Is there a way to shrink ripped bluray?

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-iLLuZioN-B18C1

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 30, 2003
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I have a backup copy of a movie on my harddrive as a M2TS file which is roughly 25 gb (movie only). Is there any way to compress this file to make it smaller without losing video/audio quality?
 
As far as I know there is no such thing as a form of loss less video compression, so no. Any compression will mean decrease in video and audio quality. Especially if the audio is one of the loss less codecs.

How much smaller did you want to make it?
 
yes you can compress the movie. by definition whenever you compress something you lose some of the quality. as to how much depends alot on the individual. ive seen some very nicely done mkv files that looked just as good as high quality HDTV, but everyone is going to have their own opinions. quite honestly 20-25GB/movie isnt all that bad imo. not everyone stores 2000 movies. a 2tb drive will store about 60 Blu-ray rips, which to me isnt all that bad considering your getting the untouched files. your best bet is to save the original rip files, then make some compressed versions and test hem out with your own eyes and ears to make sure your getting what you want.
ive used dvdfab a few times to test out blu-ray to mkv conversions and they turned out very nicely, but i just opted to keep the original rips at this point.
 
you can save a little by remuxing to mkv.

If they give you lossless audio on the bluray, you can save a little by converting it to flac, but I wouldn't recommend that unless you are desperate for space, since you can't bitstream it like dtshd-ma and truehd.
 
Rogue71 said:
definition whenever you compress something you lose some of the quality.
Click to expand...

It actually doesn't. As there are both lossy and lossless ways of compressing something, yuo can't assume that you lose information.
 
Rogue71 said:
yes you can compress the movie. by definition whenever you compress something you lose some of the quality. as to how much depends alot on the individual. ive seen some very nicely done mkv files that looked just as good as high quality HDTV, but everyone is going to have their own opinions. quite honestly 20-25GB/movie isnt all that bad imo. not everyone stores 2000 movies. a 2tb drive will store about 60 Blu-ray rips, which to me isnt all that bad considering your getting the untouched files. your best bet is to save the original rip files, then make some compressed versions and test hem out with your own eyes and ears to make sure your getting what you want.
ive used dvdfab a few times to test out blu-ray to mkv conversions and they turned out very nicely, but i just opted to keep the original rips at this point.
Click to expand...

Thats what I was originally thinking, but then I started to think about my dvd collection, and I have literally 300+ dvds. I would guess that eventually my bluray collection will get that large, and I guess I would much rather have 10-15 gb videos rather than 25. My friend has a few 1080p mkv files that he says are usually around 10gb.

Is there a free converter to go from M2TS to mkv given the fact that I am now willing to take a slight hit on video quality? B/c truthfully the 1080p vids he has in mkv format look pretty good to me.
 
actually, you might be able to get the best of both worlds.
since it is a bd25, after you cut some fat(ie extras) and put it in an mkv, it will likely be about 15 gigs.

Here is what I would do:
Find the largest m2ts file. This is likely to be the movie. Open it in tsmuxer and demux it. Only select the main video and audio streams, and possibly the subtitles if necessary.
Then take the results of that, and open it up in mkvmerge (part of mkvtoolnix). This will allow you to create an mkv with the results from tsmuxer.
 
grimreeferx09 said:
actually, you might be able to get the best of both worlds.
since it is a bd25, after you cut some fat(ie extras) and put it in an mkv, it will likely be about 15 gigs.
Click to expand...

He's already done that. He stated in the OP that this is the movie ONLY.
 
I use ripbot primarily but handbrake will do it as well. I take the ripped video or mkv and drop it in those programs, re-encode it and then merge it back with the audio from the original rip with mkvmerge.

For the actual ripping process I primarily use makemkv. In the past i've used HDBRstreamextractor as a GUI for eac3to in conjunction with anydvdhd.

There is of course quality loss but the key is finding the settings that will not be noticable to you. I can re-encode bluray and save a great deal of space but also end up with something that to me is indistinguishable from the original.

However things like comedies I don't care about so i'll shrink that down even further.
 
-iLLuZioN-B18C1 said:
I am quite new to this. What exactly is demuxing?
Click to expand...

It's taking something like an MKV and pulling out the audio and video files. The MKV itself is just a container.

You don't need to demux it on your own. Apps like handbrake and ripbot will do it for you and spit at your "shrunk" or re-encoded movie.

You drop your previous mkv in mkvmerge and only check the audio(maybe also subs and chapters if you want those) then you drop in the file you re-encoded in ripbot or handbrake and it will spit out your final movie, shrunk down with the audio and other features you want. Well I do it this way because i'm working with the HD audio and ripbot or handbrake(prior to yesterday) can't do it.

You could drop a mkv in ripbot/handbrake, reencode the video and keep the DD/DTS audio and it will merge the video and audio and subs all in the app and not have to do that follow up step that I do.
 
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Snowknight26 said:
Never go from lossy to lossless unless you explicitly have to.
Click to expand...

Generally this is good advice, but you are never going to have raw 1080p video. That's hundreds of GB per hour.

Even BluRay is highly, highly compressed with a lossly codec and you can use lossless video codecs to shrink that BluRay stream down even smaller without losing any more quality.

Lossless compression is like sticking the BluRay into a .RAR, except the video codecs are far more efficient at losslessly compressing video than .RAR.

Doing this doesn't work with Audio as putting a .mp3 into FLAC will actually make it larger with no change in audio quality, but it's different with video and with the right lossless video codec.
 
SirMaster said:
Doing this doesn't work with Audio as putting a .mp3 into FLAC will actually make it larger with no change in audio quality, but it's different with video and with the right lossless video codec.
Click to expand...

It's exactly the same as that. Converting any lossy video to a lossless format will result in the video being bigger.

And yes, it would change the audio quality as with, say, MP3 to FLAC, you can decode the MP3 in theoretically infinite precision, whereas with FLAC you're limited to 24-bits.
 
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Snowknight26 said:
It's exactly the same as that. Converting any lossy video to a lossless format will result in the video being bigger.

And yes, it would change the audio quality as with, say, MP3 to FLAC, you can decode the MP3 in theoretically infinite precision, whereas with FLAC you're limited to 24-bits.
Click to expand...

With this lossless codec:
http://lags.leetcode.net/codec.html

Using this codec on a standard DVD, the output is smaller than the original DVD and DVD is lossy MPEG-2 so it does work.

It's like putting a DVD inside a .rar It definitely doesn't get larger. Though this codec is much more efficient at compressing the video-type data than a general standard bzip algorithm like winrar uses.

I thought MP3 was 16-bit (or it can be less). Or were you saying mp3 was just capable of higher than 16-bit.
I didn't think you would lose quality going from MP3 to WAV but you most certainly wouldn't gain anything.

And do you also consider that the source of the MP3 was likely a 16-bit CD or possibly a 24-bit SACD/DVD-Audio. Or would you still lose quality going from an MP3 that was originally created from a 16-bit CD back to a 16-bit WAV.
 
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Snowknight26 said:
It actually doesn't. As there are both lossy and lossless ways of compressing something, yuo can't assume that you lose information.
Click to expand...

UH HUH! My zipped copy of Duke Nukem Forever doesn't look nearly as good these days as it did when I cought it on the retail floppies :D
 
grimreeferx09 said:
actually, you might be able to get the best of both worlds.
since it is a bd25, after you cut some fat(ie extras) and put it in an mkv, it will likely be about 15 gigs.

Here is what I would do:
Find the largest m2ts file. This is likely to be the movie. Open it in tsmuxer and demux it. Only select the main video and audio streams, and possibly the subtitles if necessary.
Then take the results of that, and open it up in mkvmerge (part of mkvtoolnix). This will allow you to create an mkv with the results from tsmuxer.
Click to expand...

While this is good advice.. And what I do. You shouldnt just search for the largest m2ts file.
You should be using BDInfo
http://www.videohelp.com/tools/BDInfo
Free and very helpful.
This way you can add the playlist instead.. Which grabs everything.
 
SirMaster said:
With this lossless codec:
http://lags.leetcode.net/codec.html

Using this codec on a standard DVD, the output is smaller than the original DVD and DVD is lossy MPEG-2 so it does work.
Click to expand...
Look at the comparison charts they have. They're comparing it to the uncompressed video (RGB32, YUV2, YV12, etc) not MPEG-2.

SirMaster said:
It's like putting a DVD inside a .rar It definitely doesn't get larger.
Click to expand...
That's where the discrepancy lies. RAR and ZIP files use lossless data compression, not lossless conversion when dealing with audio/video formats.

SirMaster said:
I thought MP3 was 16-bit (or it can be less). Or were you saying mp3 was just capable of higher than 16-bit.
Click to expand...
Lossy formats don't have a bit-depth. The higher the bit-depth is when decoded, the closer to the stored data you become. Think of it as curve fitting where each polynomial degree represents a bit. The higher the degree (bit-depth), the closer to the original data you get.

SirMaster said:
I didn't think you would lose quality going from MP3 to WAV but you most certainly wouldn't gain anything.
Click to expand...
Because of the above, you do lose a small amount of data.

SirMaster said:
And do you also consider that the source of the MP3 was likely a 16-bit CD or possibly a 24-bit SACD/DVD-Audio. Or would you still lose quality going from an MP3 that was originally created from a 16-bit CD back to a 16-bit WAV.
Click to expand...
Same as above.
 
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Snowknight26 said:
Look at the comparison charts they have. They're comparing it to the uncompressed video (RGB32, YUV2, YV12, etc) not MPEG-2.


That's where the discrepancy lies. RAR and ZIP files use lossless data compression, not lossless conversion when dealing with audio/video formats.


Lossy formats don't have a bit-depth. The higher the bit-depth is when decoded, the closer to the stored data you become. Think of it as curve fitting where each polynomial degree represents a bit. The higher the degree (bit-depth), the closer to the original data you get.


Because of the above, you do lose a small amount of data.

Same as above.
Click to expand...

Ah the polynomial curve makes sense. I never looked that far into lossy compression and assumed it was at least similar to lossless but I see the difference now. Thinking about it now, i can see there would not be a way to make it so small using the "grid" of bits times the sample rate like a raw audio stream is.
 
Archer75 said:
I use ripbot primarily but handbrake will do it as well. I take the ripped video or mkv and drop it in those programs, re-encode it and then merge it back with the audio from the original rip with mkvmerge.

For the actual ripping process I primarily use makemkv. In the past i've used HDBRstreamextractor as a GUI for eac3to in conjunction with anydvdhd.

There is of course quality loss but the key is finding the settings that will not be noticable to you. I can re-encode bluray and save a great deal of space but also end up with something that to me is indistinguishable from the original.

However things like comedies I don't care about so i'll shrink that down even further.
Click to expand...

Tried using ripbot last night with all the newest versions of all the software it requires. It gives me an error when it tries to demux. Im on win 7. Is anyone else having issues with this on win 7?
 
If you do want very good quality and a smaller file then you should look up the standards the "scene" uses when doing their encodes for scene releases.

I believe they use x264 triple-pass with pretty specialized and tweaked x264 encoder settings.

Or if you have time, a fast processor, and are crazy you can always just use the placebo preset on the x264 encoder :p
 
Get a nightly build of HandBrake, feed it the m2ts file, set it for High Profile, set the container for MKV, and hit Start, when it's done you'll have a single MKV file ready to roll, significantly smaller (probably 3x smaller) and it'll look pretty much exactly the same to your rather limited Human optical receptors aka eyes.

NEXT!!!
 
-iLLuZioN-B18C1 said:
Tried using ripbot last night with all the newest versions of all the software it requires. It gives me an error when it tries to demux. Im on win 7. Is anyone else having issues with this on win 7?
Click to expand...

Depends on the error. I get no error when using it in windows 7 x64. I just hit add, load in a video file a wait till it's down, tweak my settings, hit done and start.

I also usually use quality setting CQ=18 and for me I can't tell the difference from the original. I use the same high profile setting in ripbot and handbrake.
Handbrake never autocropped for me though it was supposed to. The autocrop feature in ripbot works flawlessly.
 
Joe Average said:
Get a nightly build of HandBrake, feed it the m2ts file, set it for High Profile, set the container for MKV, and hit Start, when it's done you'll have a single MKV file ready to roll, significantly smaller (probably 3x smaller) and it'll look pretty much exactly the same to your rather limited Human optical receptors aka eyes.

NEXT!!!
Click to expand...

Or get the new version of Handbrake they just released. :)
 
The new version, i think 0.95 (?), has some problems....I ended up having to use the "nightly build".
 
Joe Average said:
Get a nightly build of HandBrake, feed it the m2ts file, set it for High Profile, set the container for MKV, and hit Start, when it's done you'll have a single MKV file ready to roll, significantly smaller (probably 3x smaller) and it'll look pretty much exactly the same to your rather limited Human optical receptors aka eyes.

NEXT!!!
Click to expand...

I'll try this tonight. Thanks
 
Funny, I was going to make a thread about pretty much the same thing since I have been looking into this over the past week or so. I'm looking for quality over file size, but I also want to cut out the extras to save space since I never watch them.

I first started converting bluray last year using the guide below, so I could watch them on my xbox extenders. It takes a while, but I didn't notice any quality loss.

http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/t/81225.aspx?PageIndex=1

On a side note, I don't convert the MKV to WTV like the guide does. I never could get that to work right, but that's a whole different story...



Now a year later, I have a better understanding of bluray encoding and a bigger/nicer TV (50" plasma now vs 42" LCD before). I realize that I don't really watch blurays on my extenders, so I was wondering if I was sacrificing quality for no good reason. I had some free time over the holidays so I wanted to re-investigate this again to see if I could notice a quality loss now. From copying DVDs, I know that cutting out the extras reduces the file size slightly while leaving the movie intact. My issue with doing this to a bluray is that I save more space than I would expect.

For example: Live Free or Die Hard

The disc is 42.5 gigs.

The largest m2ts file on the bluray of Live Free or Die Hard is 32 gigs @ 2hr 3min run time.

My MKV rip w/DD 5.1 using ripbot results in a file size of 13.4 gigs @ 2hr 8min run time.


I didn't really notice this before because on a lot of blurays, the files are broken up into 1-4gb chunks that ripbot combines. Now that I have noticed the drastic file size difference, I am wondering if I'm just blind and don't notice the difference.

I was sure I noticed quality loss in a scene from Robin Hood when I was watching it last week. I took 2 screen shots of the same scene; one straight from the disc (46.3 gigs), and one from my rip which is a 16.2 gig MKV w/DD 5.1 @ 2hr 35min run time. Robin Hood is one that has a bunch of 1-4gb chunks, so I'm not sure of the file size of just the movie, only the total for the disc.

Disc (46.3 gigs):
Disc.jpg


MKV (16.2 gigs):
copy.jpg


Ripbot Settings for Robin Hood:
Settings.jpg



Honestly, I still can't tell the difference. Can anyone explain to me what I'm missing here, or am I crazy?
 
14Mbps is high enough for the encode to be transparent to the source.
However, taking screenshots of your player, resized, at two differen't frames isn't the best way to do a comparison. ;)
 
I have had no luck with both ripbot and handbrake. They are both doing the same thing for me. I start the process. I can see the file that it begins to output. Everytime early on in the process it just goes straight to "complete". The file output is usually 50-300mb, which is anywhere from 30 seconds to 3+ mins. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Anyone else ever had this problem?
 
-iLLuZioN-B18C1 said:
I have had no luck with both ripbot and handbrake. They are both doing the same thing for me. I start the process. I can see the file that it begins to output. Everytime early on in the process it just goes straight to "complete". The file output is usually 50-300mb, which is anywhere from 30 seconds to 3+ mins. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Anyone else ever had this problem?
Click to expand...

I used to have this problem... but I forget what fixed it exactly. I believe it was due to either a codec or file association issue. I know VLC caused me some issues because it wanted to be the default player for a few file types that ripbot didn't like. I also had some codec issues that was resolved by using Shark007's codec pack and following the config guide.
 
Snowknight26 said:
14Mbps is high enough for the encode to be transparent to the source.
However, taking screenshots of your player, resized, at two differen't frames isn't the best way to do a comparison. ;)
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's not a perfect comparison since I didn't line up the frames. I figured if I have to be that anal to notice the difference, there is no way I could notice the difference while watching the movie. :p

Resized? I didn't resize anything. I just opened the file, skipped to the scene, and then took a screen shot.
 
Following up just in case someone can use this information in the future. For the record I'm on win 7 64 bit.
I did some research and found a post where someone had success going into the .ini file in ripbot and changing the following value to zero:
Usex264x64=0

I did this and it is working as of now. The question now is, I have set it up to do 2 passes b/c I read somewhere this is what you should do. What does 2 passes do? The 1st pass seemed reasonable at 2.5 hrs. The 2nd pass says it will take another 5 hours. Does it normally take this long?
 
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That's normal.

The first pass analyzes the video and writes the collected info to the (default) '.stats' file. The 2nd pass encodes the video using the information collected in the first pass while.

If you were to only run 'pass 1', your video would have a huge bitrate at the beginning while the end's would be very low as the encoder doesn't know anything about what it's encoding. It would also look bad as you should be using fast settings to begin with (why use slow settings when it's just gathering info to use in the 2nd pass?) Running the 2nd pass would use the gathered info and converge the bitrate to what you chose, clip any high peaks, compress it much better (because you used slower settings.. hopefully), etc.
 
xFROSTx, Robin Hood is only around 27GBs with everything but the video and english soundtrack removed, with no additional compression. So your comparison (46GBs vs 16GBs) wasn't really apples to apples. Something to keep in mind if you are compressing blu-rays to that size thinking you are saving a bunch of space, some yes but not quite that much. And with the cheapness of 2TB drives, I'd personally rather have the original movie quality.
 
To be honest with 2TB HDDs at ~£60.....why bother wasting time compressing/recoding/etc?
 
anyone ever compare dvdfab and handbrake and whatever other popular software for converting to mkv to see whats the better of them? or is there really very little difference? i was originally just going to leave the blu-ray rips alone and use tmt3, but as im having some slight stuttering it seems that converting the files to an uncompressed mkv and using straight WMC player is an easier way to do things for now. i dont care about file size and i just rip main movies. im not doing any re-encoding to save the hd audio at this point as i have a DD encoding soundcard that makes things sound great.
ive used dvdfab for a few and they seem ok, but im just wondering if one of the others is more dependable or gives a higher quality movie.
 
devil22 said:
xFROSTx, Robin Hood is only around 27GBs with everything but the video and english soundtrack removed, with no additional compression. So your comparison (46GBs vs 16GBs) wasn't really apples to apples.
Click to expand...


I guess I didn't clarify quite enough...;)

Yup, you are exactly right, comparing the size of the disc to the size of the movie is pretty much pointless. I had no quick way of figuring out the size of the movie short of getting a calculator out. That's why I used the Live Free or Die Hard example as well, since that was one of the movies that made me notice for the first time how much the file size was shrinking. I can give more examples, but the point is that my MKV rips are around half of the original size, which I feel is pretty considerate. Robin Hood was used because I was sure I noticed a huge drop in quality in that scene and I thought the difference would be the most noticeable. I didn't take those screenshots specifically for this thread, so yeah, it's not a perfect experiment.


devil22 said:
Something to keep in mind if you are compressing blu-rays to that size thinking you are saving a bunch of space, some yes but not quite that much. And with the cheapness of 2TB drives, I'd personally rather have the original movie quality.
Click to expand...

I completely agree. I use Ripbot for 2 reasons that are more of personal preference, rather than using it for the point of saving space.

1 - Create an MKV of just the movie since I don't care about extras. Even though I have 8TB of storage, I still wouldn't mind saving that space.
2 - Keep the bitrate from peaking too high so my xbox extenders can keep up. At my core, I'm against compression because it will have some quality loss no matter what. On the other hand, if the difference is so small that it's not noticeable on anything less than a 15k setup; Then yes, I would like to have my cake and eat it too. :)

The best analogy I can think of is WAV vs. MP3. Yes, a WAV file will sound better than an MP3, but I can't tell the difference between a 10MB Mp3 and the 60MB WAV original. The file size difference is considerate, but since I can't tell the difference, might as well go with the smaller file since it makes it easier to work with. This is what I have been trying to figure out on my own. When I saw this thread, I figured I would contribute my findings since I'm still not sold myself. It seems too good to be true, so I'm looking for flaws. Since I haven't found anything really noticeable myself, I was wondering if someone could show me what I should be looking for. If more screenshots are needed, no problem, I'll even try to get identical frames this time. :p
 
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