15-Minute Reviews :: Agogo DVD Ripper v6.87

Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s review is on Agogo DVD Ripper version 6.87 by Agogo Software – An application to take your DVDs and back them up onto your system.

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“It is time to backup your DVD disc right now! Agogo dvd ripper is a well-designed program which provides a fast and easy way to convert your favorite dvd movies to DivX, XviD, AVI, iPod, PSP, 3GP, Pocket PC, VCD, SVCD. The program is easy to use – in just a couple of clicks you can choose subtitles, audio track, and customize output video and audio quality.”

Quick Pros

• Interface is dead-simple
• Decent output format selection though limited to drop-downs
• Options vary depending on format chosen

Quick Cons

• Crashed upon loading disc with modern copyright protection
• Speed is mediocre at best – Improved when took to 29.97 fps
• No advanced functions such as crop, trim or otherwise
• No apparent way to disable the preview functionality during encoding

Expansion

Upon the first launch of this application, you are greeted by a very simple interface. The top of the window you will find a preview pane for the DVD of choice. Along the bottom are forward/backwards controls, along with the ‘Start Converting’, ‘Open’ and ‘Output’ and a few other buttons as well. To get the process started, you first choose ‘Open’; Here you will choose which DVD drive you wish to rip or you can even choose a DVD stored on your hard drive. Once you’ve completed this step, you will want to go into ‘Output’ and choose the format you want and the settings for the format. You can also set the application up to shutdown when it is complete. From here, you can click ‘Start Converting’ to start the process.

There is a choice of formats for you to choose from: AVI (I seemed to only get XviD as an option for codec), VCD/SVCD, MP4 for iPod and PSP, 3GP for cellphones and finally an AVI format for PocketPCs. While there are a lot of options available, they are limited to drop-down boxes and as such does diminish some of the power to convert how you want it. The options are set up in a manner that they change depending on the output you choose; For example, PSP offers you the ability to set the file number for older firmwares.

Upon testing my first disc, I found an issue fairly quickly; The application does not seem to fare well with modern copyright protection schemes; Two recent movies, upon inserting and attempting to open, crashed the application after a few minutes of thrashing around on my disc. I finally resorted to one of my classic movies (As noting the author’s comment here – ‘Do you like collect classic DVD movies?’) and tried with that one. This time it appeared to work. I tried encoding with the default settings on AVI DivX, but unfortunately I was only seeing a lowly 28 frame per second average after a few minutes of encoding. After going back to the format selection screen, I did spot that the default setting for AVI was 25 frames per second encoding; I changed this up to 29.97 and tried again, and I did see an increase to 46 frames per second; A considerable increase over the actual selection increase. Unfortunately, this would mean there is still a long process ahead.

While the application appears to work, there is no advanced functionality of any sort; No trimming or cropping or splitting for portable devices; No control over if the preview is displaying or any other features. Essentially this is a straight ripping application with very few bells and whistles.

(One final note: Movies is misspelled inside the preview pane – ‘Moives’)

Final Verdict

While the application does seem to work on older-built discs, the lack of support for modern movies does leave me lacking a desire to keep this application. While the interface does work, there isn’t much in the way for functionality outside of raw ripping and even then, the speed is mediocre. For free, while it may be good for someone who is looking to encode their old DVDs into backups, it may leave many others looking for alternatives. As for paying $39.98 for this title, I would find it difficult for myself to justify this price with so few features.

Posted by BladedThoth on Monday, November 19, 2007