Guide · Discs

How to rip your DVDs, Blu-rays and 4K discs: a plain-English guide

Ripping means copying a film from a disc you own into a file on your computer. Done right, the file looks and sounds exactly like the disc. This guide is for someone who has never done it. It uses MakeMKV, the tool most people use for this, and works the same for DVDs, Blu-rays and 4K UHD discs.

Copying discs you own is legal in some countries and not in others. Check the rules where you live.

The short answer

Get a drive that reads your discs, and install MakeMKV.
Put the disc in, open it in MakeMKV, and tick only the main film (usually the longest title).
Keep your language's best sound track, your subtitles and the forced subtitles.
Click Make MKV. Expect 20 minutes to 2 hours and 5 to 90 GB, depending on the disc.
Rename the file to Title (Year).mkv, put it in a folder of the same name, and play it.

What you need

A computer, a drive, MakeMKV and some disk space. The drive is the one part that differs by disc type.

	DVD	Blu-ray	4K UHD Blu-ray
Drive	Any DVD or Blu-ray drive	Any Blu-ray drive	Only some drives. See below.
MakeMKV	Free, and stays free	Free during the beta, with the beta key	Free during the beta, with the beta key
Space per film	About 4–8 GB	About 20–40 GB	About 50–90 GB
Time per film	About 15–30 min	About 30–90 min	About 45 min to 2 hours
Internet	Not needed	Helps with new discs	Needed, for the disc's key

Sizes and times are rough. A longer film is bigger, a scratched disc is slower, and an external USB drive is often slower than one inside the computer. On a slow drive a Blu-ray can take as long as the film itself.

MakeMKV and its key

MakeMKV runs on Windows, macOS and Linux. Its home page says opening DVDs is free and will stay free, and that everything else, Blu-ray included, is free while the program is in beta. The beta has been running for many years. For Blu-ray and 4K discs you enter a beta key, which MakeMKV posts in a pinned forum post and replaces from time to time. You can also buy a key that does not expire. The beta version itself stops working after 60 days; installing the newest version resets that.

A drive for 4K UHD discs

This is where beginners get caught. A 4K disc needs a drive that MakeMKV can switch into what it calls LibreDrive mode. Many Blu-ray drives, even ones sold as "4K" or "UHD", cannot do that as they come from the factory. Which models work changes with each firmware version, so this guide names none.

Before you buy, check the UHD drive list on MakeMKV's forum, kept by its members. As a beginner, pick one listed as working with no changes needed. Two things the list warns about: the same model number can come with different firmware, so ask on the forum if unsure, and some USB cases for drives stop LibreDrive from working. Once a drive is connected, MakeMKV shows its LibreDrive status in the information pane on its main screen.

4K discs also need MakeMKV to be online. It fetches the key for each disc from the internet, so leave Enable Internet access ticked (View → Preferences → General).

Disk space

Rip to a disk with room for the whole file plus some spare. If you use a USB drive or stick, it must not be formatted as FAT32: that format cannot hold files over 4 GB. exFAT or NTFS on Windows, and ext4 on Linux, are fine. Rip to a disk inside or plugged into the computer, not straight to a network drive: it is faster and less likely to fail halfway. Copy the finished file over afterwards.

Step by step

The drawings below are simplified sketches. MakeMKV's real window looks different, but the parts are the same.

Install MakeMKV

Download it from makemkv.com and install it. On Windows the beta needs to run as administrator. For Blu-ray or 4K discs, open Help → Register and paste in the beta key.

One setting is worth changing first: View → Preferences → General → Expert mode. It shows more about each title and track, which helps with the next steps.
Put the disc in and open it

Start MakeMKV with the disc in the drive. Click the big drive picture. MakeMKV reads the disc and lists every title on it. This can take a minute or two, longer for a 4K disc. Wait for the list to appear.
Tick only the main film

Each title is something the disc can play: the film, the extras, trailers, short menu clips. Click the box beside a title to untick it. A quick way: right-click the list and choose Unselect all, then tick one title: the main film, which is usually the longest, with the most chapters and the biggest size. If several look the same, read Picking the right title.
Choose the sound and subtitles

Click the small arrow beside the ticked title to open it. Inside are the video, the sound tracks and the subtitles. Keep the best sound in your language, the subtitles you read, and the forced subtitles. Untick the rest. The keep or skip table says which is which.
Choose a folder and click Make MKV

Under Output folder, pick a disk with enough free space. Click Make MKV. The progress bar shows how far it has got. Leave the computer awake until it says the copy is done. You can use it for other things meanwhile.
Rename it and put it in place

MakeMKV names the file after the disc, something like DISC_NAME_t00.mkv. Rename it to the film's title and year, and give it a folder of the same name. With Expert mode on, you can also type the name into the title's name field before ripping. Then add the folder that holds your films to your player. Naming and folders has the details.

This kind of copy is called a remux. The video and sound are copied as they are, not re-encoded, so nothing is lost. Only the container changes, from the disc's own format to MKV, which keeps the chapters and the name of each track's language.

Before you put the disc away, play the file and skip through it: the length should match the film, the scenes should follow one another, and the sound should be in sync.

Picking the right title

A disc holds more than the film. MakeMKV hides very short clips by default (anything under two minutes; this is in Preferences → Video), but you will still see the film, the extras and sometimes other versions of the film.

The usual case

Pick the longest title. It almost always has the most chapters and the biggest size too. Click a title and the information pane shows its length, chapters and size.

More than one long title

Some discs carry two cuts of the film, such as the cinema version and an extended one, or a version with the credits in another language. Their lengths differ by a few minutes. The case often gives the running time, and dvdcompare.net lists the cuts and lengths of most discs. You can rip both: each one becomes its own file.

Two long titles with the same length are often the same film with different credits or different language choices, for other countries. Either works if you do not need those languages. On discs from one big studio, playlist 00800.mpls is usually the English version.

Dozens of titles with the same length

Some Blu-rays, from a few studios, hide the real film among many fakes. This is called playlist obfuscation. Every fake has the same length and size as the real film, but plays the scenes in the wrong order, so a rip of a fake jumps around or ends in the wrong place.

What helps, in order:

Let MakeMKV find it. If Java is installed on the computer, MakeMKV can often work out the real title from the disc's menus. It then puts it first in the list and marks it as the main feature.
Look it up. Click each title and note the playlist file name the information pane shows, such as 00800.mpls. Search MakeMKV's forum or the web for the film's name with "playlist". Someone has usually posted the right one. Go by the playlist file name, not the title number: the numbers can change with MakeMKV's settings.
Check after ripping. Play the file and skip through it. The scenes should follow one another, and the film should end with its credits.

Which sound and subtitles to keep

Discs carry many sound and subtitle tracks. Subtitles are tiny, so keeping a few costs nothing. Sound tracks are bigger; a lossless one can be several gigabytes.

Track	Keep?	Why
The best sound in your language: TrueHD (often with Atmos), DTS-HD Master Audio (sometimes DTS:X) or LPCM	Keep	This is the disc's full-quality sound. It is the reason to rip rather than stream.
A plain track in the same language: Dolby Digital (AC3) or DTS	Your choice	A fallback for devices that cannot play the lossless one. MakeMKV often shows it tucked under the lossless track, because the lossless track carries it inside. Ticking both gives you two separate tracks.
On a DVD: the Dolby Digital track in your language	Keep	DVDs have no lossless sound. This is the best there is.
Other languages	Your choice	Keep the ones someone at home listens to.
Commentary	Your choice	Small, and some people love them.
Audio description	Skip	Unless someone at home uses it.
Subtitles in the languages you read	Keep	Tiny, and the disc's own subtitles are timed exactly to it.
Forced subtitles ("forced only")	Keep	See below. Without them, some lines go untranslated.
Subtitles in languages nobody reads	Skip	Harmless, but they make the subtitle menu long.

Forced subtitles, explained

Some films have a few lines meant to be read even with subtitles off: a character speaking another language, or a sign or letter that needs translating. Those lines are called forced subtitles. On the disc they are often mixed in with the full subtitles and only marked as forced.

MakeMKV can split them into a track of their own, named something like "forced only". Keep that track. A good player shows it on its own when subtitles are off. Some discs put forced lines in a separate, unmarked track instead; then MakeMKV cannot tell, and a small subtitle track in your own language is the clue.

TV series discs

A series disc usually shows each episode as its own title, all of similar length. Tick the episodes and leave the extras out. Some things to watch for:

A "play all" title. Many series discs also have one long title holding every episode in a row. Skip it: you already have the episodes one by one.
Which titles. Look for as many titles as the disc has episodes, with similar lengths, chapter counts and sizes.
The order. MakeMKV lists titles in the order they sit on the disc. That is normally episode order, but not always. Check the lengths against the booklet or an episode guide.
Several discs per season. Keep counting across discs. If disc 1 ends at episode 4, disc 2 starts at S01E05.
All episodes in one title. A few discs, mostly DVDs, have the whole disc as one title with chapters. You can rip it and split it by chapter afterwards with MKVToolNix, which is free.

Rename each file to the show's name with the season and episode number, such as Example Show S01E01.mkv.

Naming and folders

Media players work out what a file is from its folder and file name. Name it badly, and the player shows the wrong poster or none. The layout below works in Kinema, Jellyfin, Plex and Kodi alike.

A film: Films/Example Film (2019)/Example Film (2019).mkv
An episode: TV/Example Show/Season 01/Example Show S01E01.mkv
Two cuts of one film can sit in the same folder, for example Example Film (2019) - Extended.mkv.
Keep films and series in separate top folders. Players handle them differently.

The year matters: it tells two films of the same name apart. The full rules, including what Kinema does with release-style names, are in How Kinema reads file names.

Watching the result

Any good player can play an MKV. Where they differ is how much of the disc's picture and sound reaches your screen and speakers. We make Kinema, a free, open-source library and player for Windows, Linux and (early) Android TV, built for exactly these files:

Point it at your folder and it does the rest. Posters, descriptions and where you stopped. Files it is not sure about wait in a Needs attention list instead of getting a wrong poster.
The sound reaches your receiver untouched. Atmos, DTS:X and TrueHD go to an AV receiver as they are, when the receiver takes them. Kinema asks about this on the first run.
Forced subtitles show with subtitles off, in the language being spoken.
It says what it is doing. The film's page shows what the file holds (resolution, HDR format, the exact sound format), read from the file itself. Press i while playing to see what the picture and sound are doing.
No server and no account. One program on the computer connected to your TV.

If you would rather stream to phones and other rooms from one server, Jellyfin and Plex do that. If you want a full media centre with add-ons, there is Kodi. All three play these files too.

Download Kinema

When something goes wrong

MakeMKV says it is too old, or has expired.: The beta stops after 60 days. Download and install the newest version from makemkv.com. If it then asks for a key, take the current one from the forum post.
MakeMKV does not see the drive.: On Windows, start MakeMKV as administrator. For an external drive, try another USB port and the drive's own power supply if it has one. Then restart MakeMKV with the disc already in.
A 4K disc will not open, or opens with errors.: Look at the information pane with the drive selected. If LibreDrive is not shown as enabled, this drive cannot read 4K discs for MakeMKV. The UHD drive list says which can. Blu-rays and DVDs still work in it.
The rip stops with read errors, or says 0 titles saved.: Look at the messages just above. Words like "medium error" or "uncorrectable read error" mean the drive could not read the disc: clean it with a soft cloth, wiping from the centre outwards, and try again. Some damaged discs read in one drive and not another, and some never rip at all. Messages about AACS mean a problem with the disc's protection instead; see the next item.
It says the disc's key is unknown, or it cannot decrypt a new disc.: Install the newest MakeMKV and check that Enable Internet access is ticked. For 4K discs, MakeMKV fetches each disc's key online. A brand-new disc may not have one yet; the disc's thread on MakeMKV's forum usually says when it works.
A 4K disc stops reading after it sat in the drive for a while.: Some drives go to sleep after about two minutes and then cannot read a 4K disc. Open and close the tray, and start again.
The film jumps around or ends in the wrong place.: You ripped a fake playlist. See Dozens of titles with the same length.
A foreign-language scene has no subtitles.: The forced subtitles were not kept, or the player does not show them on their own. Rip the title again with the "forced only" track ticked.
There is sound on the receiver but not on the TV or headphones, or the other way round.: Your device cannot play the lossless track. Switch to the fallback track in the player, if you kept one, or try a player that can decode it.
The copy fails near the end of a large file.: The output disk is full, or it is FAT32 and the file is over 4 GB. Use a disk with more room, formatted as exFAT, NTFS or ext4.
The player shows the wrong film, or none.: Check the file and folder names against Naming and folders. Add the year. In Kinema, the Needs attention list lets you pick the right film by hand.

For enthusiasts

None of this is needed to rip a disc well. It is here for when you want to know more.

Dolby Vision on 4K discs: profile 7, FEL and MEL

A 4K disc's picture is HDR10, and often Dolby Vision as well. Most Dolby Vision discs use profile 7: an HDR10 picture, the base layer, plus a second layer with the Dolby Vision information, the enhancement layer. MakeMKV keeps both in the MKV.

The second layer comes in two kinds. A MEL (minimal enhancement layer) carries only the Dolby Vision instructions. A FEL (full enhancement layer) also carries picture data that adds to the base layer. Few devices outside disc players can use a FEL fully.

Where the device has no decoder for profile 7, Kinema plays the HDR10 base layer and says so in the playback details. It never claims a Dolby Vision picture it did not show. The film's page names the profile, and for profile 7 whether it is FEL or MEL. Those badges need ffmpeg, an optional extra installed separately (on Windows Kinema can do it with one press).

HDR10+

HDR10+ is a rival to Dolby Vision, used on some discs. Its scene-by-scene information sits inside the video itself, so a remux keeps it with no extra step. Whether you see it depends on the TV and the player. Kinema's playback details name the file's HDR format, HDR10+ included.

Keep the remux, or compress it with HandBrake?

A remux keeps everything and takes the most space. HandBrake can shrink a file to a fraction of the size by re-encoding it, but that always throws some detail away, takes hours per film, and can drop Dolby Vision and lossless sound unless you set it up with care. HandBrake does not read protected discs itself, so you would still rip with MakeMKV first.

Compress if space is the problem, for example films for a laptop. For a home cinema, many people keep the remux: disks are cheaper than ripping a collection twice. Kinema plays both.

Backups

A collection of remuxes takes days of ripping to build. Keep a second copy on another disk, ideally in another place. Two disks inside one computer, or a RAID, protect against one disk failing, not against a mistake, a theft or a fire.

If you want the whole disc, menus and all, MakeMKV's Backup button copies it unchanged into a folder (tick "Decrypt video files"). Kinema plays such a folder, or an .iso of a Blu-ray, as one film on Windows and Linux, without the menus. An MKV is still the simplest: it plays everywhere.

Questions

Is MakeMKV free?

Ripping DVDs is free and, according to MakeMKV's site, will stay free. Blu-ray and 4K UHD ripping are free while MakeMKV is in beta, with a beta key that MakeMKV posts on its forum and replaces from time to time. You can also buy a key. The beta version stops working after 60 days; installing the latest version resets that.

How long does it take to rip a Blu-ray?

Roughly 30 to 90 minutes for a Blu-ray film, 15 to 30 minutes for a DVD, and 45 minutes to 2 hours for a 4K UHD disc. The drive's reading speed decides most of it: on a slow USB drive a Blu-ray can take as long as the film. A scratched disc is slower still.

How big is a ripped Blu-ray or 4K file?

A film from a DVD is about 4 to 8 GB, from a Blu-ray about 20 to 40 GB, and from a 4K UHD disc about 50 to 90 GB. It depends on the film's length and how many sound tracks you keep.

Do I lose quality when I rip with MakeMKV?

No. MakeMKV copies the video and sound as they are into an MKV file. Nothing is re-encoded. This kind of copy is called a remux.

Can any Blu-ray drive rip 4K UHD discs?

No. MakeMKV needs a drive it can put in LibreDrive mode to read 4K UHD discs, and many drives cannot do that out of the box. MakeMKV's forum keeps the current lists of drives that work. Check there before buying a drive. MakeMKV also needs internet access to fetch each 4K disc's key.

Why does my Blu-ray show dozens of titles of the same length?

Some discs hide the real film among many fake copies, called playlist obfuscation. The fakes play the same scenes in the wrong order. If Java is installed, MakeMKV can often spot the real one and mark it. Otherwise, the film's thread on MakeMKV's forum usually names the right playlist file (for example 00800.mpls), which MakeMKV shows in the info pane for each title.

What are forced subtitles?

Forced subtitles are the few lines meant to show even when subtitles are off, such as when a character speaks another language or a sign needs translating. MakeMKV can put them in a track of their own, marked forced only. Keep that track.

Should I compress my rips with HandBrake?

Only if you are short of space. Compressing takes hours per film, loses some detail, and can drop Dolby Vision and lossless sound unless set up carefully. Disk space is cheap compared with ripping a collection twice, so many people keep the remux.

Is ripping my own discs legal?

It depends on where you live. Copying discs you own for your own use is allowed in some countries and not in others, often because breaking the copy protection is not allowed. Check the rules where you live.

Can Kinema play the disc or the BDMV folder directly?

A folder holding a disc's BDMV, and an .iso of a Blu-ray, play as one film: the main film, with chapters and the languages of the sound and subtitle tracks, but no disc menus. A .m2ts file also plays. A disc that is still encrypted is not played; Kinema says so. Folders and .iso images play on Windows and Linux, not yet on Android TV. An MKV from MakeMKV plays everywhere Kinema does, so it is the simplest choice.

Why is my rip in Needs attention in Kinema?

Kinema was not sure enough which title the file is, and would rather ask than guess. The file name is almost always the reason; see How Kinema reads file names.

Sources and further reading

MakeMKV and its download page: what is free, the 60-day beta, systems supported.
MakeMKV forum: the current beta key.
MakeMKV forum: What is LibreDrive?
MakeMKV forum: the UHD drive guide and list, kept by forum members.
MakeMKV forum FAQ: playlists, series titles, the lossless track's core.
Jellyfin forum: From disc to drive, a thorough beginner's guide to ripping for a library.
dvdcompare.net, for the cuts and running times on a disc.
MKVToolNix, for splitting or editing MKV files afterwards, and HandBrake, for compressing them.

Last checked against MakeMKV 2.0.0, October 2026. If something here is wrong or out of date, please tell us.