HDMI capture instead of Ripping for Backup of BluRay?

[aramkolt]

I've been watching a fair amount of blu ray ripping videos on YouTube and the whole process seems kind of involved and costly if you've only got one single 1080P blu ray that you want to make a backup to put onto a home streaming server. These days, it seems a blu ray drive and the software (MakeMKV) will probably mean you're spending at least $200 at least assuming all goes smoothly with firmware upgrades and disc reading etc, not to mention the time and learning curve.

I'm wondering if anyone has dabbled in capturing standard blu ray (1080P) via something like a Blackmagic or similar HDMI capture device that captures into something like ProRes422HQ or uncompressed 10 bit as an alternative? From there, you'd use something like handbrake to get the file down to a more reasonable size. I get that downsides there would be features like extras and subtitles/languages won't be something you can switch on and off. I also don't believe that those devices can capture anything other than stereo audio via HDMI either. I've heard that coaxial output can be captured as regular audio as long as the bit depth is high enough and the recording is "bit for bit" - but I've kind of lost what thread discussed that. There are also some cheap Optical USB capture devices like the Happage PVR that I think you could just capture audio separately with and then combine into the file later if you need better than stereo.

There's other devices like the Cloner Alliance Box Pro that'll record from 1080P sources via HDMI, but my guess is the quality is probably pretty crappy given the limited bitrate and live H264 encoding it does. I believe the highest bitrate it can do for 1080P is 22Mbit/s.

Would love to hear others' thoughts and what sort of "percentage loss" in quality you might have doing ProRes422HQ/10 bit uncompressed/Cloner Alliance compared to the obviously lossless ripping method.

[Subtitles]

A Blu Ray drive and MakeMkv will not cost $200!!!
For a start, MakeMkv has a free version as long as you update the license every month.
You can still buy Blu Ray Drives and external ones are cheaper than internal drives.
Amazon has them for around $50 but they look like made in China so buying them from AliExpress can be cheaper.
Also you can buy used drives second hand from for example eBay or local computer shops.
To be honest I will never spend time using HDMI ripping to do what you are suggesting.

[aramkolt]

Ah, I thought I'd seen somewhere that MakeMKV was out of beta and therefore needed to be purchased which apparently isn't currently the case. I'd be all about buying it if I was using it on a regular basis, but this would just be for one disc. Seems most of the suggested drives in YouTube tutorials are older models that are easily $100-$150 used on ebay. Are there ones on Amazon in the $50 range that are known to work well with the firmware re-flashing required? Seems the user ratings aren't that great on Amazon for most of the less expensive ones.

Still curious how HDMI capture compares though.

[dellsam34]

If you're talking about HD Blu-ray not UHD then drives are very cheap, all you need is the free MakeMKV software with the exception of Cinavia discs which I believe MakeMKV is not capable of decoding, but it can decode other audio tracks like Dolby D and DTS, not a lot of titles have Cinavia though.

The UHD ripping is not involved at all but the drive shipped with a custom firmware applied is little over $100, It is involved if you buy a cheaper drive and try to flash it yourself.

If you have only few discs, send them over I will rip them for you if you don't mind paying shipping roundtrip.

Honestly, I would not even bother capturing from HDMI, ripping Blu-rays is as easy as DVD.

[aramkolt]

Definitely appreciate the offer! Since I like experimenting with different hardware, I might end up giving the ripping part a go myself and if I'm unsuccessful for some reason, I might take you up on that offer. My main concern over mailing would be possible loss during shipping which seems to happen way more often than you'd think.

I guess if I dabble, might as well have the UHD capability for future-proofing. The main disc I want to backup is just a regular 1080P blu ray disc.

Where can you get a preflashed drive for $100? Seems the ones on Amazon that I see being lasted as supported (for UHD) are a minimum of $130 plus tax which would be this one: https://www.amazon.com/Amazonia-Verbatim-Connectivity-Enclosure-Compatible-PC/dp/B07MTP9VKX. Kind of makes me think there might be a shortage given how many different blu ray models referenced in various ripping videos are simply out of stock on Amazon.

I might eventually post what the difference in capture looks like via HDMI vs a direct rip. I get that it isn't the ideal method, but if you have a blu ray player and don't want to invest in more hardware for a personal backup or two, seems HDMI could make sense in some situations.

Am mainly curious if others do that and if they can tell a difference picture quality wise compared to a direct copy. Seems like digital to digital really shouldn't have significant visual losses, but I'm not completely sure about that.

[dellsam34]

I doubt there will be a major difference in quality, I would assume it will be some level differences, on top of that, depends on the capability of the capture card in terms of audio streams, you may not be able to get all of them, With ripping, you get everything on the disc with a lot of option from a complete disc image to the main title only wrapped in mkv, and everything in between like selecting what video titles, audio tracks, and subtitles you want.

There are certain requirement for a drive to qualify for UHD ripping, Check my post here, it summarized what you need to know about UHD ripping.