In my experience, ripping my DVDs is easy. On most Linux distros, mplayer will either do it out of the box, or you'll need to download a single extra library.

Blu-Ray is another matter. As far as I can tell, it seems to involve a lot of tracking down the right keys from the internet. Maybe someone who's better plugged into the digital piracy scene and will have more perspective. I just wanted to copy movies onto my NAS so I don't have to look for a physical copy on my shelf. Maybe it's easier now, but when I tried a few years ago, the effort of tracking down decryption keys so I could copy my Blu-Rays wasn't worth the trouble.

The problem you're referring to is how BD encryption keys are rotated as they are compromised. When a player gets reversed and the keys dumped, the organization basically revokes those keys for any new discs going forward. Practically, this means that things like when your particular BD was pressed matter for what keys you need. It's a pain in the ass; deCSS was much nicer.

e: apparently since I last used it makemkv now finds as many of these on its own as it can: https://www.makemkv.com/svq/

MakeMKV is the easiest route. On Linux I found it was way easier to just rip the disc with MakeMKV and watch the file than to get a Blu-ray to be read by VLC.

MakeMKV makes it incredibly easy. There are still a few Blu-Rays I remember giving me trouble, but it was a matter of untangling a web of annoying track numbers that weren't in chronological order (something like that).

4K UHD Blu-Ray discs are another matter though; I still have a couple of those I haven't been able to rip.

I recently ripped a Bluray after years of not using optical media at all and found MakeMKV to be a quick and effectively free way of doing so.

Is audio sync still an issue with ripping/encoding? I used to rip all of my DVDs and transcode to DivX. Getting the audio & video to sync up was always a pain. I've been thinking about ripping my Bluray & DVD collection again (in better quality) since I don't have the room to store my media in the same room, let alone the same floor of my house, as my TV.

I have ripped close to 1,000 Blu-Ray and DVD discs with MakeMKV and never encountered audio sync issues. It’s not a thing anymore.

There was a time I used handbrake to reduce the file sizes by encoding to x265 and that never resulted in any audio sync issues either.

BluRays are fully digital so just moving it from the disc into another container on the computer, without touching the actual video and audio data, is a possibility. It's called a "REMUX".

MakeMKV. It's mainly geared towards Blu-rays but it does DVDs too. Basically you put in a disc and maybe select what tracks/audio options you want and it spits out an MKV.

In addition to the Handbrake suggestions, you can use HandbrakeCLI if you're on a headless media server.

Before, I used to use dvdbackup then ffmpeg for DVD ripping.

I found HandbrakeCLI did a better job, though, of handling errors in the stream which seem to be much more common in DVDs than CDs.

Or, more likely, the defaults were just more idiot (me) proof.

MakeMKV rips everything except the extremely rare DVD-Audio. Even 4K discs.

Encryption hasn't been a problem for a while.

I've used MakeMKV! Odd because I remember having to run "helper" applications in order to break DRM - maybe that was another software package. Good to know, now I just need a rainy weekend!

I think it did need helpers in the past. It's all integrated now.

I use Handbrake on my mac, and it looks like there's a windows version. For me it's pretty much perfect. I set up my favorite settings as a preset, and now it's basically a one-click ripper.

Handbrake is probably the most popular software for that on Windows. You might need an additional library to work around copy protection. Google it.

IME there are so many impersonators it's difficult to find an unadulterated copy. I've seen family members get infected with malware trying to use the top results.

You can use the releases page of their github https://github.com/HandBrake/HandBrake/releases

DeCSS has been a thing for quite some time for unscrambling DVD content.

I remember I looked at Docker hub and found something I used.

Try Handbrake