Best strategy for ripping BD+DVD collection

[theriel]

Hello,
First of all - thank you all for this great website. I have already learnt a lot of extremely helpful stuff.

I am about to modernize my home media system (building media PC, ripping movies to HDD etc.) and I thought it would make most sense to ask you for general advice BEFORE I waste lots of hours doing something wrong.

My priority is not having to re-rip anything, so having a collection which will last - i.e. close to lossless + compatible + flexible. For now, I will be watching the movies on a newest Samsung 55'', so high quality is a must.

For music, I have already discovered that *.FLAC is the best format.

For DVDs and Blu-Ray Discs, this website seems to suggest using MakeMKV + Handbreak (or some other encoder) and storing files in *.mkv.

MakeMKV allows me to rip only the audio and video tracks of my interest (skipping advertisements and dubbing in 4 foreign languages). I like it.

I have some doubts, however, about the next part of the process (including encoding etc.):
1)Leave it lossless or shrink it at least a bit?
MakeMKV technically gives me loss-less format. That is fine for 40GB discs, but slightly less thrilling for 80GB movies. I could stop here, as this gives me 1:1 rip and thus I will never have to go back to my BD for anything. That sounds very tempting. However, I know from ripping audio, that e.g. using FLAC I can get lossless quality of audio weighing 350MB, instead of 700MB *.iso file. How does it compare to ripping videos? If the quality drop is not noticeable, maybe it would make more sense to shrink it a bit. What do you think/do?

2) If encoding a bit is the answer - what is the sensible coder configuration?
Resolution: 1080p (original), Audio: lossless. The rest is less clear to me. H.264 seems to be the codec of choice and 80% quality, allegedly, is not discernible from the original. That could be accomplished with Handbrake (video encode) + MKVMergeGUI (to merge with original audio). Is there other, more sensible solution/codec/configuration?

3)What do you do with subtitles?
I realize that subtitles can be either embedded in files (in *.mkv) or they could be extracted into separate files. Is there any good reason for extracting them? If I make mkv without subtitles, how would I extract just the subtitles from the DVD/BD? Or, if I have *.mkv with subtitles, can I easily remove them and save as separate files? What do you do - do you store your subtitles embedded or separately?

What do you think? What would you do?

Thank you for your thoughts and help!

[yoda313]

You haven't mentioned the hardware you have or will get. You need to finalize that as it will determine what you do.

You need a player that can read large harddrives and can play either iso, ripped folders or at least lots of codecs in multiple container formats.

Check out the western digital wdtv media players as they have lots of good recommendations on this website and a loyal following. No device is perfect but they have wide support. The "live" models have internet access and you need to check which ones have the "apps" you want like vudu or youtube. The newest models should have just about everything, some will have wireless built, check first before buying.

My strategy i have adjusted to recently is this - I just bought a toshiba 2tb external powered harddrive.

I have a 1st generation wdtv media player (no lan internet ability) that can read the drive so its good and my new sony bluray player can also read the drive (don't go above 2tb as apparently 3tb and larger aren't widely supported yet, read carefully before buying larger than 2tb if your device supports it or not).

I am ripping my blurays with anydvdhd. Then I use eac3to to convert the audio to ac3 at 640kpbs. This saves space while maintaining a good bit of fidelity and of course 5.1 audio. I then use tsmuxer to mux (combine) the movie only and the new ac3 track taken from the dts-ma audio track and create a single m2ts file. This is just the movie nothing else. YOu can do all the extras and trailers and stuff but its more involved.

Then I get a 23-27gb movie file depending on the length of the movie. I then copy that to my harddrive and I can play that on my wdtv or bluray player. No conversion is done to the video itself, its the original that was on the bluray.

This is perfect for my needs (I have an older relatively slow dual core pc that isn't up to long 2 hour movie conversions to 1080p h264 video files). Its relatively straightforward and gives great results that I can use on multiple devices.

As for dvds you should make sure you have a player that can play either iso or video_ts folders. That way all you have to do is rip the disc and copy to your external harddrive.

As for subtitles I can't offer too much on that. Others here can.

Though if you go for reencoding you can certainly convert to srt and use as selectable subtitles. Mkv is probably your best container choice as its the most flexibly. However mp4 will be more widely accessible. But keep in mind if you encode to h264 every device will have its own quirks about what peak values it can handle. The same h264 video won't play in every device you have. If you keep it basic on profile level 3 and keep it standard definition and stereo with aac audio you will be able to play it on the widest possible amount of devices. But you will have to study up on what the max specs are for any given device you plan to play it on.

You need to give specifics on hardware and software that you will be playing with. Also if you will be doing this over a network using dlna and upnp that presents its own issues. And if you want high def over wireless you have to go wifi n as a minimum. Go to 300mbps N devices for the best possible results and get repeaters to keep the signal as strong as possible throughout the household. Remember you won't get the maximum stated speed so expect less than the stated number on the device.

Let us know what you will be using and then we can give more specifics. Each device has its own needs.

Edit - didn't catch that you will be using a media pc (we call it a htpc - home theater pc - if its mostly used for movies). You will be able to use anything your computer can play on it. However if in the future you want to move it to a settop unit of sometype your choices now will somewhat limit that transfer a little depending on how lossless you go right now.

[Kerry56]

I rarely buy or even rent dvds these days. I've gone over entirely to blu ray for original source material.

Since I like to play from the hard drive, instead of the original discs, I use AnyDVD HD to rip the movies. Once there I either use ClownBD to remove extras and extraneous subtitle and foreign language streams, or I do a movie only backup and compress the larger films to a size that will fit onto a blank 25gb blu ray disc using BD Rebuilder. I have long since stopped trusting any one form of backup, so I keep my copies on burned blu ray discs, as well as on the hard drive.

I leave everything in blu ray format.

Playback is done with a slightly older version of Arcsoft TMT 5 on my HTPC. I refuse to update the player, since newer versions are infected with Cinavia detection.

[hello_hello]

I use AnyDVD to decrypt Bluray discs and the HD Streams Extractor built into MeGUI to rip them. The HD Streams Extractor lets you choose which streams to rip (so you can just choose the video, audio and subtitle streams you actually want) and it extracts each stream to an individual file. It'll also convert the audio to another format (using eac3to for the work) during the ripping proces if you want it to. Ultimately you're left with the video in an MKV, and separate audio, subtitle and chapter files.

You can of course combine the lot into a single MKV using MKVMergeGUI, which gives you untouched video and audio etc, but I prefer to reduce the file size, so from there I open any ripped subtitles with SubtitleEdit and check for any forced subtitles (ie English subtitles for non-English parts) and if there are any I convert the forced subtitles to a SRT subtitle file to be hard-coded into the video.

Once that's done I use MeGUI to convert the video. As my PC is connected to my TV I use it to preview the video before encoding to decide whether or not to keep it at 1080p, reduce it to 720p and/or apply any noise filtering. Quite often I reduce it to 720p as it's fairly obvious there's very little, or no loss of picture detail when doing so, but it varies from movie to movie. I add any forced subtitles to the encoding job and for 720p I use a CRF value of 18 which will usually result in an encoded file size of between 3GB and 5GB per movie. For 1080p it'd be around double that, so I use CRF 20 to keep the file size down, which will probably result in a file size of around 5Gb to 8GB. It varies quite a bit according to how hard the video is to compress and/or whether noise filtering was used.

My final step is to add the extracted/re-encoded audio, along with any extracted subtitles and chapters to the encoded video and remux them as a completed MKV using MKVMergeGUI.

For DVD encoding I use DVDShrink to rip the DVDs and re-author them in one step (effectively only ripping the required audio and subtitle streams etc, while ripping only the movie or the episodes individually etc). Once they're ripped I use Vobsubber to extract any subtitles (Vobsubber is built into MeGUI) and MeGUI's chapter creator to extract the chapters. Once again I check for and convert any force subtitles to SRT with SubtitleEdit in order to hard-code them. There is of course no rule saying you need to hardcode forced subtitles.... I just prefer to myself as then there's no doubt they'll always be shown regardless of the playback method (or the person operating the player). If there's a lot of subtitles to be encoded sometimes I don't crop any black borders (or don't remove all of it) so the subtitles will be hardcoded into the black border rather than the picture, but it's all personal preference.

If you use MakeMKV to rip discs, you can also use MKVCleaver to extract any subtitle, chapter or audio streams etc from the MKV it creates.

These days I always resize DVDs to square pixels when re-encoding them (eliminates the worrying as to whether a player will display video with non-square pixels correctly) and I always resize "up". As an example, for an NTSC 16:9 DVD (cropping aside) I'd resize to 854x480, for PAL it'd be 1024x576. Once again, I use MeGUI for the encoding, and generally I add the extracted audio to the encoded video rather than re-encode it.

Once of the reasons I use MeGUI for encoding is it's an AVISynth based encoder GUI, so it creates AVISynth scripts which it uses to re-encode the video. The advantage of that method is once MeGUI has saved the script, it can be opened using a player such as MPC-HC. That way I can open the script and view it running full-screen on my TV, so I can compare scripts to decide on resizing and noise filtering etc before doing any actual encoding. MeGUI has more of a learning curve than a program such as HandBrake, but I think it's worth it, however not everyone wants to fuss over the encoding process quite as much, in which case Handbrake would be fine. Well I'd use Vidcoder instead (it's an alternative HandBrake GUI) and I'd only use the built in High Profile preset, as it basically uses the default x264 encoder settings.

[yoda313]

The HD Streams Extractor lets you choose which streams to rip (so you can just choose the video, audio and subtitle streams you actually want) and it extracts each stream to an individual file. It'll also convert the audio to another format (using eac3to for the work) during the ripping proces if you want it to.

Nice tip. That would streamline my process a bit.

I thought I'd add that to get my rips down to 23-27gb I mux only the video and the newly minted ac3 track, I deselect everything else in the stream when I mux with tsmuxer.

[bobthegoat2001]

I think the easiest for me is using DVDfab. It does DVD's and Blu-Ray discs, but I normally do Blu-Ray discs with it. I like it because it's one of the few rippers/converters that will keep the DTS-HD Master Audio and/or Dolby TrueHD lossless audio intact, even if you decide to convert the video down at all.

With it, there are many options you can do.

- You can decrypt and copy the whole Blu-Ray disc without any compression to an ISO file
- Compress a 50gb dual layer Blu-Ray to a 25gb single layer Blu-Ray
- Rip just the main main movie to either a 50gb BD-R or 25gb BD-R (which is what I do) and pass-through the DTS-HD Master Audio/Dolby TrueHD so it'll play in a stand alone Blu-Ray Player
- Rip the main movie to a DVD9 or a DVD5 via AVCHD, so it'll remain 1080p and play in set top Blu-Ray players
- The majority of Blu-Ray discs use DTS-HD Master Audio for the Audio. The DTS-HDMA spec requires that it also has the a standard DTS audio (not lossless) to keep compatibility for receivers that don't support DTS-HDMA. This is normally called the DTS Core. You can also pass-through this if you don't want the lossless DTS-HDMA. The few BD movies that do use Dolby TrueHD instead normally also include the standard lossy AC3 (Dolby Digital) audio also, which can also be pass-through. You can also convert DTS to AC3, but I recommend against it (whenever you convert anything, the end result is always worse than if you don't)
- Rip just the main movie losslessly; in other words pass-through the audio and the video to an MT2S or MKV file
- Rip just the main movie, pass-through the audio, but convert the video to h264 to an MKV video
- Supports nVidia Cuda for faster encoding (fastest encoder I've used and still looks great on my 65" 1080p HDTV, the encode is almost real time (not much longer than the movie itself), a lot faster than Handbrake for sure). I think AMD video cards are supported too, but I'm not sure since I have an nVidia card.
- Supports 3D video, can also convert Blu-Ray 3D to side-by-side or even convert 2D to 3D.
- Also burn your ISO files to Blu-Ray/DVD
- And more
- Edit: I forgot to mention that DVDfab will also copy the subtitles from Blu-Ray discs to both M2TS and MKV formats. For MKV you can just remux the subtitles, which pretty much just copies them. So if you wanted, you could pass-through the the audio and the video and remux the subtitles and everything will be original quality. You'll end up with an MKV movie normally anywhere from 16gb's to 36gb's and at original quality (and it'll play in the WDTV, except for DTS-HD Master Audio. I haven't found anything other than Blu-Ray disc players that will actually play the DTS-HDMA yet [thanks Sony!])

The only drawback is that DVDfab isn't free but I found it to be the easiest and does everything I want it to do (especially if you want to preserve the HD audio). If you have some money to spend, I think the best deal is getting the lifetime (unlimited free updates) package which comes with everything (and even a set top, android based video player) for $299.99 (though they almost always have a 20% off coupon, which brings it to $239.20). This is the package I got. You can also have cheaper packages if you don't need every single product either. They have a 30 day free trial also.

It's worth noting too that DVDfab Virtual Drive is free, which I found to be handy too, which allows you to mount your ISO files and play them on your computer. It comes in handing when ripping the special features (by comparing the times).

dvdfab.com

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[lingyi]

+1 on the WDTV. I've been using my WDTV Live Plus for years and it works great for DVD and Blu-Ray rips. You mention building a media PC, so this may not be an option, but if you do decide to go with it, don't worry about >2GB hard drives. I'm using several 3GB external drives with my WDTV and have each partioned into 2GB & 1GB partions and all show up fine.

For movie only, use MakeMKV and embed the subitles. Makes for a single file (less likely to lose the extra sub file). If I want to keep the extras, I save as ISO.

As for compression. Don't. FLAC works because that 700mb CD is uncompressed audio. As has been mentioned numerous times on this site, even the largest blu-rays are already compressed. When 4K, 8K and beyond video formats are readily available, they'll also be compressed. Remember that by defiintion any CODEC is a COmpressor / DECompressor. Any further compression no matter how efficient will reduce quality to some extent. It may not be noticeable to you, but it's a fact that it is there. You've spent good money for a high end HDTV, why compromise with anything less than the best.

4TB drives are currently available for $140.00 in the U.S. That's less than $0.04/gig. Your 80gb file costs ~$3.00 to store. Factor in the addiitonal cost of a duplicate drive for backup (see below), and you're at $6.00 for that file. Less than a single ticket to the movies for something you can watch over and over again.

No matter how you plan to use to play and store your files, BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP! I have over 12TB of files and every byte of it is backed on a duplicate drive. My irreplacable personal files are backed up on a third duplicate hard drive. I've had the horror of two of my 3TB drives die and while I had a backup, it too over 36 hours to transfer those 3TB from one drive to the other via USB 2.0. The second time I used USB 3.0 connections and while the transfer time was halved (~18 hours), it's still wasn't fun. Don't rely on "Well, I have the original discs as a backup.". I foolishly overwrote over 600 DVDs worth of data during one of my hard drive recoveries, and what was a leisurely task of ripping over several years, turned into a month and half of 6-8 hours a day of rip / save, hours that I should have spent enjoying watching those movies, rather than feverishly trying to restore what I lost!

[hello_hello]

The HD Streams Extractor lets you choose which streams to rip (so you can just choose the video, audio and subtitle streams you actually want) and it extracts each stream to an individual file. It'll also convert the audio to another format (using eac3to for the work) during the ripping process if you want it to.

Nice tip. That would streamline my process a bit.

If you're not an MeGUI user the standalone version of the HD Streams Extractor can be found here:
http://code.google.com/p/hdbrstreamextractor/

Or there's a link for it on the eac3to page.
https://www.videohelp.com/tools/eac3to

[yoda313]

whenever you convert anything, the end result is always worse than if you don't)

That may be technically true but in this case I think converting a dts core to ac3 640 is not the end of the world. It is satisfactory for my needs.

Plus it should be noted I don't have a hdmi amp so I can't take advantage of hd audio only sd. So going from a dts core to ac3 640 is not a big deal to me. If I had a hdmi amp I might be more inclined to go with a richer soundtrack.

If you're not an MeGUI user the standalone version of the HD Streams Extractor can be found here:
http://code.google.com/p/hdbrstreamextractor/

Or there's a link for it on the eac3to page.
https://www.videohelp.com/tools/eac3to

Thanks again. I'll probably look into that this weekend. For now I have a workflow that works for me so I'll stick with that.

Fyi some of the big movies still use dolby true hd instead of dts-ma. All of the Star Trek movies are Dolby True HD as are all of the Matrix and Transformer movies. Just an fyi there.

[hogger129]

MakeMKV, just keep the main movie and one audio track. In BDs, I would just keep the core audio. It makes no sense to keep the HD audio unless you have good equipment to play it back on, plus it's going to take more space, and the high bit rate lossy codecs still sound pretty good IMO.

[ConverterCrazy]

I saw a ripped movie (probably from a torrent) with the following information:

==========
General
---------
Complete name : movie2012HD720p.mp4
Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : Base Media
Codec ID : isom
File size : 945 MiB
Duration : 2h 3mn
Overall bit rate : 1067 Kbps
Encoded date : UTC 2013-02-24 18:32:54
Tagged date : UTC 2013-02-24 18:32:54
Writing application : My MP4Box GUI 0.6.0.6 <http://my-mp4box-gui.zymichost.com>

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.1
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 12 frames
Codec ID : avc1
Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding
Duration : 2h 3mn
Bit rate : 809 Kbps
Maximum bit rate : 16.7 Mbps
Width : 1280 pixels
Height : 528 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 2.40:1
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.050
Stream size : 716 MiB (76%)
Title : movie2012HD720p_track1.h264
Writing library : x264 core 125 r2200 999b753
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=12 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x133 / me=umh / subme=10 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 /

mixed_ref=1 / me_range=24 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 /

threads=12 / lookahead_threads=2 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 /

bframes=8 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=240 / keyint_min=23 /

scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=60 / rc=2pass / mbtree=1 / bitrate=809 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 /

qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00
Encoded date : UTC 2013-02-24 18:32:54
Tagged date : UTC 2013-02-24 18:38:10

Audio
ID : 2
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension : CM (complete main)
Format settings, Endianness : Big
Codec ID : ac-3
Duration : 2h 3mn
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 256 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 227 MiB (24%)
Title : movie2012HD720p_track2.ac3
Encoded date : UTC 2013-02-24 18:36:58
Tagged date : UTC 2013-02-24 18:38:10
==============

The playback is a stunning for a video size of 716MB.

- video rating 9.5/10
- audio quality is compromised, rating 3/10.

The point is: which video convertor allows setting all those mind-boggling encoder parameters?

And, that is my question: which video convertor was used and can a newbie do this? (not for creating torrents, positively).


Thanks.

[hogger129]

I don't see why Handbrake couldn't do it. You would just have to set your H.264 compression to create really small files, which is probably going to take forever even on a fast processor like an i7. Plus this look like 720p (1280x528 = 720p with the black bars cropped off) which will use less bandwidth, due to there being less detail in the picture vs. 1080p, and it will make a smaller file. They could probably have also used MP3 audio instead of AC3 if they're just using 2 channels. MP3 will compress better.

[jman98]

hogger129 - Maybe the next time someone grave robs you can try copying EVERY previous post in the thread into your reply. You couldn't have just replied? You HAD to copy that entire monstrously long post first? CoverterCrazy's post is probably a violation of our terms of service anyway.

[hogger129]

hogger129 - Maybe the next time someone grave robs you can try copying EVERY previous post in the thread into your reply. You couldn't have just replied? You HAD to copy that entire monstrously long post first? CoverterCrazy's post is probably a violation of our terms of service anyway.

Fixed. As for "grave robs," isn't that better than starting a new thread on a topic that is discussed already? No need to get upset because he posted his question in the thread where the topic is being covered. Otherwise the same questions just get reposted again and again and fills up the board.

[ConverterCrazy]

hogger129 - Maybe the next time someone grave robs you can try copying EVERY previous post in the thread into your reply. You couldn't have just replied? You HAD to copy that entire monstrously long post first? CoverterCrazy's post is probably a violation of our terms of service anyway.

I don't get it!

jman98, I am amazed at your observation. How can asking a question be construed violation of Terms & Conditions even if assuming I was going to try the 'solution' in reply to my question?

Will you please explain that?

Thanks.

[hello_hello]

The playback is a stunning for a video size of 716MB.

- video rating 9.5/10
- audio quality is compromised, rating 3/10.

The point is: which video convertor allows setting all those mind-boggling encoder parameters?

And, that is my question: which video convertor was used and can a newbie do this? (not for creating torrents, positively).


Thanks.

Quality is pretty subjective, and I'm not sure I've seen any 720p movie encodes of that size which look particularly good, but that aside....

There's nothing out of the ordinary when it comes to those encoder settings. They look pretty much like the x264 defaults with the x264 veryslow speed preset to me. Most encoder GUIs should let you change the x264 speed preset when configuring the encoder.

The quality you might obtain when using a given bitrate depends on how hard the video is to compress. Video "A" might end up looking great while video "B" looks like crap. It depends how much action there is, picture detail, noise, grain etc. It's possible whoever encoded the video applied filtering such as noise reduction to make it easier to compress, but that's nothing to do with the encoder settings as such.

I usually do all my encoding with the same x264 quality setting, which means the quality relative to the original remains about the same each time while the bitrate varies instead. And it does vary quite considerably.

Why's the audio compromised? It's stereo AC3 using a higher bitrate than is often used for stereo AC3. If you happen to prefer multi-channel audio that's a different thing which doesn't really relate to the quality of stereo audio.

I'll confess I don't see the fuss over "grave robbing". As long as the question being asked is along the lines of the original topic.... someone will have to explain to me what harm it does.

[ConverterCrazy]

Thanks hello_hello and hogger129.

That answers my question and I'm done with it except for the offending comment by jman98.

[jman98]

Thanks hello_hello and hogger129.

That answers my question and I'm done with it except for the offending comment by jman98.

You said:
I saw a ripped movie (probably from a torrent)

That likely is a violation of our terms of service, but a moderator would have to decide that. Calm down. If nobody says anything you're fine, but I have similar similar posts get flagged by our moderators.

[redwudz]

For BDs, I rip to a hard drive with AnyDVD HD, then convert to MKV/AC3/H.264 with RipBot, 2 pass. This gives me a filesize of about 8GB, mostly for easy backup to BD for archiving. Takes about 3 hours for conversion. I play back over a LAN to any of my PCs. I do have a WDTV live, but the PCs are a bit more versatile. Quality look great on my video projector screen.

For DVDs, I convert directly from the DVD disc to MKV/AC3/H.264 with VidCoder. It's a front end for Handbrake and makes the program easier to use, especially for batch conversions.
I use a CQ of 19.5/Constant Framerate/Delelecine and Decomb at Default. Most times the MKV filesize is around 2GB. Conversion time, about 20 minutes. Quality is close enough to the original DVD for me.

[ConverterCrazy]

Thanks for your suggestion, redwudz.

On my system it takes a very long time 6-8 hours to convert DVD to MKV/H.264 using VidCoder - yes, for a backup & for archiving. I keep Audio to Autopassthrough.

I don't have BD.

[ndjamena]

Just for fun I encoded Batman Begins with 2 pass/Very Slow/809kbps to see these magical settings for myself.

FFVideoSource("Video 1.avi")
Crop(0, 132, 0, -156)
NNEDI3_Resize16(1280,528)
FFT3dFilter(sigma=2, bt=5, bw=32, bh=32, ow=16, oh=16, sharpen=0.4, plane=4)
flash3kyuu_deband()

"x264(x64).exe" --preset veryslow --bitrate 809 --slow-firstpass --fps 24000/1001 --keyint 240 --level 4.1 --pass 1 --stats Batman.log -o "Batman Begins (2005).mkv" "Batman Begins (2005).avi"
"x264(x64).exe" --preset veryslow --bitrate 809 --fps 24000/1001 --keyint 240 --level 4.1 --pass 2 --stats Batman.log -o "Batman Begins (2005).mkv" "Batman Begins (2005).avi"

I used 192kbps stereo AAC for audio. I have to admit, it does look really nice but I wouldn't want to make a habit of mangling my Blu Rays like this without good reason.

Although now I have to wonder, if he doesn't have BD, why was he even asking?

[ConverterCrazy]

For BDs, I rip to a hard drive with AnyDVD HD, then convert to MKV/AC3/H.264 with RipBot, 2 pass. This gives me a filesize of about 8GB, mostly for easy backup to BD for archiving. Takes about 3 hours for conversion. I play back over a LAN to any of my PCs. I do have a WDTV live, but the PCs are a bit more versatile. Quality look great on my video projector screen.

For DVDs, I convert directly from the DVD disc to MKV/AC3/H.264 with VidCoder. It's a front end for Handbrake and makes the program easier to use, especially for batch conversions.
I use a CQ of 19.5/Constant Framerate/Delelecine and Decomb at Default. Most times the MKV filesize is around 2GB. Conversion time, about 20 minutes. Quality is close enough to the original DVD for me.

Taking clue from you, I experimented with the following settings:

CQ=18,

x264 = VeryFast, Film, Main, 3.1

Audio = copy

File size is 3.5GB, time taken about 2 hours.

It's very good at a very fast speed for my old system!

Thanks a ton.

[ConverterCrazy]

Hello,

I am back with a new question.
I recently bought over 20 DVDs (all original).

Do I get it right when I believe that ripping a DVD means only the video and audio part and not the other stuff on the DVD?
The other stuff -- like the 'Cast & Crew' and 'Highlights' -- that are on DVD as slide-shows on a commercial DVD player.

And, am I right in saying that the slide-shows are not extracted via ripping process?

Please share if you have any information.

Thanks.

[Kerry56]

Ripping means transferring the contents of the optical disc to the hard drive. You can rip the entire movie, menus, extras and all, or you can rip just the main movie with some ripping programs.

If you use MakeMKV to rip DVD's, the only option is to rip the main movie and have it output as an MKV file. Ripping with the built-in ripper within AnyDVD, you only have options to rip the entire disc either as files or an ISO. TDMore Free DVD Copy lets you rip either the main movie or the whole disc. So ripping programs differ on what capabilities they offer.

Re-encoding the movie with programs like Vidcoder or Handbrake, you normally only use the main movie.

[ConverterCrazy]

Thanks @Kerry56 for the reply.

I have used MakeMKV and Handbrake but I don't see the Extra Features unless they are in video format.

As I wrote, the slideshow/photo type extras are nowhere to be seen! Though, I can see them when I play the DVD.

[ConverterCrazy]

It doesn't take this long -- not on this Help Forum -- to get some solution.

Oh, well, there might be hidden features (somewhat like Easter eggs) in DVD format making them inaccessible/inextricable.

[ConverterCrazy]

It doesn't take this long -- not on this Help Forum -- to get some solution.

Oh, well, there might be hidden features (somewhat like Easter eggs) in DVD format making them inaccessible/inextricable.

[hogger129]

...

[ConverterCrazy]

Ripping means transferring the contents of the optical disc to the hard drive. You can rip the entire movie, menus, extras and all, or you can rip just the main movie with some ripping programs.

If you use MakeMKV to rip DVD's, the only option is to rip the main movie and have it output as an MKV file. Ripping with the built-in ripper within AnyDVD, you only have options to rip the entire disc either as files or an ISO. TDMore Free DVD Copy lets you rip either the main movie or the whole disc. So ripping programs differ on what capabilities they offer.

Re-encoding the movie with programs like Vidcoder or Handbrake, you normally only use the main movie.

The link to website for TDMore-Free-DVD-Copy is http://www.tdmore.cn/free-dvd-copy.htm

Not for me.
My OS is Windows XP-SP3.

[Kerry56]

Ripping means transferring the contents of the optical disc to the hard drive. You can rip the entire movie, menus, extras and all, or you can rip just the main movie with some ripping programs.

If you use MakeMKV to rip DVD's, the only option is to rip the main movie and have it output as an MKV file. Ripping with the built-in ripper within AnyDVD, you only have options to rip the entire disc either as files or an ISO. TDMore Free DVD Copy lets you rip either the main movie or the whole disc. So ripping programs differ on what capabilities they offer.

Re-encoding the movie with programs like Vidcoder or Handbrake, you normally only use the main movie.

The link to website for TDMore-Free-DVD-Copy is http://www.tdmore.cn/free-dvd-copy.htm

Not for me.
My OS is Windows XP-SP3.

Did you download and try it in Windows XP?

One problem that is simply going to get worse for people hanging on to XP is the fact that more and more software will not list XP as one of the supported operating systems. Sometimes the new software will still work in XP, but you won't know till you try it.

I don't know if the TDMore decrypter will work in XP, as I only have one ancient, rarely used computer that still has that operating system. And I don't connect it to the net.