“My brother once installed HandBrake and some extra plugins on my computer so that I could rip and convert DVD disc with HandBrake. It did work on any DVD disc I inserted to the disc drive. But yesterday when I tried to rip and convert another DVD disc with HandBrake, I got a notice saying ‘HandBrake libdvdcss not Working’. I have no idea what this is and how I can fix this. Does any one know how to fix HandBrake libdvdcss not working issue? Or is there any alternative to HandBrake in ripping DVD disc? Appreciate for any advice.”
As a free and open-source DVD converter available for multi-platforms like Windows, Mac and Linux, HandBrake might have been the most popular DVD ripping tool in this world. However, we might meet various kinds of issues and problems during HandBrake usage. If you have met the notice like “HandBrake libdvdcss not working”, this guide would be helpful to you. We would like to explain what HandBrake libdvdcss, how it works and how to fix “HandBrake libdvdcss not working” issue.
Part 1. Why you need libdvdcss for HandBrake?
Some people might wonder why we need libdvdcss for HandBrake? Doesn’t HandBrake already be able to rip DVD discs and then convert to MP4/MKV video files? To answer this question, let’s firstly learn what HandBrake is and what HandBrake can do.
Similar to HandBrake, MakeMKV is another open-source project. When it comes to rip DVD, MakeMKV works different with HandBrake, but they have something in common, like free of charge. Decode and import video data files on DVDs in one click. Rip entire DVD, certain titles. It’s especially useful if you want to rip movies and TV shows from your DVDs and watch them on your iMac, MacBook, Mac Pro, etc. HandBrake 0.9.8, HandBrake 0.9.9 and HandBrake 0.10.2 all come with new Apple TV preset and updated iPad preset, so you can easily convert DVDs specifically to watch on your iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, iPod classic.
As a multi-platform free media converter tool, HandBrake could help you easily convert videos from supported source formats to MP4 or MKV format, rip unprotected DVD and Blu-ray discs to MP4 or MKV files for playback on video players or portable devices. That means you could easily rip unprotected DVD discs with HandBrake. However, as to copy protected materials, HandBrake does not defeat or circumvent copy protection of any kind. It does not work with video files employing Digital Rights Management (DRM). This includes but is not limited to, copy protected content from iTunes, Amazon Video, Netflix, or other online providers, and many commercial DVD and Blu-ray discs. Therefore, obviously, to rip DVD discs with protections, you need to turn to other 3rd-party DVD ripping software tools or some plugin to HandBrake.
libdvdcss is a plugin for HandBrake. It is a free and open source software library for accessing and unscrambling DVDs encrypted with the CSS (a kind of DVD copy protection). In other words, it is “lib (library) + dvd (DVD) + css (Content Scrambling System)”. Generally speaking, if you want to rip CSS-protected DVDs via HandBrake, libdvdcss is necessary. This makes it simple and straightforward: libdvdcss makes it possible to decrypt copy-protected DVD discs for ripping and converting to MP4/MKV files with HandBrake.
Part 2. How to use libdvdcss for HandBrake DVD ripping?
Knowing why we should install libdvdcss for HandBrake, we could then move to how to use libdvdcss for HandBrake DVD ripping. You could follow the below steps to learn the detailed operation on using libdvdcss for HandBrake to rip and convert CSS-DVD discs to MP4 or MKV files for unlimited playback on MP4/MKV media players or devices.
Section 1: How to use libdvd css for HandBrake DVD ripping on Windows computer:
Section 1: How to use libdvd css for HandBrake DVD ripping on Windows computer:
- First of all, download and install HandBrake from its official site on your computer. If you already have this program installed on your computer, move up to the following steps directly.
- The latest version of libdvdcss is 1.4.1. Download libdvdcss on your Windows 10/8.1/8/7 computer via the below links:
libdvdcss download for 32-bit system l libdvdcss download for 64-bit
- After downloading, leave the filename as libdvdcss-2.dll. [Attention, some said that you need to rename libdvdcss-2.dll to libdvdcss.dll. No, this extension won’t work if you do that.] Then drag the .dll file into your HandBrake program folder. If you did not change the installation directory of HandBrake during the HandBrake installation, it should be “C:Program FilesHandBrake”.
- Now restart HandBrake and you are able to encode CSS-encrypted DVDs with libdvdcss HandBrake.
Now, you could then add CSS-DVD to HandBrake as you usually do, and then try to rip CSS-DVDs to MP4/MKV video files on your computer running Windows OS. Toast titanium for mac.
Section 2: How to use libdvdcss for HandBrake DVD ripping on Mac
If you are a Mac computer owner, refer to these steps below to learn how to enable HandBrake ripping encrypted CSS-DVDs with the help of libdvdcss.
Section 2: How to use libdvdcss for HandBrake DVD ripping on Mac
If you are a Mac computer owner, refer to these steps below to learn how to enable HandBrake ripping encrypted CSS-DVDs with the help of libdvdcss.
- If you’re on Yosemite or older, you can download the libdvdcss package file and double-click it to install it directly for HandBrake, and then rip encrypted CSS-DVDs with HandBrake as you usually do in ripping non-protected DVDs.
- if you’re on El Capitan or newer, you need to make use of Homebrew. To install libdvdcss, press Command+Space and search for Terminal to launch a command line window. Then, type in brew install libdvdcss and hit enter. Homebrew will download and install the libdvdcss library. Once you’re back at the command prompt, the library will be installed.
Once the libdvdcss is installed on your Mac computer, HandBrake should be able to read and rip all encrypted CSS-DVDs on Mac computer.
Part 3. Why HandBrake libdvdcss not working?
Due to the DRM policy, HandBrake removed internal DVD decryption since version 0.9.3 in 2018. Although HandBrake had released several updates to improve program performance, decryption for copyright content is not involved at all. Therefore if you want to rip encrypted DVDs with HandBrake you have to make use of libdvdcss, which helps get rid of encryption and allows HandBrake to read encrypted DVDs.
On the other hand, libdvdcss offers no more compiled libraries (libdvdcss2) for Windows 32 bit, Windows 64 bit from version 1.2.13 released in 2013 February. Recent years, distributors add more complex structural protections unrelated to CSS on new DVDs so that old complied libdvdcss will come no effect.
It’s more commonly for Mac users to encounter HandBrake libdvdcss not working issue. Installing libdvdcss.dylib on macOS has been disabled for a long time. If you haven't built and installed libdvdcss on Mac with success, you will fail to rip an encrypted DVD with HandBrake. You will have to turn to some other DVD ripping alternatives to HandBrake, which will be described in detail in the following part.
What's more, the latest HandBrake 1.2.0 is only available for 64 bit. HandBrake libdvdcss not working problem happens when 32bit libdvdcss is installed.
With all these issues, now it’s quite usual to meet this issue. How to fix HandBrake libdvdcss not working issue? Check the below content.
With all these issues, now it’s quite usual to meet this issue. How to fix HandBrake libdvdcss not working issue? Check the below content.
Part 4. How to fix HandBrake libdvdcss not working?
As mentioned above, we could install the latest libdvdcss for HandBrake to fix HandBrake libdvdcss not working issue. However, sometimes installing the latest version of libdvdcss might not work, or you couldn’t even install it on our computer successfully. Then, what can we do? Here we would like to introduce you a quite powerful and practical HandBrake alternative to do this. That’s Leawo DVD Ripper.
As a professional 3rd-party DVD ripping software tool, Leawo DVD Ripper has been highly positively voted for its powerful disc decrypting performance. Featuring the latest disc decrypting technology, Leawo DVD Ripper enables you to decrypt CSS-DVDs from all regions, and then convert DVD movies to videos in various formats like DVD to MP4, DVD to MKV, DVD to MOV, DVD to AVI, etc. what’s more, while converting DVD file, you can adjust the settings of the output file to your own preference such as video codec, aspect ratio, resolution, frame rate, audio codec, channel, etc. You could choose desired subtitles and audio tracks from source DVD movies for output. It even allows you to convert 2D DVD to 3D video in 6 different 3D movie effects.
Follow the below steps to learn how to use this HandBrake alternative to rip and convert encrypted/non-encrypted DVDs to video in formats more than MP4 and MKV. You need to firstly download and install Leawo DVD Ripper (it’s built in Leawo Prof. Media).
Step 1. First of all, launch Leawo Prof. Media and then hit the “Convert” option on the top panel. Then, hit the “Add Blu-ray/DVD” option to load the wanted DVD file or directly drag the wanted file. (Note: you will see three content loading options, i.e. Full Movie, Main Movie and Custom Mode. Here, the Full Movie option means all detailed contents including subtitles will be loaded; Main Movie means the longest part of DVD file will be loaded and Custom Mode means you are free to decide the clip that you want to convert.)
Step 2. Click on the button right before the big green “Convert” button and select the “Change” option to enter the “Profile” panel, where you could select output format from various groups according to your own needs. You could even make use of the internal profile search bar for quick profile setting.
Note: you could adjust the parameters of selected output profile, including video codec, bit rate, aspect ratio, frame rate, audio codec, etc. To do this, open the drop-down panel by clicking the button right before the big green “Convert” button and then enter the “Profile Settings” panel.
Step 3. Click on the green icon of “Convert” option and a sidebar will pop out. Now, specify an output location to save the output file and then click on the bottom “Convert” button to start ripping and converting DVDs to videos.
Then, you just need to wait for the conversion to complete. After converting, you could then freely make use of the converted DVD movies in any way you like.
HandBrake is a free tool that comes with plenty of features from convert video formats to rip DVD. Today, you can watch videos on any devices, such as laptop, smartphone, tablet or optical drives, but DVD movies are not available.
Although new discs release with digital copy come with one free digital version, you need some help for handling with your DVD collection that were launched before digital copy became mainstream. This article tells you how to use the HandBrake to rip DVD into digital video files, so you can watch them on any devices at any time.
Part 1: Rip DVD with HandBrake
HandBrake is an open-source program, so everyone can use it for free. However, there are too many custom options for beginners to master quickly. Therefore, we share a step-by-step guide below.
Step 1: Install HandBrake and Libdvdcss
HandBrake can only rip home-made DVDs. When it comes to commercial DVDs, you need to install libdvdcss along with HandBrake. Firstly, download the right version of HandBrake from the official website(https://handbrake.fr/) to your computer. HandBrake is compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux.
For 32-bit Windows, download libdvdcss from here(http://download.videolan.org/pub/libdvdcss/1.2.11/win32/libdvdcss-2.dll), and 64-bit users download this version(http://download.videolan.org/pub/libdvdcss/1.2.11/win64/libdvdcss-2.dll). Next, copy and paste the .dll file to HandBrake program folder. By default, the path is C:Program FilesHandbrake.
For macOS, download the libdvdcss(http://download.videolan.org/pub/libdvdcss/1.2.11/macosx/libdvdcss.pkg) and double-click the file to install it on Yosemite or older. If your MacBook runs El Capitan or latter, press Command + Space and open the Terminal window, input brew install libdvdcss and hit Enter to download and install the libdvdcsss library.
Step 2: Import DVD in HandBrake
Now, insert your DVD into the built-in ROM drive or external drive. Start HandBrake to start ripping DVD on your computer. Click Open Source at the upper left corner and select your DVD, which is marked with a disc icon.
Then HandBrake will start scan titles and chapters on your disc. You have to be patient and wait for a moment to finish. If libdvdcss is installed correctly, you will get nothing but an error message. After scanning, the main interface of HandBrake will become active.
By default, HandBrake will rip entire DVD. If you want to watch a certain movie, choose the desired title from the Title drop in the Source area. Moreover, you can rip a clip of the DVD movie with HandBrake by setting the Chapters. The Duration option will show you the length of the content to rip. Then click the Browse button under the Destination section to pick up a specific folder for storing DVD movies, and drop a name for the video.
Step 3: The Best Settings for Ripping DVD with HandBrake
HandBrake offers a wide range of custom options. That makes ripping DVD a bit difficult. Fortunately, the freeware also provides extensive presets to help beginners and average people rip DVD with HandBrake quickly.
Firstly, select a proper video format from the Container drop in the Output Settings area. HandBrake is only able to export videos in MP4 or MKV. Expand the Presets panel on the right side, go to the General section and select the right resolution. Remember that the higher the resolution, the clearer the image and the larger the video file. For DVDs sold in USA, choose the 480p and select 567p for discs sold in Europe. Even though you pick up the higher resolution, the videos won’t look better. If you want to play the output videos on iPhone or other portable devices, select it in the Presets panel directly. Then HandBrake will optimize the format and resolution automatically.
At the bottom area, you can find several tabs, such as Filters, Video, Audio, Subtitles and more. The Filters tab includes the useful tools, like Detelecine, Denoise, and some video editing tools. To modify the video quality, codec, framerate, bitrate and more, go to the Video tab. Plus, you can change audio parameters and subtitles in corresponding tabs.
Step 4: Start Ripping DVD in HandBrake
Before ripping DVD in HandBrake, click the Preview menu on the top ribbon, and click Play button on the Preview dialog to view the video effect. If you are satisfied, click the Start Encode button at the top menu bar to begin ripping DVD within HandBrake. You can monitor the progress bar at the bottom to learn how much time left. Now, you can leave HandBrake and your computer running for a while. Once the process is done, you can watch the videos on your machine or transfer them to your mobile device.
Part 2: Best Alternatives to HandBrake
Sometimes, you may encounter various troubles when ripping DVD with HandBrake. It makes sense that freeware is not stable. So, you’d better master more tools for ripping your DVD movies besides HandBrake.
Top 1: Vidmore DVD Monster
Unlike HandBrake, Vidmore DVD Monster is an easy way to digitize your DVD movies. It does not ask you to set oceans of custom options. Plus, the latter provides more benefits.
Pros
- Rip any DVDs without HandBrake or other extra software.
- Support almost all video format including input and output.
- Convert DVD movies to digital videos for playback on portable devices.
- Optimize video and audio quality automatically or manually.
- Offer extensive bonus tools, like built-in media player and video editing functionalities.
Cons
- You need to install it to your computer since it is a desktop program.
In a word, it is the best alternative of HandBrake to rip both home-made and commercial DVDs on your computer.
How to Rip DVD without HandBrake
Step 1: Get the best alternative to HandBrake
The best alternative to HandBrake is available to a wide variety of operating systems including Windows 10. So, download and install the right one to your computer if HandBrake is not working for you. Then put a DVD into your optical drive. Once launch the software and click the Load Disc button, it will start scanning your disc and them import videos in media library.
Step 2: Preview and edit DVD videos
When the DVD movies appear in the library, you can preview them with the built-in media library. Plus, the best alternative to HandBrake provides you extensive video editing tools. Click the Edit icon under the video to open it in video-editor window. Here you can crop, rotate or watermark the video, adjust and apply filters. If you want to change audio tracks or subtitles, go to Audio or Subtitle tab and do what you want.
Tip: To play DVD movie on mobile device or share them through the internet, you’d better split it into short clips. Click the Cut icon under the video to open the Clip window and split it by resetting the starting and end points.
Step 3: Rip DVD without HandBrake
Next, click and expand the Rip All to drop-down at the upper right side and select a video format in the Video tab. In the Device tab, you can choose the target device and the software will set other parameters automatically.
Then click the Settings button with a gear icon at the bottom to open the Preference dialog. Go to the Ripper tab and set the Output Folder to save the output videos. Click OK and then hit the Rip All button in the home interface to initiate ripping DVD without HandBrake. Since the program integrates hardware acceleration, it only takes a few minutes to rip a DVD.
Top 2: MakeMKV
Similar to HandBrake, MakeMKV is another open-source project. When it comes to rip DVD, MakeMKV works different with HandBrake, but they have something in common, like free of charge.
Pros
- Decode and import video data files on DVDs in one click.
- Rip entire DVD, certain titles or chapters based on your wish.
- Work on commercial or encrypted discs without extra software and plugins.
- Compatible with Windows XP or later, Mac OS X and Linux.
Cons
- It can only rip DVD movies in MKV format.
- There is no custom option at all.
- You cannot preview videos before ripping.
Top 3: VLC
VLC is a popular media player with extensive functionalities including rip DVDs when HandBrake is not working. If you need an all-in-one DVD ripper, VLC may be a good choice.
Pros
- Convert DVD movies to digital videos or audio files.
- Support almost all video and audio formats including MP4, AVI, FLV, MP3, etc.
- Include basic options and video editing tools, like rotate.
- Work for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux for free.
Cons
- This alternative to HandBrake requires libdvdcss to rip encrypted DVDs.
- It is difficult to master, especially for beginners and non-tech savvy.
Top 4: DVDFab HD Decryptor
As its name indicates, DVDFab HD Decryptor enables you to remove DVD encryption and copy DVD videos to your hard drive. Bear in mind that it is a free portion of the DVDFab toolkit, so it is not as free to rip DVDs as HandBrake.
Pros
- Remove a wide variety of DVD protections from CSS to CPPM.
- Copy full DVD to your hard drive or rip main movies only.
- Personalize DVD movies, such as subtitles, audio tracks and more.
- Equip an intuitive interface.
Cons
- You have to purchase the entire program to get the DVD ripping tool.
- There are limited output formats and you cannot find MP4 or other commonly used video formats.
Handbrake For Mac Yosemite Mac
Top 5: WinX DVD Ripper Platinum
Handbrake For Mac Reviews
If you believe HandBrake is complex to rip DVDs, you may need an easy-to-use alternative, such as WinX DVD Ripper Platinum. It allows you to produce digital videos from DVD for playback on any device.
Handbrake For Mac Yosemite Drive
Pros
- Support all types of DVDs including commercial and protected discs.
- Rip DVDs to MP4 or AVI video files, or back up the full DVD.
- Crop and trim DVD videos, change subtitle or audio tracks.
- Write video contents or ISO image file on blank discs.
- Quicker to rip a DVD than HandBrake or other freeware.
Cons
- The price is expansive then other DVD rippers.
- The built-in media player is bothersome.
- It does not support for AMD GPU.
Conclusion
This article has shared a complete guide to rip DVDs with HandBrake. As freeware, you can use HandBrake without paying a penny. The problem is that it cannot break the DVD protections independently. Moreover, you can get the best settings for ripping your DVDs within the open-source program. On the other hand, HandBrake is not the only way to convert your DVDs to digital files. That is why we shared top 5 alternative applications. Vidmore DVD Monster, for example, simplifies the process of DVD ripping. If you encounter any problem when ripping DVDs, please write it down in the comment area below this article.