Versatile video converter/ downloader/ editor TEncoder has expanded its range even further with the addition of a DVD ripper.

Point the program at your disc video folder (\VIDEO_TS, probably), and you’re able to choose the title, start and end chapters, audio and subtitle track you’d like to rip.

Destination files can be configured much like a regular TEncoder format conversion: you’re able to manually set video and audio codecs, resolution, frame rate, aspect ratio, bitrates, custom codec options and more, or you can choose a custom profile to apply every setting at once.

You get plenty of control over the DVD ripping and conversion process

In addition, the program can now run up to 16 processes in parallel (previously 8). We’re not sure this will make much difference to performance (most people will be limited by I/O rather than CPU) but it’s good to have the option available.

User interface tweaks include a “Send to tray” button which sends TEncoder to the system tray while encoding. (The system tray icon displays a “percentage complete” figure for the current job, so you can still monitor its progress.)

There are also some fairly significant bug fixes, restoring proper support for FLAC encoding and ensuring MEncoder can produce working Ogg Vorbis streams again.

The big addition is clearly the DVD ripper, of course. This didn’t convince us entirely: it’s not able to rip all titles in a single operation, and for some reason the sound was out of sync in a couple of our tests (though it was fine elsewhere). It’s not bad for a first step, though, and we expect it’ll improve significantly in the next few months.

TEncoder 4.4 is available now for Windows XP and later.