Ripping BD's?

obieone

All the digital media I've bought from Amazon, I've backed up to an external HDD.
I'd like to be able to save my DVD/BD's to the same HDD, for convenience.
I'm NOT planning on pirating anything, I'm just a lazy American!.

Any recommendations on programs/ software is greatly appreciated.
Thanks

EndersShadow

obieone wrote: »

All the digital media I've bought from Amazon, I've backed up to an external HDD.
I'd like to be able to save my DVD/BD's to the same HDD, for convenience.
I'm NOT planning on pirating anything, I'm just a lazy American!.

Any recommendations on programs/ software is greatly appreciated.
Thanks

All you need to know here:

AsSiMiLaTeD

I didn't read the thread attached but I'll give you my short version:

If you want to rip your Blu-Rays and keep the full resolution with 100% video and audio quality then buy MakeMKV and be done with it. It will rip your movies into a single mkv file which is a 1:1 copy. It's a huge file though, sizes typically range from 20 to 35GB per movie. Those MKV files can then be played back by a lot of blu-ray players, you get 100% quality and even better you get to skip all the menus and previews.

If you're wanting a smaller file size and are ok with losing a bit of the original quality then add a step to the process, take the MKV file you ripped above and use HandBrake to convert that to a smaller mp4 file. That mp4 file can then be played on many devices and streamed to something like an Apple TV.

EndersShadow

@AsSiMiLaTeD‌ thats basically what my thread discusses...

BlueFox

Is there a lossless compression format for Blue Ray files? Even a 40% reduction in file size would be great.

StantonZ

BlueFox wrote: »

Is there a lossless compression format for Blue Ray files? Even a 40% reduction in file size would be great.

Yes...it's called mp4 (or similar) mentioned above. Basically, you're going to have a large file(s) when ripping Blu-Ray if you want to maintain "hi-def" resolution; otherwise, you would use DVD and/or digital downloads. The other problem with BD's is copy protection, which requires you to either have something like "AnyDVD" installed or extract (and remove) the same. Obviously, it will get even worse with 4k, etc. At some point, you might want to just play the disc!

EndersShadow

BlueFox wrote: »

Is there a lossless compression format for Blue Ray files? Even a 40% reduction in file size would be great.

I decided against that as my library isnt HUGE just yet. I also figured that the way Hard drives are going, a larger hard drive is just as easy to do compared to having to compress ALL the movies (which would take a LONG time)

I've got a 3TB drive I bought for 109 dollars thats only half full with my entire library of blu rays and DVD's in uncompressed format. If I went with a nice Media Server I could throw in a couple 3TB drives easily and fit more than enough movies without too much of a problem.

tonyb

StantonZ wrote: »

At some point, you might want to just play the disc!

Go on now...don't be silly. lol

I'm with ya though.

AsSiMiLaTeD

No, there is no lossless compression for Blu-Ray, not in the same way you have FLAC and Apple Lossless for audio. Right now anything that reduces file size also reduces quality, as far as I'm aware.

There is something to be said for the full movie experience with the previews and exploring the menus to find all the extra stuff on a BD, but ultimately I prefer the setup I have now where I just browse to the mkv file on my server and when I click the play button I get a movie instead of a series of menus and previews.

There are two reasons why I think the setup I have and you're looking to create are better than having a 'physical' library.

The first is convenience for the end user, which is why I went this direction in the first place. The more important reason is security. You can't exactly 'back up' a physical media collection so if you somehow lose or damage your discs you're screwed. With a 'digitized' library all you have to do is buy more storage and you can have as many copies of your data as you want to suit your personal level of paranoia.

There are a couple negatives though. The first is cost, because you still have to buy the physical media and now have to buy storage on top of that. The second is the task of ripping. Notice above how I said it's more convenient for the end user, as in the person browsing your library and watching movies. However, this is a bit of setup needed to do the process correctly and there is some time involved. It's not very complex at all, but if you're not a computer person it can be a bit much at first.

For me the positives easily outweigh the negatives, but that's a personal choice.

BlueFox

AsSiMiLaTeD wrote: »

No, there is no lossless compression for Blu-Ray, not in the same way you have FLAC and Apple Lossless for audio. Right now anything that reduces file size also reduces quality, as far as I'm aware.

That is what I was wondering. Being frugal, I would prefer to double my drive size with a 50% compression, whether for audio or video. Maybe video has so much information that any lossless compression would only give a modest reduction, so it isn't worth it.

EndersShadow

BlueFox wrote: »

AsSiMiLaTeD wrote: »

No, there is no lossless compression for Blu-Ray, not in the same way you have FLAC and Apple Lossless for audio. Right now anything that reduces file size also reduces quality, as far as I'm aware.

That is what I was wondering. Being frugal I would prefer to double my drive size with a 50% compression, whether for audio or video. Maybe video has do much information that any lossless compression would only give a modest reduction, so it isn't worth it.

There are lots of thoughts on how much if any degradation there is depending on what percentage you compress the video.

Handbrake is what most folks use to compress it but then (if I understand this right) you may need a higher powered cpu and gpu to decode everything before the signal is sent to the TV.

Personally my library wasn't big enough for it to be an issue and I'd rather compress as a last resort.

For right now I'd rather spend more on hard drives to make life easier for whatever device has to process the video.

Hopefully makes life easier when I build my HTPC as well.

westmassguy

I'll add my 2 cants here. MP4 and MKV are "Containers". They contain separate audio and video tracks. MP4 is more popular because more commercial devices can recognize it. MKV/Matroska is much more versatile. You can combine almost any video and audio format you want with MKV. Mpeg1, Mpeg2, all versions of Mpeg4. Mp3, AAC, AC3, DTS. You can even add subtitles to the container. MKV files are also slightly smaller than the same MP4 file.
I use Handbrake almost exclusively to compress all Hi-Def formats to MKV. 720P @ 6K bitrate on my 52" 1080i DLP looks excellent. If I had a 8' or 10' high-end projection setup, things would be different, and the original BR discs would be used, or just the main movie ripped from the disc.
As mentioned, you will need a powerful PC to do the re-encoding.
Another handy tool, is MKVMerge, which allows you to convert MP4s to MKV, add subtitles etc.

AsSiMiLaTeD

In response to a couple points above:

First, any compression of video that I'm aware of is going to result in a loss of quality. Music can be compressed without a loss in quality because there are parts of a song where no data is present, so you end up with formats like FLAC and ALAC. That's not possible with video as far as I know, because there's always data present. How much of a loss and if you can see the difference is another thing, but there is degradation of the original video.

Second, tools like Handbrake do require some horsepower to run but once the video is encoded you don't need a computer in order to stream it. So you need a decent machine to encode the video but after that you're done, you can either play directly from a drive or NAS.

I take a hybrid approach to my library. For movies where I'm really concerned about getting 100% quality I just rip the full quality file to MKV and play that file. That doesn't actually represent nearly as much of my movie collection as one might think though. I've got close to 1000 movies and less than 100 fall in to that category. For my other 900 or so movies I convert down to mp4 at 720p and then play those via the Apple TVs. The video quality is great even with those compressed files, but not as good as the MKV rips that are several times larger.