Sunday, August 25, 2013

User-friendly Blu-ray Ripper: ByteCopy vs DVDfab, Which one is best?

Description: Which is more user-friendly Blu-ray Ripper on the market from three aspect: disc loading, backing up Blu-ray/DVD main movie in m2ts without any quality loss, profile customizing, multiple audio tracks and subtitle streams retaining, srt/ass/ssa subtitle adding, output multi tracks MKV/MP4/MOV and converting. DVDfab? Pavtube ByteCopy? The article will show you.

No matter you are a newbie or professional who wanna get Blu-ray Disc collection backed up to computer hard drive or ripped Blu-ray movies to other video format for playback on new iPad 3, iPad mini, Apple TV 3, Samsung Galaxy Note 2, Galaxy Tab 3, Google Nexus 7, Surface, Kindle Fire HD, etc, it is not easy to find the suitable tool because there is so many on the market.

In below article I compare two most popular and hottest tools on the market from three aspects, disc loading, profile customizing and converting, hope it can help you more or less and you can make a much easier choice.

Prepared tools:
  • DVDFab trial version
  • Pavtube ByteCopy trial version
  • An external Blu-ray Disc drive
  • A Blu-ray Disc (take Avatar for example)



Part 1. Load Blu-ray Disc.

DVDFab: I insert the disc before running DVDFab, and when I open the software it automatically detect the disc and start loading. While it seems like that DVDFab cannot correctly detect the BD region code. My Blu-ray Disc Avatar is region A and region B, while after loading into DVDFab, it shows this disc is from region C by default and I have to manually change to correct region for successful disc loading. 

Meanwhile it takes 3-5 minutes to finish disc loading process, and there is no estimated loading time period so I have no idea how long it will take until it is complete after 5 minutes.

ByteCopy: I installed Pavtube ByteCopy on the same computer and click this "Load Disc" icon to import same Avatar Blu-ray Disc, I do not need to choose BD Region Code or anything else, and it only takes about 10 seconds to finish disc loading. 


Plus, there is a percentage showing the progress of disc loading so I would know when the disc can be successfully imported.

Part 2. Custom profile settings.

1. Disc audio streams and subtitle tracks selection.

DVDFab: The GUI of DVDFab is very fresh and I could easily know the functions of every button, like the "Edit" icon for cropping and resizing source disc, the device image or "Profile" icon for output format settings, the "Advanced Settings" for customizing profile parameters, etc.

But I had trouble finding the icon to selecte subtitle and audio track in the first place, and accidentally I put my mouse on the selected Disc title, now I see the drop-down list of subtitle and audio tracks.

ByteCopy: There are obvious icons on Pavtube GUI so I can easily set up the desired subtitle track and audio stream.

2. Video editing option.

DVDFab offers two video editing options, one is Resize output movie resolution and another is Crop unwanted video black bars.

In ByteCopy Video Editor Tab, I find other options beside crop and resize, including trimming, adding text/image/video watermark, adding video effect, audio editor and attaching srt/ass/ssa subtitles, etc. Meanwhile, on ByteCopy GUI, I am able to merge several video clips into one or split one large movie into several segments.

Part 3. Start conversion.

1. Automatic rename function.

DVDFab: Once complete profile settings, I click the big "Start" button to convert my Avatar Blu-ray. While here comes an error message which shows "The file already existed, do you want to overwrite it?" because I did a similar conversion before. If I choose "Yes", my current ripped movie would overwrite the previous one and the previous ripped movie is gone forever, but if I choose "No", the conversion just aborts and tells me "Process Failed", so weird.

Later I realize that I have to manually rename the movie before starting conversion to avoid this error message again.

ByteCopy: I completely rip this movie without renaming the file and Pavtube ByteCopy does not pop up any similar error, instead it would add a number like 0, 1, 2,…at then end of the output movie name, so I will not loose any of the movies I ripped, this amazes me.

3. Locate output file.

In DVDFab, I cannot find any button that would lead me to the created movie, it means I have to remember to file path I set up then open computer hard drive to look for that file; in Pavtube ByteCopy, it is considerate to put "Open" icon on GUI to locate the ripped movie, or I could click this "Open output folder" on conversion UI as well.

Below is my point of view about these two BD ripping tool, DVDFab and Pavtube ByteCopy, and considering to user-friendly aspect, I prefer Pavtube ByteCopy.

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