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  1. Hi everyone

    I'm a bit stumped with this one so I thought I'd better ask the experts!

    I am trying to rip my blu-ray discs to HDD and then the discs can be stored away, after all you only watch the extras once!

    I rip the full disc to HDD using AnyDVD and then use MakeMKV to make a single file of each episode/film stripping out everything except for the english audio track and a subtitle track.

    It's been pointed out to me that my files sizes are pretty whopping and some online investigations as to what is being put out there has rather surprised me!

    I've a couple of examples to show you:

    Blu-ray building
    Click image for larger version

Name:	Shop DL.jpg
Views:	357
Size:	938.8 KB
ID:	23509

    Online building
    Click image for larger version

Name:	Shop BR.jpg
Views:	432
Size:	928.2 KB
ID:	23510

    Blu-ray face
    Click image for larger version

Name:	Face BR.jpg
Views:	346
Size:	571.5 KB
ID:	23511

    Online face
    Click image for larger version

Name:	Face DL.jpg
Views:	343
Size:	538.9 KB
ID:	23512


    I've tried to get the screenshots as close together as I can. They were captured with print screen from full screen playback with VLC and saved as full size JPGs, I have cropped out the black bars on all the images.

    My rip is around 9GB whereas the other version is around 5GB. To my they look virtually identical, certainly nothing that warrants another 4GB of footage per file!

    Both files are .MKV

    What can I be doing wrong, or not doing to produce the smallest file possible without losing quality? I think I must be missing a step.


    Thanks very much in advance, I can't wait to read the replies and hopefully a solution!
    Last edited by The Big Cheese; 10th Feb 2014 at 13:08. Reason: Added additional information
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  2. You have a "rip" - that' s what a video rip means by definition, a 1:1 copy of the video

    You can re-encode it x264 or some GUI for x264 like handbrake, ripbot, megui, staxrip etc.... to reduce the filesize with minimal quality loss such as in your screenshots . 99.99999% chance they used x264

    You can view what settings were used by the other videos with mediainfo (view=>text) , although that only tells you what encoding settings were used, and nothing about what other filters are processing was done
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  3. Ah I see! Thanks very much for your reply, that explains some things.

    I've always avoided recoding files because of how long it takes, I guess that explains why the rips are so quick.

    Thanks for the mediainfo link, I've followed it but it does state that it's full of adware which I certainly want to avoid!

    Is there any way of finding out about the file with a completely freeware piece of software without the 'extras'?


    Thanks!


    P.S. If I do find a way of recoding them to make them smaller but look virtually identical I'll certainly add it on here!
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  4. Mediainfo is probably the most recommended/used tool on this site. If you pay attention to where you're clicking it's easy enough to avoid/refuse the adware in the package.
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  5. Banned
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    Originally Posted by The Big Cheese View Post

    P.S. If I do find a way of recoding them to make them smaller but look virtually identical I'll certainly add it on here!
    No need. I understand that all of this is magical and new to you because you barely participate here, but I'm pretty sure that anything you come up will be what others have already known about and discussed a million times here. I appreciate your willingness to help others, but you're just doing a lot of work for nothing. Whatever you come up with will already be known and probably well documented here.
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  6. IIRC, the Mediainfo installer will by default install a toolbar of some sort, but you can opt out if you'll just read over the options before clicking install. Anyway, Mediainfo is a very useful tool.

    I have a few suggestions:

    1) With your Core2 Duo, you should probably use BDRebuilder. Its presets are pretty fast. You could probably re-encode 2-3 episodes overnight.

    2) Load your full disc rip and use other movie-only playlist for input. Though it might be less confusing for you to first extract each episode from your rip with Clown_BD. Longest titleset (episode) will be listed first when you load into Clown_BD.

    3 In BDRB, use alternate movie output. I'd suggest you try MKV container, 1920x1080, 640 kbps DD 5.1 audio. Use quality based encoding with a crf setting of 20. (Lower crf values will yield better quality, and bigger file sizes).

    Doing a one-pass crf encode is not only faster (than two-pass to target file size), it gives you pretty much the same quality each time, though output size is unpredictable. Content varies in its compressibility. If you do it to target file size, you'll always over or under-compress. Find a crf value that works for you and your display.

    Good luck.
    Pull! Bang! Darn!
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  7. Originally Posted by The Big Cheese View Post
    If I do find a way of recoding them to make them smaller but look virtually identical I'll certainly add it on here!
    Bluray video is often mpeg2, which doesn't compress as efficiently as an mpeg4 encoder such as x264. I've ripped Blurays which have resulted in files sizes much larger than 9GB (no re-encoding).

    The x264 encoder has a quality based encoding mode (mentioned in a previous post) called CRF encoding. CRF18 is around where the encoder is considered to be "transparent" (higher CRF values = lower quality = smaller file sizes). The resulting file size after encoding (for a particular CRF value) will vary considerably depending on how hard the video is to (re)compress.

    I generally use CRF18 but if you want "perfection" you could go as low as CRF16. I don't think too many people go much lower as then you're at the stage where re-encoding mightn't reduce the file size at all, or be likely to even increase it. CRF values a little higher than CRF18 will still produce very nice looking encodes.

    There's a portable version of MediaInfo without an installer. It's in a 7z file. There's a link to in on the MediaInfo page on this site. Just download it, extract it to a folder and run it. You won't get any extra junk that way. When you run it the first time it'll offer to add a MediaInfo shortcut to the right click menu.
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  8. Member
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    I for one notice a difference between you're rip and the online version. Definite changes in color, contrast, brightness...

    If someone has only seen the online versionk, they'll probably be quite happy. However, now having seen the direct copy, I'd rather have one. I would have thought my TV would be over bright and washing out colors and losing depth seeing the online copy only.
    Have a good one,

    neomaine

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  9. Hi everyone

    Thanks so much for your replies.

    hello_hello, thanks for the hint for the MediaInfo portable version, I've downloaded that and it works brilliantly, I had no idea that much information was embedded with the video file!

    fritzi93 - thanks for the suggestion of BDRebuilder, I'll have a look at it, I have Handbrake already so I downloaded the latest version and gave that a go tonight.

    I've tried to go by the log of MediaInfo, I don't understand all (or most) of the settings it has given but I've followed them as best I can along with the suggestions given here.

    I've kept all the filters to off, kept it at a constant frame rate with an RF of 16. The output file size is 4.06GB compared to 8.97GB of the original size and from my initial tests the picture looks virtually identical, I've got to check it a bit more yet but it's looking good so far!

    I noticed you mentioned my old computer build, I've since massively upgraded that so I can now recode an episode with the above settings in about 30 minutes so I'm quite pleased with that.

    I only have two other questions...

    I've noticed the recode doesn't have any chapter points etc., is there any way to add those back in? It's not important but might be handy at some point.

    Finally, (and this one is important), there aren't any subtitles either. Is there any way of adding those back in?

    The program I screen grabbed is a good example, it's not always in English so I would certainly need subs for non English sections, but I would like the option of full subtitles as well.

    Is there any way of keeping those in?

    Thanks again!
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  10. No chapters or subs? I guess your output was MKV or MP4 then?

    You want RipBot instead. (It's another front-end for X264 encoder). You'll keep chapters points in MKV output. You can either hard code subtitles into the picture, or mux in selectable subtitles. RipBot will identify any forced subs in its temp folder after the initial demux. RipBot (actually BDSup2Sub) will convert the .pgs subtitles to something better supported, i.e .sub (VobSub).

    Good on ya for updating your computer details. You're good to go.
    Pull! Bang! Darn!
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  11. Given you originally said you're wanting to output a single MKV file:

    HD-DVD/Blu-Ray Stream Extractor. That's the standalone version. It's also built into MeGUI under the Tools menu. I run AnyDVD in the background with the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray Stream Extractor doing the ripping. It'll extract everything to individual files (video usually extracted to an MKV) and you can extract just the streams you want.

    I use the above method myself and re-encode just the video with MeGUI (it doesn't matter how you do it), then I mux all the streams together with MKVMergeGUI.

    Subtitles are a pain in the butt. I don't work with them much but if need be I use Subtitle Edit to extract/convert just the forced subtitles so they can be added to the script MeGUI creates for encoding.

    Just some more ideas......

    Originally Posted by The Big Cheese View Post
    I've tried to go by the log of MediaInfo, I don't understand all (or most) of the settings it has given but I've followed them as best I can along with the suggestions given here.
    I'm not sure which file you're using MediaInfo on but I wouldn't take anyone else's encoder settings as being clever.
    There's no reason not to stick with the x264 defaults 99.999999% of the time. For Handbrake that's Handbrake's High Profile preset (disable filters etc if you want to). The general idea is to pick a CRF value which gives you a quality you're happy with (and maybe "on average" a file size you're also happy with), then use the slowest x264 speed preset you can stand. The default of Medium is fine. I generally use either Medium or Slow.... it's personal choice. Select an appropriate x264 Tuning (none, film, grain etc) and that's it. No need to mess around with advanced x264 settings.
    After encoding, if you check the encoder settings with MediaInfo, you'll notice some have changed according to the x264 speed preset and/or tuning used. In effect, the x264 speed presets and tunings just change the advanced x264 settings in a preconfigured way. Some encoder GUIs show you which advanced x264 settings are effected when a different preset is selected. Handbrake isn't one of them.
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