Splitting bluray movie to 2 bd-r discs

[jayt34]

I did a search and found a similar thread about splitting m2ts files, but no solution. Here is my deal. I tried to copy the LOTR bluray movies last night onto my hard drive using DVDFab, but for some reason I had no video just audio(very strange) I have posted a thread on the DVDFab forum but no help yet. I wanted to try Anydvd, but will have to purchase the software as my trial period is over. I understand that Anydvd will only rip the whole movie and I would have to use Clownbd or something like this to extract just the movie only. I need to figure out how to split the movie by chapters to fit on 2 bd-r 25gb discs. I have used TSMuxer to split by time and it works pretty good, but splitting by chapters would be much easier. Does anybody know how to do this, without losing any quality, I do not want to re-encode anything, hence the reason for 2 bd-r discs.

Thanks

[fritzi93]

You can try DVDFabPasskey for decryption, it's free (for the time being) and works like AnyDVDHD. So you can run it in the background and use ClownBD or tsMuxer to extract main movie.

Can't speak to why you only got audio using DVDFab. Are you certain your settings were correct? What do you use to view rips on your computer? (It would help if you filled in your computer details as well).

To split the movie is easy enough with tsMuxer. I would suggest examining the chapter timings for convenient possible split points. Chapters will be preserved when remuxing each half, of course. This is not inconvenient to do, it only takes an extra minute or so.

As to your not wanting to re-encode anything, well your other option would be a double-layer Blu-Ray recordable, though they're expensive. Personally, I re-encoded all the LOTR BD discs, main movie, to BD9, and they're quite acceptable. Unless you have an enormous display device, I'm betting you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the original and a BD25 backup.

I don't know of any program that can do what you want automatically, maybe there is one. Good luck.

[jayt34]

You can try DVDFabPasskey for decryption, it's free (for the time being) and works like AnyDVDHD. So you can run it in the background and use ClownBD or tsMuxer to extract main movie.

Can't speak to why you only got audio using DVDFab. Are you certain your settings were correct? What do you use to view rips on your computer? (It would help if you filled in your computer details as well).

To split the movie is easy enough with tsMuxer. I would suggest examining the chapter timings for convenient possible split points. Chapters will be preserved when remuxing each half, of course. This is not inconvenient to do, it only takes an extra minute or so.

As to your not wanting to re-encode anything, well your other option would be a double-layer Blu-Ray recordable, though they're expensive. Personally, I re-encoded all the LOTR BD discs, main movie, to BD9, and they're quite acceptable. Unless you have an enormous display device, I'm betting you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the original and a BD25 backup.

I don't know of any program that can do what you want automatically, maybe there is one. Good luck.

Thanks for the reply. I have used dvdfab for several blyray backups and had no problem, I think i'ts just these movies that are causing me problems. I use powerdvd 9 or windows media player 11 to view the streams. My computer is a Dell Inspiron, fairly new. I have not compressed a bluray that is 36gb or so in size to a 25gb disc yet so I don't know the quality loss. My screen is 110 inches diagonal and I have a dlp projector that I use to watch movies on. How do I use tsmuxer to get the exact time. I have used the split function but it only lets you use minutes, seconds, or milliseconds, not both for instance 45m 8s, I would have to use 2708 seconds to get it exactly right. Not a big deal I guess. I wasn't aware that it preserves the chapters, that's good to know.

[fritzi93]

Well, 110 inches is certainly "big", as far as I'm concerned. Nevertheless, you ought to try a backup to single-layer Blu-Ray (BD25) with BDRB and see what you think.

As to split point, what I mean is, in tsMuxer hit the Blu-Ray tab and there you are, all chapter timings are there on the left. Say the movie is, oh, 3 hrs 15 mins long and the chapter list says there's a chapter point at say 97 mins, 23.77 secs. For your split, that would be the end point for the first half and start point for the second half. The few times I've done it, I always dropped the milliseconds and the result was fine. Just enter the correct values and away you go.

I'm certain your problem is not with decryption. I'm thinking it's either a problem with your DVDFab settings (not likely), or perhaps your system doesn't like DTS-MA audio. Perhaps your computer simply can't keep up. If you don't have a DXVA capable video card the load would be put on the processor. And mind you, DTS-MA and TrueHD audio files are huge. Is this your first attempt, or have you done any backups successfully, and if so have been able to display them on your computer?

Anyway, I did those movies with AnyDVDHD running and extracted main movie with ClownBD, downconverting the DTS-MA audio to 448 kbps AC3. You could try it using DVDFabPasskey and ClownBD, leaving the audio untouched. If you have problems, try extracting the core audio. Sometimes I've had problematic discs and that procedure was successful.

Good luck.

[EDIT] Now that I think about it, severely fragmented files could exhibit that problem, especially if you don't have a separate dedicated capture drive to decrypt to. The file is just too difficult for the player to seek. I've had that happen when I let my capture drive get too full and a decrypted Blu-Ray got on the drive as a very fragmented set of files.

[jayt34]

Well, 110 inches is certainly "big", as far as I'm concerned. Nevertheless, you ought to try a backup to single-layer Blu-Ray (BD25) with BDRB and see what you think.

As to split point, what I mean is, in tsMuxer hit the Blu-Ray tab and there you are, all chapter timings are there on the left. Say the movie is, oh, 3 hrs 15 mins long and the chapter list says there's a chapter point at say 97 mins, 23.77 secs. For your split, that would be the end point for the first half and start point for the second half. The few times I've done it, I always dropped the milliseconds and the result was fine. Just enter the correct values and away you go.

I'm certain your problem is not with decryption. I'm thinking it's either a problem with your DVDFab settings (not likely), or perhaps your system doesn't like DTS-MA audio. Perhaps your computer simply can't keep up. If you don't have a DXVA capable video card the load would be put on the processor. And mind you, DTS-MA and TrueHD audio files are huge. Is this your first attempt, or have you done any backups successfully, and if so have been able to display them on your computer?

Anyway, I did those movies with AnyDVDHD running and extracted main movie with ClownBD, downconverting the DTS-MA audio to 448 kbps AC3. You could try it using DVDFabPasskey and ClownBD, leaving the audio untouched. If you have problems, try extracting the core audio. Sometimes I've had problematic discs and that procedure was successful.

Good luck.

[EDIT] Now that I think about it, severely fragmented files could exhibit that problem, especially if you don't have a separate dedicated capture drive to decrypt to. The file is just too difficult for the player to seek. I've had that happen when I let my capture drive get too full and a decrypted Blu-Ray got on the drive as a very fragmented set of files.

Thanks again for the reply. I was able to back up all of the Matrix movies and they are all encoded with the VC-1 codec. I feel like an idiot. The Lord of the Rings movies were ripped into my hard drive the whole time I just used the wrong program to try and view them. all is well. Thanks again.