Exteme Newbie - Backuping DVD/Bluray Collection Help/Guide

[Rjupiter]

Hello -

I found this site and was looking though it but got very overwhelmed with all the software etc... and am not sure what is good and even so what or how to use it. I currently and looking to backup all my Dvd/Bluray (mainly tv shows, some movies) to my media player/NAS. I am hoping this will be better and keep the disks from getting kid wrecked from wanting to watch, for example, Frozen for the 50th time. but i have no idea how to go about it. i do know i want it be be x264 and with the original audio AC3 and I would like them, TV/Movies, to be stand alone file i don't care about extras, menus etc... but would also like the CC as my one child has hearing issues.

was wondering is there a step by step guide or a preferred setup to get this done? Something that will take me from A to Z without scratching my head to much?

thanks

[True Colors]

1) get an external drive to save your movies. BR files take up a ton of space. I recommend a 3 terabyte or 4 terabyte western digital drive.

2) use MakeMKV to pull the original source files from disks. For bluray, your output files will be really large. Approx 20-25 gig.

3) use ripbot to shrink these large files down to something smaller. For me, around 4 gig for a 100 minute movie is usually fine. Some people prefer larger, others are okay with smaller. Naturally, the bigger file size will be closer to original quality.

TC

[jman98]

Unfortunately you need to explain if you really mean CC or if you mean subtitles by this term or both. The problem is that they aren't the same thing at all and many conversion programs destroy CCs when they convert. If you really mean CC or both then somebody with experience (not me) will have to suggest the use of a program that will preserve the CCs for you. Keeping subtitles is not problem, by the way. CC is a very different animal from subtitles.

[Rjupiter]

Unfortunately you need to explain if you really mean CC or if you mean subtitles by this term or both. The problem is that they aren't the same thing at all and many conversion programs destroy CCs when they convert. If you really mean CC or both then somebody with experience (not me) will have to suggest the use of a program that will preserve the CCs for you. Keeping subtitles is not problem, by the way. CC is a very different animal from subtitles.

my apologies i did mean subtitles.

[Rjupiter]

1) get an external drive to save your movies. BR files take up a ton of space. I recommend a 3 terabyte or 4 terabyte western digital drive.

2) use MakeMKV to pull the original source files from disks. For bluray, your output files will be really large. Approx 20-25 gig.

3) use ripbot to shrink these large files down to something smaller. For me, around 4 gig for a 100 minute movie is usually fine. Some people prefer larger, others are okay with smaller. Naturally, the bigger file size will be closer to original quality.

TC

so MakeMKV will pull off just the movie into a single file and not everything on the disk like menus, extras etc..?

[usually_quiet]

If you want to retain closed captions (as opposed to subtitles) you have to handle DVD ripping and converting very carefully, as mentioned above. DVD closed captions are not stored in their own stream like subtitles. Closed captions are in the video itself, hidden in the MPEG-2 GOP user data and they will not survive re-encoding and some other video processing.

Some programs will destroy closed captions even if they don't re-encode. You will have to make sure the DVD ripper/decrypter does not disturb the GOP user data if you need to keep closed captions. Unfortunately when I tried it, MakeMKV obliterated the closed captions even though it does not re-encode. I haven't tried AnyDVD HD or DVDFab HD. Maybe someone else knows if they preserve closed captions.

No re-encoding means if you want to retain the closed captions as closed captions, the video must be kept in its original MPEG-2 format. You won't be able to convert DVDs to h.264. If your child can use subtitles, then you can use CCExtractor on the MPEG-2 video to create an .srt subtitle file. Once you have usable subtitles, you can re-encode to h.264.

[usually_quiet]

so MakeMKV will pull off just the movie into a single file and not everything on the disk like menus, extras etc..?

It definitely won't pull off the menus. It likely will pull off the extras as separate files. If you want the menus, and everything else on the disc, you need to rip as an ISO (using something other than MakeMKV), which will be the same size as the disc. Few hardware media players can play ISOs as well as a Blu-Ray player or DVD player can play a physical disc, if they can play ISOs at all.

[Keyser]

i do know i want it be be x264 and with the original audio AC3 and I would like them, TV/Movies, to be stand alone file i don't care about extras, menus etc... but would also like the CC as my one child has hearing issues.

my apologies i did mean subtitles.

To me it all spells VidCoder. Try it!

[usually_quiet]

i do know i want it be be x264 and with the original audio AC3 and I would like them, TV/Movies, to be stand alone file i don't care about extras, menus etc... but would also like the CC as my one child has hearing issues.

my apologies i did mean subtitles.

To me it all spells VidCoder. Try it!

I just tried VidCoder. It does indeed have the ability to use DVD subtitles, or external srt subtitles, and can convert closed captions to subtitles. I happen to have tried it on a DVD with rolling-type closed captions, and it did not do a great job with them, but those are very difficult to process correctly. I expect standard closed captions would be converted properly.

VidCoder is not a decrypter, so commercial DVDs and Blu-Rays with copy protection would have to be ripped with AnyDVDHD or DVDFab first.

[Rjupiter]

thanks for the info, it seems that all i need is to use MakeMKV and it will decrypt and make a single file of my disk, if so thne i think i try this out and see how it works.

[True Colors]

MakeMKV will make a single file onto your hard drive. Normally, you will create one big file(the movie) and nothing else.

Sorry to repeat myself, but this one file is going to be gigantic.

I do not want to get off topic, but since you asked, most BR disks will have an assortment of small files. These are things that many people consider to be useless -- trailers, advertisements, deleted scenes, interviews, etc.

Anyway, after you have the one big file, then you run it through ripbot to create an output file which is a much smaller version of the original big file. You can adjust the quality settings to see what suits you. Or, if you get to that point, you can come back to this board and there are a lot of people here who can assist you with this.

As far as subtitles/captions go.......

If you want closed captions(where is says "bang!" to represent noises), I do not know how to do that.

However, if you want subtitles, then that is super simple. Go to www.opensubtitles.org and you can search and download the subs for just about any movie that you want. The file that it gives you will be an srt file.

Then, when you get ready to play the movie back, make sure that you have your video file and the srt file in the same folder and both of them have the same name..... for example...... frozen.mkv and frozen.srt

I would recommend that you use the video player MPC-HC. It is extremely popular and it does have the ability to handle subtitles.

And FYI...... all of the software that I have recommended to you is stuff that is available at no charge

TC

[usually_quiet]

A Blu-Ray disc might have SDH subtitles, special subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing instead of closed captions, because the Blu-Ray spec doesn't include closed-caption support. Although a small number of Blu-Ray discs do include closed captions, there is sometimes no good way for many consumers to make use of them. HDMI and HD component video don't provide any way for a TV to display them, and most Blu-Ray players don't display them either. I'm not sure about closed caption support for hardware media players.

On the other hand, the NTSC portion of the DVD spec (the part of the spec that applies to US DVD releases) includes closed caption support. Closed captioning is fairly common on DVDs made for the US market, maybe more common than English subtitles. I know I have some commercially produced DVDs with English closed captions, but no English subtitles. Sometimes the English subtitles available online for a particular movies aren't very good or they match up with a different version of the movie that was edited to appeal more to the audience in another country. It may be worth trying to extract the closed captions if that is the case.

[Rjupiter]

MakeMKV will make a single file onto your hard drive. Normally, you will create one big file(the movie) and nothing else.

Sorry to repeat myself, but this one file is going to be gigantic.

I do not want to get off topic, but since you asked, most BR disks will have an assortment of small files. These are things that many people consider to be useless -- trailers, advertisements, deleted scenes, interviews, etc.

Anyway, after you have the one big file, then you run it through ripbot to create an output file which is a much smaller version of the original big file. You can adjust the quality settings to see what suits you. Or, if you get to that point, you can come back to this board and there are a lot of people here who can assist you with this.

As far as subtitles/captions go.......

If you want closed captions(where is says "bang!" to represent noises), I do not know how to do that.

However, if you want subtitles, then that is super simple. Go to www.opensubtitles.org and you can search and download the subs for just about any movie that you want. The file that it gives you will be an srt file.

Then, when you get ready to play the movie back, make sure that you have your video file and the srt file in the same folder and both of them have the same name..... for example...... frozen.mkv and frozen.srt

I would recommend that you use the video player MPC-HC. It is extremely popular and it does have the ability to handle subtitles.

And FYI...... all of the software that I have recommended to you is stuff that is available at no charge

TC

True, thanks very much for all the great information, i got Make and Ripbot and am going to start trying these out this weekend, i especially appreciate the subtitles link. my special youngin will be most happy we can have the words on the screen.