How do I rip videos from DVD to external hard drive

[MsMaryH]

Years ago I made movies (from VHS tapes) with Canopus (now called Grass Valley) and burned to DVDs. The disks are now failing and before losing everything I would like to move these movies over to an external hard drive. Can you tell me how to go about this?

 

[kanewolf]

Handbrake is one of the best free video conversion tools. Since these aren't commercial DVDs there is no encryption to deal with. Handbrake should be able to convert them to a streaming friendly format.

 

[MsMaryH]

Thank you, kanewolf. Just downloaded it and will give it a try!