Backing up & shrinking Bluerays

I've not ever used DVDFab, so long as they update FREQUENTLY you may be fine. AnyDVD-HD updates itself pretty regularly and seldom does a disk stop them for more than a few days after release.

That said - that gets you access to the unencrypted data. The best program for removing the various streams from that is, at the core, eac3to. BD doesn't store all of it's video in just one file and eac3to can handle the multiple parts. Many other programs are front-ends for this including the one I use - meGUI. Handbrake doesn't use eac3to so it may not serve all of your needs. eac3to gives you separate video, audio, chapter, and sub files. Choose your poison to process the video and audio. Audio I leave alone, AC3 audio is seldom more than 500-700megs. DTS can be a gig plus! DTS is uncompressed which explains this and it has more channels. Video can be in several formats but x.264 handles it well, choose your settings and front-end (including HB), and off you go for a few hours more or less depending on what you're using and your hardware. Hint: more cores good, a slower clocked multi-core CPU can stomp a faster fewer core CPU. Intel rules here. GPUs fly but seem to limit encoding options. Once done you need to mux the audio and video together with chapters and subs - that's MKVMerge. Tada, done!

Yeah, more complex than DVD! You could try RipBot264 for a more DVDShrink like experience but I find that program quirky as hell. Doom9 is the place to look for help with these programs BTW.

Now if compression wasn't an issue there's a program out there that just rips right to MKV. The name escapes me but considering file sizes I think it's a bit nutz to use. I've compressed a ton of BD and the resulting files are gigs smaller with no loss of quality I can see....

Forced subs? I've not seen anything handle these well including RipBot etc.

P.S. For some real fun wait till you encounter a BD with Theater, Director, and unrated cuts on the same disk! Which do you keep? the media saves space by using branching to store one copy of the common parts and copies of all the unique parts but currently ripping that leaves you with THREE full movies. I'm playing around now with some stuff to get around this but there's "issues". Just be aware the problem exists. Oh and always check the audio track, sometimes you cannot tell which is the director dub and which is the track you want for the movie until you're all done! VLC will play DTS and AC3 tracks.

Well this all seems very confusing. I admit to not fully understanding video codecs and muxing and demuxing and tuxing lol. However I have ripped several Blurays with very little effort.

I use AnyDVDHD which I think everyone will agree is the easiest, though not cheapest, method for decryption. I then copy the Bluray to my harddrive. Next I use handbrake to scan the folder, get the title to copy and rip. I usually use the Normal profile. I have tried the High profile but couldn't detect a deference in quality, and the Normal takes half as long. It usually takes four hours to rip on a dual core AMD x2 3.0ghz. And I wind up with a file that is between 4 and 8 gigs.

Get the SVN version of handbrake here for Bluray disc support. That is how I have done probably 15 of my Bluray's with no problems. If there is some benefit gained by going through all of the other suggested programs please let me know, otherwise two clicks and I am done.

wiggy Wrote:Wow thanks guys for your response, one thing I have learned is that its not a simple (yet) at ripping a dvd!!

But will try the free dvdfav HD ripper then use handbreak to shrink, just a question on the forced sub titles, doesn't dvdfab or handbreak let you choose to keep them when ripping or shrinking?

Dvdfab will let you delete subtitles if you want to. So does Makemkv. If you want to leave the subs in you can too.
The problem I have with movies I have is when you rip a movie the forced english subs aren't really labeled right. With a little bit of testing you will find them.

If the movie has english forced subs in the movie itself I don't think you can do anything about it.

Jay_M Wrote:Well this all seems very confusing. I admit to not fully understanding video codecs and muxing and demuxing and tuxing lol. However I have ripped several Blurays with very little effort.

I use AnyDVDHD which I think everyone will agree is the easiest, though not cheapest, method for decryption. I then copy the Bluray to my harddrive. Next I use handbrake to scan the folder, get the title to copy and rip. I usually use the Normal profile. I have tried the High profile but couldn't detect a deference in quality, and the Normal takes half as long. It usually takes four hours to rip on a dual core AMD x2 3.0ghz. And I wind up with a file that is between 4 and 8 gigs.

Get the SVN version of handbrake here for Bluray disc support. That is how I have done probably 15 of my Bluray's with no problems. If there is some benefit gained by going through all of the other suggested programs please let me know, otherwise two clicks and I am done.

Reading through the thread you linked it seems those were builds leading up to 0.9.5 - which my copy of HB informed me tonight was ready for download. I'm doing some testing tonight for the creation of branching MKV and had a BD in the drive and HB handy so.... 0.9.5 which is a release of HB recognizes the BD structure just fine like it would with a standard DVD so yeah this might work very well for folks!! High profile is available too which is nice - I may have to play with HB a little bit now darn you

FWIW my dream right now is threaded MKV files for all of these multi-cut bluray but creating and then playback is a trick. Matroska DOES support it however as well as menus - another trick I have yet to figure out or find tools for :o

Hey All.

As far as finding out which playlist to use in a multiple version BR I do the following:

-- use BDInfo under Windows [through VirtualBox in my case]
-- BDInfo will present you with multiple options for the same film
--- if you're unsure which to use then fire up TSMuxer and create an m2ts file with the playlist you think is correct...
----- if you picked the right film then use that as your source...trial and error and you know it'll work...

thethirdnut Wrote:Hey All.

As far as finding out which playlist to use in a multiple version BR I do the following:

-- use BDInfo under Windows [through VirtualBox in my case]
-- BDInfo will present you with multiple options for the same film
--- if you're unsure which to use then fire up TSMuxer and create an m2ts file with the playlist you think is correct...
----- if you picked the right film then use that as your source...trial and error and you know it'll work...

Yeah, not been using BDInfo so I will look into it. I've got so many danged little widget tools it drives me crazy.

P.S. As for speed - HB uses the same encoders I'm using and in fact I'm using 64bit x.264 and other tools that HB might not use although you did state X64. The reason for encoding speed diffs between your setup and mine is the profile and maybe the OS, my profile is tweaked and very high bitrate. I can look later if you want details but with just one encode running I do get something like 20FPS or so. Encoding isn't memory intensive but I've got 12gigs and my CPU runs 8 threads maxxed under x.264. For real "speed" MediaConverter7 can do a movie in like 45mins but I'm not convinced it's quality is as high so I'm not using it right now except to test while I wait for them to answer my queries concerning profiles. Bitrate and other settings make a massive difference in speed but sometimes make small differences in quality. I try for max quality knowing that one day I may be throwing the video on a very large screen

I'm using Handbrake 64-bit version of the nightly build under Mythbuntu 10.04.

A transcode typically takes 3-4 hours using Constant Quality RF = 19; no audio or subtitles included.

This is running on an i3-540 with 4 GB RAM...doubles as my 24/7 server...runs about 110 watts idle.

ah, constant quality 17.5 is likely a part of it.

program --crf 17.5 --qpmin 10 --partitions all --level 4.1 --bframes 3 --ref 4 --slices 4 --aud --nal-hrd vbr --b-pyramid strict --keyint 24 --min-keyint 2 --vbv-bufsize 30000 --vbv-maxrate 40000 --weightp 0 --colorprim "bt709" --transfer "bt709" --colormatrix "bt709" --output "output" "input"

That's a bit weird as it comes from the meGUI profile heh. I see framerates as high as 20+ but those look to be animated. How to Train a Dragon 20+ and took 3:06mins. Knight and Day 15FPS 2:54mins. Salt was 17.x FPS 2:45mins. I often compress 2 at once but those are from logs where I've done just one at a time and I wasn't where I could see them earlier. I seriously looked at 6core CPU and I hate that my GPU isn't used. I did have fun drag racing a friend with a Mac Pro that had dual XEON, same movie, same profile, same OS used (Windows), umm I beat him although with a slightly higher clock than I use now. Yes at some point shaving an hour off is silly if it runs while you sleep, it used to take me quite a bit longer though before moving to this CPU and I'm happy for it!

Sadly the x.264 guys don't seem interested in GPU speedups apparently but Sandy may get their attention despite Intel not speaking to them until long after design was done. <sigh> Encoding seems to be one of the few consumer type apps where raw speed seems to come out. I want absolute max quality in hopes of projecting to a much bigger screen down the road and I'm now playing with multibranch MKV which are even bigger!

Yea, try RF = 19 or even 20; might shave off some more time for you. I subjectively can't tell between original and HB's output at 19 on a 58" plasma up close.