My DVD ripper of choice is HandBrake. A great app, with lots of options and presets, and the best part of all: it’s free.

The bummer with previous versions was you could only convert video directly from DVD. You couldn’t re-encode existing video files. So if you wanted to convert, say, a WMV file to FLV, HandBrake was not the app for you.

Sorry, emphasis should have been on the word was. Because the DVD-only limitation is officially but a bad memory with the new 0.9.3 release.

I had been relying on the excellent (but not free) VisualHub for my video conversion needs, and was saddened by its recent demise. But with HandBrake stepping in to fill the void, my video-converting self is happy once again.

So go get it (yes, it’s still free!). Versions for Mac, Windows, and Linux. No one is left out of this party.

Thanks open-source dudes!