SiggySoft DVD Ripper - MiddleSiggy's Digital World

What it does

SiggySoft DVD Ripper copies home DVDs to files on your PC: discs from camcorders and DVD recorders, DVD-RAM and DVD-RW discs recorded in a recorder's own format, 8 cm camcorder discs, disc images (.iso) and VIDEO_TS folders. It keeps the disc's picture and sound as they are in an MKV, or makes a smaller MP4 to watch and share. Scratched discs are read in passes, and a report names the minutes that could not be read. It is for people copying their own recordings. It does not copy discs with copy protection, such as films bought on DVD: it says so and writes nothing.

Home and recorder discs

Finalised camcorder and recorder discs, DVD-RAM and DVD-RW discs in a recorder's own format, 8 cm camcorder discs, disc images and VIDEO_TS folders. On a recorder's disc each recording becomes a file of its own.

Picture and sound kept

The MKV keeps the disc's MPEG-2 video and every sound track without re-encoding, with the chapters, the languages and the subtitles in the disc's own colours. The MP4 turns interlaced video into one picture per field, 59.94 a second for NTSC and 50 for PAL.

Careful with damaged discs

A disc is read in passes, with up to three slow retries per unreadable sector, and by default every sector is read twice and compared. The report says where the gaps fall, for example "Title 1: 0:15 to 0:16 (11 sectors, unreadable)".

A checksum for every copy

Each finished file is read back and its SHA-256 written to a checksum file beside it. Later, for example after copying to a backup drive, Tools > Check a copy names any file that changed or went missing.

Get SiggySoft DVD Ripper

Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit
The .NET 10 Desktop Runtime (Setup installs it when the PC has none)
A DVD drive to read discs; a USB drive works. Choose one with a tray, because an 8 cm camcorder disc can jam a slot-loading drive. Disc images and folders need no drive.
The FFmpeg libraries, 77 MB, downloaded once by the setup check
Room for the copies: up to 4.7 GB for each single-layer disc kept as MKV or ISO, and as much again while a disc is being read. The setup check asks for 10 GB free.
Optional, for MP4 copies: the ffmpeg program, which the setup check installs. A graphics card with a video encoder makes MP4 copies several times faster than the processor.
Optional: Python 3.12 or newer, so the setup check can install the slower deinterlacer that gives the cleanest MP4 picture
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The manual (PDF, 0.5 MB)

Version 1.0.2 · SiggySoftDvdRipper-1.0.2-Setup.exe · 10.7 MB
SHA-256 ff8629932fcb434f8600240dc68ff74a799ba99f06356af067285aa4b76bf0ef

What it looks like

Click a picture to see it full size.

A test disc image open: two titles, the main title ticked, and the first picture of each of its four chapters

A DVD recorder's disc: three recordings, each copied to a file of its own

A disc that was never finalised: the program explains how to finalise it and still finds the recordings

A copy-protected disc is declined and Rip stays switched off

What's in the window

Part	What it does
Source	The DVD drives and the images and folders opened before, with a copy-protection line that is green when none was found and red when the disc is declined.
What to make	MKV, MP4 (H.264 or HEVC, with its deinterlacing), ISO image and VIDEO_TS folder, the folder for copies, and Read every sector twice.
Titles and recordings	One card per title or recording with its length, chapters, picture size, sound tracks and subtitles; the longest title is marked main title and ticked.
Chapters	The first picture of each chapter of the selected title, or four pictures spread across a recording, so the right title is easy to find.
Queue	Every copy waiting, running or finished, one disc at a time; Disc after disc opens the tray when a copy ends and copies the next disc put in.
Catalogue (Tools menu)	Every disc copied, with the date, its files, how long the copy took and how many seconds were affected by damage.
Setup check (Tools menu)	What the program needs, each line marked READY, NEEDED, WORKS WITHOUT IT, OUT OF DATE or INFO, with a button where the program can fix it.
Feedback menu	Report a problem, suggest a feature, ask a question or say thanks, and see exactly what will be sent before anything leaves the PC.

Installing it

Download the installer (SiggySoftDvdRipper-1.0.2-Setup.exe) from the box above. The installer is not signed yet, so the browser may say the file is not commonly downloaded: choose Keep.
Open it. Windows may say it protected your PC: click More info, then Run anyway.
It installs for your Windows account without administrator rights, starts the program, and puts a shortcut on the desktop and in the Start menu. If the PC lacks the .NET runtime the program needs, the installer downloads it from Microsoft first.
New versions come from this site. When the program starts it looks for one and downloads it in the background; a notice under the menu says when it is ready, and it installs the next time you start the program (or at once from Help, Check for updates).
To remove it: Windows Settings, Apps, Installed apps. Your settings and your own files stay.

To check the download, run Get-FileHash SiggySoftDvdRipper-1.0.2-Setup.exe in PowerShell and compare the result with the SHA-256 above.

Tips

Wait until the drive stops spinning up before pressing Open.
Before giving up on a scratched disc, clean it with a soft cloth from the centre outwards, try another drive and copy it again. The rescue map keeps what was read before, so the next copy reads only what is missing.
A camcorder disc that Windows cannot open was probably never finalised. Finalising it in the camcorder that made it (Finalize or Close disc in its menu) gives back the titles and chapters the camcorder made.
Keep the MKV as the archive copy: an MP4 has no place for picture subtitles, so they are left out of it.
Turning off Read every sector twice halves the reading time. Leave it on for scratched discs: some drives return wrong data from a bad sector without reporting an error.

Privacy

SiggySoft DVD Ripper sends nothing in the background: no usage counts and no crash reports. The FFmpeg libraries (77 MB, from an open-source project's public builds, checked against their published SHA-256), the ffmpeg program and the deinterlacer are downloaded only when you press Install on the setup check. The program reads the .NET release list (7 KB) once a day and a copy installed with Setup looks for a new version on www.middlesiggy.com at every start, both of which Settings turns off; a Feedback report leaves the PC only when you press Send. See the site's privacy policy.

Version history

What the recent versions added, newest first. The full list is in the manual.

Version 1.0.2 · 2026-10-26

Updates come from www.middlesiggy.com
The manual is written for anyone who downloads the program from this site; Feedback reports go to www.siggysoft.org

Version 1.0.1 · 2026-10-06

Fixed: saving the settings before the window had first been placed on the screen stopped with an error

Version 1.0.0 · 2026-10-06

First version: copies camcorder and recorder DVDs, DVD-RAM and DVD-RW recorder discs, 8 cm discs, disc images and VIDEO_TS folders
MKV, MP4, ISO image and VIDEO_TS folder copies, each with a SHA-256 checksum file, a report and a catalogue entry
Damaged discs read in passes, with every sector read twice and compared
Copy-protected discs are declined; the program contains no decryption

Help and feedback

The program's Help menu opens the manual. To report a problem or suggest an idea, use the Feedback menu in the program: you see everything before it is sent. Or write through the contact page.

All SiggySoft programs