Basic Advice on BR Ripping

[djtech2k7]

I am new to BR in general, but my kids are tough on BR disks, so I want to rip them to HD digital file so I can just drop them on my hard drive and play them without having to track down the disks.

I have done this with DVD, but need help with BR. I want to retain full HD quality, so I do not want to rip it down to low quality. I want it into a single file and would like it to be a standard format. Saving space would be great, but quality is more important to me. For DVD, I use handbrake and a few other things, but again BR is new for me.

What format and settings should I use? What software should I use? Do I need to worry about copy protection on BR? Can I retain the same BR quality but store it in a standardized single HD video file?

Thanks!

[Baldrick]

Use MakeMKV if you don't want to shrink. It can also rip.

Use Ripbot264 or handbrake to shrink. Rip with AnyDVDHD, DVDFab Decrypter or MakeMKV.

[djtech2k7]

Is MKV a standard format like H264?

If you shrink with the ones you mentioned, what video settings should be used to retain full HD quality? For example, there's a bunch of settings in handbrake, but I really don't know what any of them mean or how they should be set.

[Kerry56]

Break encryption with AnyDVD HD. This decryption program gives fewer problems and is updated very quickly. Fairly expensive for the lifetime version of the program.

If you'd rather have a free decryption program, I'd use MakeMKV, which can rip as an mkv file (as already noted) or as the complete blu ray structure on the disc. Once on the hard drive, you could convert or compress the movie as you wish. The problem with the free decrypters is that they are not updated as quickly, so newer releases are often a problem.

If you want just one file, use the mkv or mp4 container formats. I prefer mkv, but some people need mp4 to match their playback equipment. So you need to know which one is best suited for your particular players. Support for both types of container files is becoming common on new equipment.

By ripping to mkv without compression, you will retain full quality. There won't be any change. File sizes will be very large, and if you are using MakeMKV for this, the codecs used in the audio and video will not be changed either. Some players might not like VC-1 video (found in about 19% of all blu ray) contained within an mkv file. The player might expect H264. So you need to test this in your players.

If you use a program like Handbrake or VidCoder, you will be converting to H264. File sizes will be considerably smaller, with little loss of quality most of the time. I'd start with the default setting of CQ 20 in Handbrake (video settings tab). If the quality isn't acceptable, do another test at 19 or 18 to improve it, at the cost of longer encoding times and larger file output.

Which audio type to select is a bit harder to advise you on without knowing the capabilities of your players. Most people tend to drop the HD audio down to AAC format, or keep it as plain AC3 rather than the HD formats, since the HD audio takes up a lot of room. Do you have a preference with this?

[Baldrick]

If you just are going to play your video on computers use MKV. If you want it to work on portable devices you might consider using mp4.


And you can also shrink with bd rebuilder(to a single mkv or mp4).

[djtech2k7]

Thanks all for the great replies. So I finally made the decision to buy 4videosoft BluRay Ripper. I have barely used it, but it looks like it will take just about any format video/audio and convert it to just about any video/audio.

So far I have only taken MTS files from my camera and turned them into a single H.264 MP4 file.

My question is now about the quality settings and the output size. I have been using the following settings to convert my MTS files to MP4. I would like to keep HD quality, but saving some space would be an added bonus. My question is what settings should I use for doing MTS or Blu-Ray conversion? I have a nice home theater, so I want to maintain the great HD quality.

[Steve(MS)]

Thanks all for the great replies. So I finally made the decision to buy 4videosoft BluRay Ripper. I have barely..]

So "great replies" but not great advice?
You totally ignored the replies and their advice.
You are free but don't expect anyone here to know anything about that "Ripper".

[jman98]

Thanks all for the great replies. So I finally made the decision to buy 4videosoft BluRay Ripper. I have barely..]

So "great replies" but not great advice?
You totally ignored the replies and their advice.
You are free but don't expect anyone here to know anything about that "Ripper".

This is why sometimes I wonder if it's really worth trying to help, although I'm not one of the people who got ignored here.

djtech2k7 - You are converting your audio to 44.1 kHz. That's stupid AND unnecessary. Until you learn why, I think I'm going to opt out of this thread.

[djtech2k7]

I did read the replies/advice. When I originally wrote the post, I was looking for the tool and the right format. I ended up buy the software I mentioned, so some of the settings that were suggested are not visible/available in this software. I am not sure what is so offensive about my question.

The settings that I posted were a modified version of the default H.264 settings in the software. I just bumped the size to full HD. I do not know what normal sound settings are and what the impact of them are. I know a little more a bout the video, but not nearly all.

The bottom line is that I am not expecting everyone to know the software I bought, but there are only a few options in the screen I posted. I did not think that asking about those options would be an issue. I thought I was starting on the right track with these settings so I wanted to ask about it.

[Kerry56]

Blu ray frame rate is normally 23.976, so your choice of 29.97 is incorrect. And your audio sample rate should be set to 48000Hz.

[fritzi93]

Never heard of that software and I doubt many members here have either. That doesn't necessarily mean it's bad, of course.

Still, I can't help thinking it's a pity you paid for it, when the tools section has so many excellent free tools suitable for your purpose.

[Kerry56]

Some of the commercial programs like this use X264 as the encoder, so maybe he got lucky Fritzi. I know the DVDRanger program uses it.

Then again, I tested the Digiarty program for conversions over at MyCE, and the output wasn't good at all. How they managed to screw up X264 is beyond me, but looking through the output in MediaInfo, they had some very strange choices in the encoding parameters. The result was really poor.

[jman98]

Then again, I tested the Digiarty program for conversions over at MyCE, and the output wasn't good at all. How they managed to screw up X264 is beyond me, but looking through the output in MediaInfo, they had some very strange choices in the encoding parameters. The result was really poor.

Replying only because it addresses this specifically...
Programs like this don't have to be good, they just have to work. Suckers will always buy them just because they showed up first in a Google search. Many dumb users truly do not care about quality at all as long as it works. Low quality but watchable is good enough. Some years ago I had a friend who used to regularly make abominable OTA TV recordings (these were in the pre-digital TV days) with plenty of snow and noise and he then encoded them to VCDs, which he kept. He thought they were great. I watched about 5 minutes of one and refused to ever watch them again, but he loved them.

Remember, there's usually no refunds on software like this, so as long as it works, the buyer will either put up with the crummy quality and not know better or he'll have no recourse to a refund as the software does do what it claims to. In the USA you can't necessarily get refunds just because you dislike the quality of the encoded output. Laws elsewhere may be more consumer friendly.

[hogger129]

What are you playing back with? Only reason to use MP4 with AAC audio is for Apple devices or Sony devices. Also, are these going to be 1:1 backups?

If you are compressing them, I would compress them down to about 7 or 8 GB. Use .mkv container, and AC3 5.1 audio @ 448kbps or 640kbps.


As for what programs to use, I would use MakeMKV to make your main uncompressed rip, and then use another program to convert that. Handbrake and BDRB are free and I've heard they do a great job. DVDFab is the only paid one I'd use.

[blud7]

Wow that program is $45! Anyway it's the OP's choice to buy software if he wants.
No need to call him stupid.
Those settings are fine with a few exceptions as noted above.

1. The framerate should be 23.976
2. The audio should be 48 kHz but it doesn't have to be.
3. For AAC encoding 128 kbps is fine for stereo (2.0/1) audio, but for 5.1, you should try 320 kbps minimum
4. Lower the video bitrate to 8000 kbps, it should be fine.

[hogger129]

Is MKV a standard format like H264?

If you shrink with the ones you mentioned, what video settings should be used to retain full HD quality? For example, there's a bunch of settings in handbrake, but I really don't know what any of them mean or how they should be set.

Not sure what you mean by "standard." The reason for MKV is the versatility of the container. Can contain all different kinds of audio formats (though for PCM you need it in a .wav container), subtitles, etc. It also has less overhead than many of the other formats, which results in a slightly smaller file size.


For full HD quality just make sure you use 1920 x "whatever." This will keep the 1080p, but rather than 1920x1080, it might say 1920x800. It's not reducing the resolution, all it's doing to my understanding is not encoding those black bars as part of the video. It actually saves you some space too and uses that extra space to up the video bit rate.