AVS › AVS Forum › Video Components › Home Theater Computers › I Need Some Help w/ Blu-Ray Rips
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

I Need Some Help w/ Blu-Ray Rips

post #1 of 12
10/11/12 at 10:15am
Thread Starter 
I have done a lot of reading over the last day and still cannot determine the best way to achieve my goal. I currently have a centralized media server with numerous HTPCs throughout the house using XBMC as the frontend. In the past, I ripped all of my DVDs into a folder structure that simply contained the movie. I am now in the process of growing my Blu-Ray collection and need some help on the best way to rip my collection.

Unless I can be persuaded that I should include the menus and extras, I have decided that I am interested in just ripping the movie itself. I cannot recall the last time I watched the extra features that were contained on a DVD. I prefer to click play within XBMC and simply have the movie start playing.
Image and audio quality is a priority. I do not like the idea of compressing the video and/or audio with any type of lossy format. I want to be able to preserve the original video and highest audio quality that was contained on the blu-ray disc.

I also want to be able to preserve any “embedded” subtitles. For example, if I am watching a movie with an English audio track and there is a scene where someone is speaking in German then I want to be able to see the English subtitle for that particular scene.

It is my understanding that I have three options on how to rip Blu-Rays:

• ISO
• Folder / File Format
• MKV

The ISO format would be the entire disc, including menus, trailers, etc. So it seems that the ISO format is out. That leaves me with the Folder Format and MKV. What are the advantages / disadvantages of these formats?
Reply
Reply

AVS Top Picks

post #2 of 12
10/11/12 at 10:48am
An ISO is just a container, it can be of a full disc, main movie, etc...

I personally like to do a main movie folder rip of my Blu rays using AnyDVD + Clown_BD. This seems to work best with forced subtitle support for the players I use. Other options would be to use DVDFab (can do a main movie folder/ISO rip) or MakeMKV (full disc folder rip or main movie mkv rip).
Reply
Reply
post #3 of 12
10/11/12 at 11:57am
Folder/File format is usually used to back up the full disc with menus and extra's.
ISO, as dbone1026 says is just a container and when used with Blu-ray ripping, it usually just contains the Folder/File format anyway.
Seeing as you are not interested in extras or menus, ripping the main movie Blu-ray to MKV would be the ideal choice, you can keep the untouched video/audio and keep the required subtitle tracks.
Check out something like MakeMKV, its easy to use and can do exactly what you need.
Reply
Reply
post #4 of 12
10/11/12 at 12:16pm
Thread Starter 
I was leaning toward MKVs but I read in a few places that MakeMKV applies compression to the video. Is this true or not? As stated earlier, I do not want to sacrifice any video or audio quality.

Thanks for all the help!
Reply
Reply
post #5 of 12
10/11/12 at 12:20pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Griff1324 View Post

I was leaning toward MKVs but I read in a few places that MakeMKV applies compression to the video. Is this true or not? As stated earlier, I do not want to sacrifice any video or audio quality.
Thanks for all the help!

MKV is just a container that holds video, audio, subtitles, chapter information, etc. Simply putting video into an MKV container does not compress it. If you use makemkv, there is no compression at all. You can compress video and put it in an MKV container if you want though.
Reply
Reply
post #6 of 12
10/12/12 at 7:31am
The file format may be best for your wants. Basically, you'll probably just do something like "movies" and "tv shows" XBMC will sort the out for you. Unless you want to keep some content separate because you don't want it in your main collection, you're most likely not going to do another folder. I do this for my mother's old movie collection that I have no interest in.

As for MKVs, as implied above, they can have compression. But using something like MakeMKV, it won't. It's just changing container to MKV, which is way it's MKV are smaller, but not by much. A 25GB blu ray may yield a 22GB MKV file. If you want smaller, then you're using something like Handbrake that will transcode to something smaller.
Reply
Reply
post #7 of 12
10/12/12 at 2:38pm
Something I'm just now learning about... MakeMKV does NOT properly handle HD audio streams on the disk. It downconverts them to 48khz.
Reply
Reply
post #8 of 12
10/12/12 at 5:24pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by NorCalJason View Post

Something I'm just now learning about... MakeMKV does NOT properly handle HD audio streams on the disk. It downconverts them to 48khz.

That is incorrect. MakeMKV handles HD audio streams perfectly. You must have made a mistake.
Reply
Reply
post #9 of 12
10/12/12 at 6:02pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by jim2100 View Post

That is incorrect. MakeMKV handles HD audio streams perfectly. You must have made a mistake.

Agreed. Never had a problem.
Reply
Reply
post #10 of 12
10/12/12 at 6:13pm
I have had very good results using handbrake for creating mkv files (http://handbrake.fr/). I use it on my windows home server box. I start a transcoding task in the evenings, and it's done by morning.
Reply
Reply
post #11 of 12
10/12/12 at 6:25pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by jim2100 View Post

That is incorrect. MakeMKV handles HD audio streams perfectly. You must have made a mistake.

Yep, I am mistaken.

I had assumed all HD audio had sampling rates of 96khz or better.

In fact, i'm finding most HD audio tracks (TrueHD) still samples at 48khz.

Often, on a HD DVD there are multiple lossy tracks, and one lossless. All at the same sample rate.
Reply
Reply
post #12 of 12
10/12/12 at 6:26pm


I just randomly picked this out of my library. It was ripped with MakeMKV. Bit rate is more important than sampling rate as it results in better audio density whereas the sampling rate is the dynamic range. The lower the sampling rate the less of the highs and lows but this out beyond the threshold of human hearing.

BTW, the opening sequence on this track is the stuff you demo your system with and it sounds fantastic!
Reply
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: Home Theater Computers

AVS Top Picks

AVS › AVS Forum › Video Components › Home Theater Computers › I Need Some Help w/ Blu-Ray Rips