads, previews, trailers, etc...

Step 5. On the right side, set an output folder to save the ripped movie file. Make sure there is enough space on the local drive, because a Blu-ray movie is usually over 20GB in file size. Finally, hit the "Make MKV" button to rip Blu-ray to MKV. The process is expected to be a bit long based on various reasons, such as PC configuration, BD drive speed and Blu-ray Disc size, etc. Please be patient.

At last...

After the ripping process, you'll get a large-size MKV file. You can keep it if you don't mind the drive capacity, otherwise, you can compress video with HandBrake into a reasonable file size. The presets in General are recommended for general use. That's the whole tutorial on how to rip Blu-ray with HandBrake, have you got it? If there is any problem in the process, you're welcomed to contact us.

How to & Tips

Stress-free Guide - How to Rip Blu-ray with HandBrake

Can HandBrake Rip Blu-ray Discs?

How to Rip DRM-free Blu-ray with HandBrake?

Can I Rip Commercial Blu-ray Discs with HandBrake?