Rip Blu-Ray movie only with HD Audio?

[Pyrophoric]

My goal is to rip my current library of Blu-Rays to a file format that is compressed as much as possible with little to no visual quality loss, keeps the HD audio in tact and preferably allows me to play through WMC in W7. If this isn't possible through WMC I am willing to download or purchase other software but would really like to keep it to WMC.

I don't care if I have to buy software to rip, strip and compress but want to keep the video quality as close to original as possible and only the main HD audio (no menus, extras, special features or extra sound tracks).

Any suggestions on how to accomplish this feat? I will be outputting video from my 4870x2 and audio through my HD 5450, if that matters.

Thanks for any help!!!

[fritzi93]

Welcome to the forum.

Not knowing your experience level, please forgive me if I run through some basics. First you must decrypt and rip to hard drive. AnyDVDHD is probably the best option, but it's a bit pricey. DVDFabHDDecrypter (free) can rip BD, but doesn't keep up with new protections as well. Then there's MakeMKV. (free)

Dunno much about WMC, but I'll assume it will play h.264 in MKV container. MKV is convenient; it's a single file, not a folder; you can retain subs and chapter points, many free players can play them, e.g. MPCHC. You can rip a Blu-Ray disc to MKV with MakeMKV, deselecting any unwanted streams, and retaining exactly what you want.

The output from MakeMKV will still be a hefty sized file. If you want smaller, I'd recommend RipBot or HDConvertToX. Both are front-ends for essentially the same set of tools. All free. Since I prefer HDConvertToX, I'll do a summary of what you would have to do:

Load the MKV, analyse the file. Choose no crop (others may disagree, but I don't think the space saving is worth it, and if cropped, the file is a pain to remux to Blu-Ray). Going from memory alone (not on my HTPC at the moment), I think you wouldn't require hardware compatibility, so check the box for none.

For Video, choose x.264 in MKV container. Now we come to file size and quality. I think dual-layer DVD size is ample (8 GB) for most movies. And the default quality (encoding speed) is fine. Squeezing more quality out will entail a big speed penalty. Encoding h.264 is CPU intensive and can take quite a while, depending on how much horsepower your computer has. But experiment and come to your own conclusions.

For Audio, since you ripped your preferred audio and don't care about file size, just choose copy audio.

For subtitles, enable them if you wish. Make the subs selectable or hard-coded. HDConvertToX will automatically convert the subs to a more compatible format (using BDSup2Sub). Chapters should have automatically loaded if present in the input file. Generate the encode.

Good luck.

[wulf109]

Anydvd and TSmuxer

[Pyrophoric]

Thanks for the replies.

I have been mulling over different options since posting this.

So far, I have only had time to try MakeMKV and it was on Terminator Salvation. The resulting file was in fast forward for reason. I have to do more research on that when I have time. One thing I did notice was that the first time I ran the program it told me it was an evaluation version and to buy it after 30 days. The cost is $50 and even though I have only tried to make one file so far, I am not impressed for that price. It might be user error though so I will continue to mess with it.

I think I want to stick with AnyDVD HD for ripping because I have had a couple issues with HDCP errors. All my equipment is up to snuff but I still have occasional problem. That plus it's good for 1:1 Blu-Ray burning.

DVDFab Blu-Ray to Blu-Ray looked like a great application once installed. However, after reading their forums it seems there is little BD+ support atm, as you commented on.

tsMuxeR seems like a good program if I don't need any compression but want to strip extra stuff to a file plus it keeps chapters.

BD Rebuilder seems like a good program if I want a burn compression.

I had not heard of RipBot or HDConvertToX before you mentioned them. I will look them up and do some research.

Right now I am using the Shark007 codec pack which enables me to run mkv's through wmc. I don't know the details on HD Audio though with mkv.

[fritzi93]

Terminator Salvation seems to be problematic if ripping with MakeMKV, if a couple posts on other threads are anything to go by. AnyDVDHD is by all odds the best choice for Blu-Ray decryption.

Well, you could rip full disc with AnyDVDHD, then re-encode movie-only with BDRB to BD9 or custom size if you wish. I believe you can keep HD audio in BD9, although the setting for it says BD25. If that works in WMC, then all's well.

If not, then rewrap the *m2ts in the BDMV folder with HDConvertToX. Load, analyze, no crop. Select X264 in MKV container, copy video, copy audio, enable subs. This is fairly quick as you're *not* re-encoding, just putting the audio/video/subs/chapters into a different container.

Good luck.

[Pyrophoric]

Thanks again!

[redwudz]

What I've been using is AnyDVD HD and RipBot and creating a two pass MKV, usually with 640kHz AC3 surround sound. I encode it to fit on a DL DVD disc for backup archiving. I don't resize the video. I don't use DTS audio as it takes up too much space and the 640kHz AC3 sounds fine. The downside is it takes about six hours for the processing. And I have a quad core CPU running at 3.4Ghz. But the quality is very good.

RipBot just does the main movie and the main soundtrack, pretty much automatically. I use tsMuxeR on occasion when RipBot has problems figuring out which set of video and audio are the correct ones. Another handy tool is BDInfo as it can tell you what combinations of .m2ts files are the correct ones.

[Bwizzy]

These cats are right about their different file conversions, but as far as having WMC playback the content, I have Haali Media splitter, FFDShow, and Avisynth installed. They all plug into WMC in some way. I have no problems playing any type of video format with Windows 7 Media Center

[Pyrophoric]

Thanks again to all.

The only thing that is putting me off from trying MakeMKV more is the fact it isn't free. It says in 30 days I need to buy it. Having already dropped $140 on the audio card and $114 on the lifetime for AnyDVD HD, that isn't happening right now. lol

[Bwizzy]

Well you have all the tools you need right now. You can use RipBot and make some damn good BD cuts of movies. Why did you buy the audio card, if you don't mind me asking? The Video Card has HDMI Audio if I'm not mistaken. It sound to me like you are hooking this PC to Home Theater set up. All you need is the Audio out through the Video Card to your surround sound receiver and the receiver does the rest.
My set up lets me get all the bells and whistle. I have my HTPC hooked to this:

http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA/Products/HomeEntertainment/AV-Receivers/Pioneer...-1019AH-K.Kuro

And I get all the stated Audio formats. Even some old avi anime files i have were in 5.1.