15-Minute Reviews :: Plato DVD Ripper Pro Converter v6.66.2

Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is Plato DVD Ripper Pro Converter version 6.66.2 by Plato Software Inc – An application to aid you in the conversion from DVD to various other formats.

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“It is time to backup your DVD disc Right Now! Plato DVD Ripper Pro Converter helps you easily convert DVD to iPod MP4, AVI, MPEG, VCD, SVCD, Apple iPhone, Apple TV, Sony PSP, PS3, Mobile 3GP, WMV, Microsoft Zune, YouTube FLV video files. It provides you with excellent image/sound quality and smaller file size just in a few clicks. Whether you are a veteran or a beginner, you will feel it was developed for you.”

Quick Pros

• Interface is extremely easy to get around for the most part
• Controls are very self-explanatory
• Pre-built settings for a variety of formats

Quick Cons

• Stop button looks more like round record button
• Bit tedious to remember to click the Save buttons on the settings tab
• Could stand to be more flexible for its settings
• Macrovision error with a few discs
• Help file kept greeting me with prompt to install Chinese Simplified
• Problems with application hanging
• Extremely slow encoding

Expansion

Upon launching this application for the first time, you are greeted by a polished-looking interface. Along the top of the window is a time remaining bar (Which shows you how much is left between when you hit Start and the end of the video). Below that are three tabs; Convert, Setting and Help. Inside the Convert window is much of what you’d expect to see in a Convert window; A Preview pane front and center, selection of formats to the left of the preview pane, DVD information on the right of the preview pane, and then playback controls and output information below. For some reason the developer decided that the ‘Stop’ button should be round, which many may think is the record button as well as the Start button and maybe should be tweaked to avoid confusion. The drop-down box for Profile Setting gives you some of the common settings, but if that may not be enough for you, you can change to the Setting tab.

On the Setting tab, along the top half of the window is a series of drop-down boxes for setting common video and audio settings. It’s pretty easy to get the settings set up, but you must remember to click ‘Save Output Setting’ and ensure you select ‘Customize Setting’ from the Convert window. The next section down allows you to set up what areas to record. You have a choice of ‘Record from current point’, ‘Record from beginning of title’ and ‘Set start time and end time to record’, all of which are self-explanatory. Finally, below that is various other settings including shutdown when finished, disable screensaver and so forth.

On my first attempt, I tossed in my usual DVD for testing titles such as this one, and tried to begin recording. When I clicked ‘Open’, browsed to the DVD and clicked OK, I was greeted by this error: ‘This DVD-Video is protected by Macrovision. The system does not satisfy Macrovision requirement. Can’t continue playing this disc.’ Browsing the developer’s site, I could not find information on this issue, only that the application supported Macrovision-protected discs. I went to the helpfile, and when I did, I promptly was greeted by the ‘Language Pack Installation’ dialog box for Chinese Simplified, and also when I navigated to various pages (Not all) – A minor annoyance. The help file did not help with this issue, so I decided to move onto other discs.

My second disc (An older DVD) seemed to load up fine, but promptly starts playing back very quickly and freezes after about 2 seconds. At this point, the entire application became non-responsive so I had to force-stop the application. I thought that maybe it was the ‘Fastforward to Main Movie when first play’ option, so I disabled that (And made sure to click Save Setting) and tried again but to no avail. It appears to launch into fast-forward mode immediately again and then locks up. Tweaking all the settings, it did not seem to make a difference at all.

I moved onto my third disc and this time it doesn’t do the fast forward/lock-up issue. I can use the playback functionality just fine, so I seem to be ready to try recording. I get my settings set up and hit the Start button at the point I wish to start. All of a sudden the video stopped. I thought the application had crashed, but clicking on Stop brought up the dialog box to stop, and the rest of the buttons had a rollover effect. I checked my CPU usage and indeed it is at 99 percent for this application, and watching my DVD drive, it appears to be doing something. Indeed, it is doing something; The frames are slowly advancing, about one frame every few seconds. It is working, but very slowly. I stop recording and try a few settings changes, a few different formats, and they all are about the same speed. I quickly tried another application to ensure the DVD was playing back decently, and it was good. I then tried moving to another disc, one I self-authored and know there is no copywrite protection scheme on it and again, the same thing; Extreme slowness. Now, due to previous titles I’ve reviewed, this system can record at a decent speed, so I’m not sure what the issue is here. Every time I hit ‘Stop’ and click ‘Yes’, the movie takes off at normal speed, so I am not sure where the issue is. I’m not going to wait for an entire encoding, but even leaving the application running for about 10 minutes, I still only made it a few seconds worth of DVD time; Not very good.

Final Verdict

I do hope my experience with this application is limited to my system at some level; This is awful on how the application is running for me when I have had good results from other rippers tested from Giveaway. For free, I’d suggest testing it to see if you get the same results but be aware of the above-noted issues. It is a good concept and a nice layout, even though the settings are a little restrictive with fixed drop-downs, so long as it works for you. As for paying $39.95 for this title, I could not recommend it in the form I have tested it in; If you are interested and must, do the trial version first before you buy to make sure it works sufficiently for you.

Posted by BladedThoth on Monday, October 22, 2007