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And here again another week has gone by, so that means it’s time to take a look at another program that is supposed to help you take your videos with you on the go.

This week I have Extra DVD Ripper Express and it does have some nice features, it’s easy to use, but the end product is junk, the final ripped and converted movie is way out of sync to the point it is un-viewable. Some movies that are out of sync aren’t too bad, maybe annoying at times but the final product of Extra DVD Ripper Express is so out of sync… I’m sure you’ve all seen the old Godzilla movies or other Japanese with English voice overs where their lips move and the audio just doesn’t match the lips. Well the end product of Extra DVD Ripper Express is a lot worse than that, to the point where people are talking in the audio but the characters aren’t, or a male talks but yet a female character is moving her lips.. Kinda funny for a few seconds, but not worth much in the end.

But continue on to see some screen shots, and a bit more information, but I’m not getting too in depth with a product that basically doesn’t work…

Here’s a brief excerpt for the description on their website which you can find HERE if you wish to read the entire description:

Extra DVD Ripper Express  is a flexible and easy to use DVD ripper software. It can quickly convert DVD movies to AVI, MPEG, iPod(MP4), iPhone, Apple TV, FLV(YouTube), Sony PSP, Sony PS3, WMV, Microsoft Zune Player, Pocket PC, Mobile 3GP without any loss of quality.

Opening up the program you’re greeted with a colorful and very easy to use interface, apparently the default conversion format is iPod as that’s the first one shown when you open the interface. You’ll notice under the Pirates of the Caribbean picture are three settings, the Output setting, Output Folder and the Output Filename. On right side of the interface is the actual settings of the format you choose to use.

From the Drop drown menu at the top  I selected the Rip DVD to Pocket PC option as that’s what I wanted to do, but it defaults to WMV format and I personally don’t like that, not only do I prefer AVI/Divx files but you’ll notice that their setting for PPC video size is 208×160 which is a bit small  for the Tilt and you can change it either.

So I switched to Rip DVD to AVI format which gave me the correct video size by default. While this is fine for me, for someone else who has little experience with this type of thing they might not know to pick a different format to make it fit the Tilt. After all it is called Rip DVD to Pocket PC, so common sense says to pick that for your movie right? You can’t change the output video size so you’re basically stuck with what they give you and 208×160 is pretty small.

After you select your format pop in your DVD, of course I used Stargate again, and will be using it for all of the software in this series. One bonus to the software is that is it automatically finds the main movie for you so you don’t have to figure out which you want, this makes it much easier for newbies to use this product to convert their movies. Once it find the start of the movie a pop-up menu comes up with a couple options that will allow you to change the record settings if you wish to, or you can just hit start as it is set by default to find the main movie for you and be ready to go.

So after hitting start, the conversion process took a little over 26 minutes to complete, and the finished movie was almost 500MB, coming it at 490MB, so that’s not too big.

The video quality isn’t bad at all, but as I mentioned the audio is way off, so I just wasted 26 minutes converting Stargate to fit my phone, pointless really and just a total waste of my time. Considering this software costs almost $40, I basically have a rather expensive virtual paperweight now…

In the software’s defense it might actually work for other formats, but I don’t care about those other options, I got this software to do a specific job which obviously it cannot do.

I like the fact that it finds the movies for you when you put in your DVD, it’s nice that you don’t have to figure out which file is your main movie.  The interface is easy to use, but it’s really not very configurable at all, power users won’t like it, Extra DVD Ripper Express is truly aimed at people who have little or no technical knowledge but want to take their movies with them.

The only recommendation I have for this software is: don’t waste your money on this one.

If I had to give this product a score it might be a 2 out of 5 score and that’s taking into consideration the ease of use of the product and the fact that it finds the movie for you, but in reality Extra DVD Ripper Express deserves a 0 out of 5 score because it just doens’t work correctly. Sometimes I can deal with the soundtrack being off a little bit, especially on such a small screen as the Tilt has as you don’t notice it as much, but the end product here is just so bad that I can tell you to stay away from it and find something else.

So far in this little series I haven’t found any software that works to convert my movies to my phone, and I’m not just ’saving the best for last’ either. I’ve got a bunch installed and I’m just sort of testing them alphabetically as that seems a good way to do it. I’ve got quite a few more to go yet, so maybe I’ll run across one that works eh?!