How do i encode a blu-ray to 720p mkv at 1gb?

[Turp]

Hello everyone, I wanted to jump on here and introduce myself and also mention what brought me here. I've been a computer tech for 20+ years, and I absolutely love movies. I watch them on a 32" & 50" LCD, and I prefer them at 720p which looks perfect and saves disc space as I store everything on a NAS (network access server). My reason for joining here, is to hopefully learn how to put a Blu-ray into my computer and then end up with a great quality 720p encoded MKV file (just the movie) about 1GB in size. I thought to myself today, wouldn't it be nice to have ONE single simple to use Windows program which would allow any novice to do just that. Now there may already be such software, I haven't yet looked (as I said, I just had the idea and joined here a half hour later). I do know that over the last 5-10 years, there have been countless methods and apps which can do all this and much more, but I've never heard of one that is very powerful (under the hood) while remaining basic/simple enough for almost anyone to use successfully. You see my ideal app (and I'm by no means a programmer), would be a simple button driven front end, which would automatically detect what kind of disc you have (vcd/dvd/blu-ray), then display the few basic screen formats (radio buttons) and audio options (check boxes) that you wish to include in your output file, and then what kind of wrapper file format you'd like. Perhaps a single quality vs. size slider. I have all of the SlySoft products, and they are fairly simple to use, but they aren't near what I'm thinking of (and they're 4 separate apps). So, it's very nice to meet everyone, and I'd really appreciate some nice & helpful discussion and direction.

[october262]

try dvdfab. they have bluray copy that can copy to different formats.
http://www.dvdfab.cn/download.htm

[johns0]

Turp,next time you post a new thread please give a more descriptive title rather than help me,for this time i changed the title,to do what you want rip with makemkv or anydvd and then encode with handbrake with a 22 constant qualty video setting and audio at 160 kbps aac and welcome to the forums.

[fritzi93]

Welcome to the forum.

There are a number of powerful (free) programs to do what you want. BDRB, Ripbot, Handbrake, etc. All have the x264 encoder under the hood.
None quite as simple as you're asking for, but not difficult.

It's a bit much to ask for "great quality" from a 1 GB 720p encode. Maybe for very clean animation.
Content varies in how much bitrate it needs to look acceptable without artifacts.

As a starting point, I'd suggest you try quality based encoding instead. Choose a quality you find acceptable, and use that setting for all your encodes. Output size will, of course, be unpredictable. But if you encode to a target size, you'll always be over or under compressing.
I suggest a setting of crf20 or 22, and see if that works for you. (Lower value yields better quality).

You'll need to decide on an output container. MKV and MP4 are popular. To save space, re-encode your audio to AC3 for MKV, or AAC for MP4.

Others will have plenty more to add, no doubt.

Good luck.

[Turp]

Sorry about that, and thanks for fixing it. That's good info to get me started, I'll give it a go. AnyDVDHD is good, but it only rips into a BD structured folder or ISO. I tried HandBrake once a while back, but found it complicated with too many options that are either too technical and/or confusing.

[Turp]

It's a bit much to ask for "great quality" from a 1 GB 720p encode. Maybe for very clean animation.
Content varies in how much bitrate it needs to look acceptable without artifacts.

Quite right, I should have said acceptable to me @ 720p.

As a starting point, I'd suggest you try quality based encoding instead. Choose a quality you find acceptable, and use that setting for all your encodes. Target size will, of course, be unpredictable.

I agree, I'd much rather the same quality consistently with varying size (anywhere from 500MB to 2+GB).

You'll need to decide on an output container. MKV and MP4 are popular. To save space, re-encode your audio to AC3 for MKV, or AAC for MP4.

From what I've read in the past, I'm pretty sure that MKV is my preference, however I do plan to use PLEX for streaming to my mobile devices. Do you think that MP4 would be better suited for that and more flexible?

[theewizard]

well 1gig with h264 encode in an mkv will give a 'good' picture, ..........( I prefer to use mp4)
but 1 gig it is not what i would call great, you can't reduce 12 or 20 gig to 1 and maintain the same quality

typical 2hr movie would only be 500mb per hr, thats a Titanic reduction of detail

i would shoot for 3 gig that is a 4 to 5 fold space reduction and still have quality and detail

i have PVR recordings of broadcast 720p 59,xx fps that are 6 gig for 1 hr of TV broadcast

[fritzi93]

I use MKV with 1080p AVC and 5.1 AC3 at 640 kb/s. And I stream with no issues using Plex.

My encodes these days are done with Ripbot. Film Tune setting, Slow preset, and crf20 for viewing on a 70" HDTV.
Been meaning to re-do using crf18, but that means over 300 BDs to re-do. So I keep putting it off.
I'm starting to think I'll just re-rip with MakeMKV, re-encode only the audio, and get more hard drives.

Just to give you an idea, output sizes varies from 2.81 GB (WALL-E) to 19.1 GB (Saving Private Ryan).
The former is clean animation and a little over an hour and a half.
The latter is nearly three hours and has pronounced grain, which was a deliberate artistic choice.

Your 720p encodes would of course be less than half that size at crf20.
For the size TV you'll use crf22 is probably fine, and will save space.
The slowest preset you can tolerate will give you the smallest files.

[Turp]

My encodes these days are done with Ripbot. Film Tune setting, Slow preset, and crf20 for viewing on a 70" HDTV.

I downloaded RipBot, but it has slowed my pc to a crawl and is still only on "Indexing video stream..." trying to open a regular DVD after 30 minutes. Is this app gonna take a day per disc? maybe somethings wrong. I am now trying MakeMKV.

[ndjamena]

if 500MB to 2GB is the target size, I think CRF 25 at 720p would be more like it.

How long ago did you try handbrake? A lot of the "options" were removed a while ago and what's left is pretty standard.

[fritzi93]

My encodes these days are done with Ripbot. Film Tune setting, Slow preset, and crf20 for viewing on a 70" HDTV.

I downloaded RipBot, but it has slowed my pc to a crawl and is still only on "Indexing video stream..." trying to open a regular DVD after 30 minutes. Is this app gonna take a day per disc? maybe somethings wrong. I am now trying MakeMKV.

Not the fault of Ripbot. Something else is wrong alright.

[EDIT] A commercial pressed disc I presume? Is AnyDVD running in the background?