How do you store your Blu Ray rips?

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nilepez

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Do you rip to a directory structure, an ISO or do you create an MKV (presumably uncompressed) of the movie?
As I get closer to getting a NAS I need to think about how i'm going to do it so your thoughts are appreciated.

So if someone stumbles across this and doesn't feel like reading it all here's a summary:
  1. Most rip to another format (e.g. MKV)
  2. If you're going to transcode on the fly you probably do not want to recompress/transcode the audio/video
  3. MakeMKV is recommended to remove extra audio streams/subtitles that you don't want and then converts the m2TS file to an MKV
  4. If you want to reduce the size of the movie, several here use Handbrake and defaultluser's post may help (I haven't tried that yet and I may not, given the amount of storage I have available.
  5. mvmiller12 has an alternate method of reducing file sizes that uses
    1. EAC3TO to either compress or remove audio streams
    2. MeGUI x264 to re-encode the videos to smaller bitrates (he uses x264 because most devices can h/w decode it, including a firestick, while x265 has less support.
    3. There is further advice within his post.
 
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For Plex and other media players, really needs to be a single file. So my recommendation is to rip to a single media file.

But, in all fairness, those files are going to be huge. So, I generally only store a compressed (to whatever level you think you can handle) version and consider the Blu-ray the "original". Again, mainly to save space.

So, unless your library is very small, I recommend that. Otherwise, you'll have a very large NAS full of data for just a few things that is difficult to play effectively over many networks.
 
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cjcox said:
For Plex and other media players, really needs to be a single file. So my recommendation is to rip to a single media file.
But, in all fairness, those files are going to be huge. So, I generally only store a compressed (to whatever level you think you can handle) version and consider the Blu-ray the "original". Again, mainly to save space.
So, unless your library is very small, I recommend that. Otherwise, you'll have a very large NAS full of data for just a few things that is difficult to play effectively over many networks.
Click to expand...
I have 6 8TB drives, so probably 5 drives for data 1 for parity (but maybe I'll do 2 parity). For now, HD Disk content is fairly small, but once I can get it on the nas, it will grow. I may rip some DVDs too, but it'll depend on the quality. My understanding is that if I take the movie file and whatever audio I want, and convert to an uncompressed MKV it's about 9GB (not sure if that's true though), which in a world where I have 32-40 TB of storage doesn't seem too bad.

Regardless, it sounds like I shouldn't store the entire disk.
 
MKVs. I remove all subtitles (PGS) and language tracks I don't need prior to rip. You're left with the Original Quality video file. Most 2 Hr BD movies will average 25-35 GB in size depending on the bit rate and the codec used. (standard def DVDs (2 hrs) will be 4-7 GB in size ripped to MKV)

I have a 10 TB NAS, after 116 movies and 17 TV shows (mixed SD/HD)- I'm at 4 TB consumed. After a while I'll probably either expand the NAS, or transcode some of the movies to smaller bit rate versions to conserve space. But I prefer to keep the Original Quality file, even if it is a ton of space.

BTW, don't call it uncompressed. Technically all digital video is compressed using lossy codecs, even blu rays. It's simply the largest bit rate video available to the consumer.
 
Saturn_V said:
MKVs. I remove all subtitles (PGS) and language tracks I don't need prior to rip. You're left with the Original Quality video file. Most 2 Hr BD movies will average 25-35 GB in size depending on the bit rate and the codec used. (standard def DVDs (2 hrs) will be 4-7 GB in size ripped to MKV)

I have a 10 TB NAS, after 116 movies and 17 TV shows (mixed SD/HD)- I'm at 4 TB consumed. After a while I'll probably either expand the NAS, or transcode some of the movies to smaller bit rate versions to conserve space. But I prefer to keep the Original Quality file, even if it is a ton of space.

BTW, don't call it uncompressed. Technically all digital video is compressed using lossy codecs, even blu rays. It's simply the largest bit rate video available to the consumer.
Click to expand...

How are you getting the rip with only the bits you want? I did one for Hunger Games just now, but it's the entire disk. AFAIK, anydvd doesn't have an option to not rip the extra stuff.
 
Use MakeMKV. It's pretty easy to use, just checkbox what you want to keep.
MhqtRqr.jpg


I think you only need anydvd to transcode to smaller bitrates or mp4.
 
MakeMKV to rip, then Handbrake to encode to mk4 (right?) I have about 60 movies done this way- about 250gb I think.
Looks pretty good on Plex.
 
I use a separate disc extractor (DVDFab, main movie only), then Handbrake for encodes. After getting my hands on so many raw videos, I only have one thing to say:

1080p is so wasteful for most movies. Even on my 65" 4k tv!

For CGI popcorn flicks, I really can't tell the difference between 720p and 1080p with quality factor 19. The action onscreen is just too fast-paced.

Period-style movies are purposefully lower-resolution. They use digital filters to make it look WORSE. Hidden Figures falls into this category, where the 720p looks exactly the same as 1080p.

So that leaves you slower-paced NEW movies that can actually give you that 1080p quality. Atomic Blonde comes to mind as one of the few from last year that really kicks-ass at 1080p.

Animation looks the same at 720p as it does at 1080p. There just isn't enough detail put into most of these to justify the higher resolution.

As for older movies (1990s and earlier), if they were stored correctly, AND filmed with high-end equipment, you MIGHT get something with more than 720p of ACTUAL resolution. But the vast majority are 720p or less (the rest of that picture being blur and film grain). If you down-sample the video to it's ACTUAL resolution, you stop wasting space, while it looks the same.

35mm film is CAPABLE of 4k resolution. But how you CAPTURE that onto the film determines how crappy the final result is. High-quality cameras and lenses used to be way more expensive then they now are, and real-time digital processing in the camera has fixed a lot of poor exposures/focus you see in 1990s-and-earlier films.

The Handbrake x265 encoder is so much faster than it used to be, that I encode two settings, and just choose the best:

720p and 1080p for new slower-paced movies. 20 quality level usually works.

720p and 600p (1000 horizontal resolution) for popcorn flicks and everything older, I use 19 for fast-action, and 20 for slower.

Multi-pass encoding is old and pointless. Handbrake Constant-quality single-pass gives me better compression, and takes half the time. You just have to take the time to see the results of a few sample runs, and chose your favorite settings. In my experience, 19 is exactly the same as-source, even for fast-motion movies. 20 is nearly the same as source for slower movies.

If you're picky like me (and can use h.265), you can store an entire move library on 1TB or less (average of 3GB per-title). Or, even if you let Handbrake keep the original quality 1080p at 19 constant quality (average 5GB per-title), it will still give you hundreds of movie s on a 2TB drive. This is compared to the raw Blue-Ray rips, which use around 25GB each.
 
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defaultluser said:
Can you even decrypt/rip 4k BluRay yet? I didn't think it was possible.
Click to expand...

I've no idea- just got my first UHD TV and UHD Blu-ray player (the Philips one that does Dolby Vision, have an LG OLED), and that'd be the standard for deploying such a setup, for me.
 
defaultluser said:
Can you even decrypt/rip 4k BluRay yet? I didn't think it was possible.
Click to expand...

Yes and no. There is no universal crack for all UHD content, but some BluRay drives can read the disks despite not being "UHD" drives, and there are some leaked keys that will allow you to extract from them. There is a discussion about this in the RedFox AnyDVD forums.
 
For the record, I rip my BluRays using AnyDVD HD and EAC3TO (ripping/converting audio to AC3 640 - audio system is only DD 5.1) and then use MeGUI x264 to re-encode the videos to smaller bitrates (2 stage, usually @ 3500 - nearly indistinguishable on most films on my 4K TV, will re-encode again at a higher bitrate for those where there is a noticeable difference in quality). Note that I use custom-tweaked profiles on my videos to enhance visual quality at these lower bitrates. Why x264 instead of x265? Pretty much everything hardware decodes x264, including the cheap Amazon FireTV stick.

If the video itself is 2.35 or greater aspect ratio, I'll use BDSUP2SUB to "move" all of the subtitles out of the frame, so that they appear above or below the actual picture (this works very well when using Kodi - Media Player Classic ignores this.

Movie is reconstructed as an .MKV using MKVToolNix. Average file size is anywhere from 2 to 5 GB per film (~1 GB for most hour long TV episodes) and is stored on a 5x4TB (HGST ReadyNAS drives) RAID 5 external drive array (for 12 TB of storage) connected via a Highpoint RocketRAID 644 to an FX-8350 (stock) w/16G of RAM and a Radeon R7 270x running Kodi and Netflix for local video on the 4K TV (using display port to HDMI adapter for 60Hz 4K) and Plex Server for remote video (other TVs in house using Amazon FireTV sticks, tablet/phone when away from house). The RocketRAID card is to keep the array easily portable should I switch processor architectures.

The FX-8350 is something of a wonder processor for Plex Server, and the only time the CPU is really doing anything substantive is when Plex is being used - video card handles all x264 decode duties locally. Video is ripped and re-encoded on my Ryzen R7 1700 (@ 3.8 GHz) desktop with 16G of RAM (@ 3200). Average encode for typical 2 hour Progressive Scan movie is ~1.5 hours (BluRay) or 20 minutes (DVD). These are CPU encodes, naturally (slower, but better quality than video card accelerated encodes).

Interlaced encodes though........ Interlaced DVD's using the QTGMC filter at "Slower" preset with multi-threading take ~3 hours or so per movie. Interlaced BluRays can take a couple of days per film (!!!). Thankfully Interlaced BluRays are pretty rare (usually only find these for BBC shows like early seasons of Downton Abby or all of Torchwood).

I keep an offsite (stored at a friend's house) backup of my media on an 8TB (WD) external USB drive. (Got a little bit over 1 TB of space left on this)

You did not ask specifically about it, but Live TV is provided courtesy of a Silicon Dust HDHomeurn Prime cablecard network box and all TV's can get Live TV (complete with DVR services) either via Kodi (with HDHomeRun plugin) or Plex. I have no cable boxes at all (just the single cablecard) and am using the Verizon FiOS TV and Internet service. The HDHomeRun Prime can simultaneously stream 3 different TV channels, and I have never had a case where this has not been sufficient to cover all TVs in the house. Plex will now even allow me to watch Live TV when away from home should I so wish. I got the coveted 50% off Lifetime Plex coupon 3 months after trialing it and jumped on that :)

Fun fact: some DVD's don't come with subtitles, but do come with Closed Captions. Ripping Closed Captions using CCRIP and then adding them into your .MKV as a .SRT subtitle will then give you "subtitles" for these films (I'm looking at you, Highlander TV series)
 
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I do have this interlaced DVD movie I just can't get to encode well using x264 and QTGMC, and so I used Handbrake to decomb the picure. A Tale of Two Sisters (Korean horror film, excellent if you haven't seen it. American remake, also good, was The Uninvited). The way they encoded this movie is all sorts of jankey - I feel like I'd have to break it up into chunks and re-encode them separately with different settings to make this work, and also perform some frame decimations. It is a MESS. The Handbrake decomb is good enough for now, though I am seriously considering buying the BluRay. Reviews say that the video quality on that is actually WORSE than the DVD though. Sad this film can't get a good home video release... :(
 
I backup my discs using makemkv and output a 24-32GB file. Gets stored on a NAS that also runs plex.

I used to do a directory rip and then use mkvmerge but now do the one step process with the new version of makemkv.

The UHD discs are starting to pile up waiting for an effective/applicable backup method.
 
defaultluser said:
Can you even decrypt/rip 4k BluRay yet? I didn't think it was possible.
Click to expand...
You can. There are certain Blu Ray drives (not UHD drives) that have a bug that allows them to rip UHD content. They cannot, however play that content. I tested it yesterday on Hunger Games (10 bucks at Fry's made it too good to pass up) and it worked without a hitch. At this point, I believe Make MKV can do it as can AnyDVD. For AnyDVD it's still experimental. I'm not sure which s/w is better. There's apparently some accusations from Make MKV's author that AnyDVD is copying form them, but someone on AnyDVD who has both apps said there's at least one disk that he can rip on AnyDVD and it doesn't on Make MKV, so who knows I honestly didn't know Make MKV had decryption built in.

All I know is this makes it easy for me to pickup UHD disks on sale, even though my only 4k capable display is my monitor. Maybe this year i'll buy a 4k display (I say that every year ;) and I'm quite the procrastinator when it comes to buying stuff, but I did pull the trigger on a NAS)
 
mvmiller12 said:
Yes and no. There is no universal crack for all UHD content, but some BluRay drives can read the disks despite not being "UHD" drives, and there are some leaked keys that will allow you to extract from them. There is a discussion about this in the RedFox AnyDVD forums.
Click to expand...
I get the impression that both AnyDVD and Make MKV can decrypt them now. I don't know how AnyDVD is getting new keys, but the latter seems to be able to take some sort of a log file from failed rips and generate a key (the generation appears to be done by sending the log to them)
 
Machupo said:
I backup my discs using makemkv and output a 24-32GB file. Gets stored on a NAS that also runs plex.
I used to do a directory rip and then use mkvmerge but now do the one step process with the new version of makemkv.
The UHD discs are starting to pile up waiting for an effective/applicable backup method.
Click to expand...
Anydvd and Makemkv can do this now. There are a lot of threads on the redfox boards, as well as myce and I assume makemkv's forums as well. There are also discussions about cross flashing drives to different firmware and there are ways to get older firmware on drives that have firmware that fixed the hole in these blu ray drives.

Back on topic, what type of file is your 24-32 GB file? Is it an MKV? If I opt to use compression as many seem to recommend, then I may try for HEVC, since it does a good job with less space. I just want to make sure there's no new artifacts. My goal is ultimately to have something that look like the Blu Ray/UHD disk.
 
nilepez said:
Anydvd and Makemkv can do this now. There are a lot of threads on the redfox boards, as well as myce and I assume makemkv's forums as well. There are also discussions about cross flashing drives to different firmware and there are ways to get older firmware on drives that have firmware that fixed the hole in these blu ray drives.
Click to expand...
Saturn_V said:
Use MakeMKV. It's pretty easy to use, just checkbox what you want to keep.
MhqtRqr.jpg


I think you only need anydvd to transcode to smaller bitrates or mp4.
Click to expand...
Anydvd is used to decrypt (though apparently MakeMKV does this too, which it didn't back when I tried it many years ago). AFAIK, anydvd cannot transcode at all. for some reason I thought MakeMKV did that, but maybe that's what Handbrake is for.
 
nilepez said:
Back on topic, what type of file is your 24-32 GB file? Is it an MKV? If I opt to use compression as many seem to recommend, then I may try for HEVC, since it does a good job with less space. I just want to make sure there's no new artifacts. My goal is ultimately to have something that look like the Blu Ray/UHD disk.
Click to expand...

This ultimately boils down to what's more important: saving space or preserving quality? The answer is subjective, personal and is neither right or wrong.

I keep all my MKVs at original quality. The exact same as on the bluray disc. The biggest reason (apart from *percieved* quality), is that I depend on the HW transcoding to all my platforms. And it's best if you're transcoding from the largest bit rate version available. So on the big TV and AVR- I'm sending the Rokus original quality and 5.1. On the bedroom TV, I'm transcoding a 12 Mb version and stereo. To the tablet- a 3 Mb 720p version, and so on. What you want to avoid is transcoding from a version that's already squashed down from Original Quality. (you're compressing it twice) The quality is not as consistent.

In the OTT/Streaming space; average bit rate for streaming 1080p is well under 8 Mb- and it's perfectly acceptable. You can make an argument that any thing over 12 Mb is unneeded bits. And I understand that argument. But transferring all these discs over the MKVs has opened my eyes as to how much we're missing.
 
Is there an advantage to ripping a disc with AnyDVD and then using Handbrake to encode to a MKV container? I just use Anydvd to decode the disc and let Handbrake rip\encode to MKV.
 
Fix Me said:
Is there an advantage to ripping a disc with AnyDVD and then using Handbrake to encode to a MKV container? I just use Anydvd to decode the disc and let Handbrake rip\encode to MKV.
Click to expand...

Your post sounds like you ALREADY do what you are asking about.


WTF MATE?
 
Fix Me said:
Is there an advantage to ripping a disc with AnyDVD and then using Handbrake to encode to a MKV container? I just use Anydvd to decode the disc and let Handbrake rip\encode to MKV.
Click to expand...
Vs doing what?
 
It really depends on how you plan to play them back and what quality you prefer. I prefer uncompressed audio and video for my home playback and have built my environment to support that. My go to is Plex Media Server, as it is a very capable platform and can support any number of different playback scenarios.

Rip feature track from disc (including UHD) through MakeMKV with HD/Atmos audio (HDR on the UHD discs). The UHD copies have their own folder for reasons explained below.
Storage is an unRAID server, which is also the Plex Media Server (among several other things). It's currently got 3x 8TB drives, one of those is parity. I can easily expand this to 6 or more drives by just simply plugging them in.
Playback is primarily to Nvidia Shield TV's through of course, Plex. One is connected to a 4k HDR TV, the other a 1080.
I have two users created in Plex, one of which does not have access to the 4K movies folder since it would force a transcode from 4k to 1080 (requires a lot of CPU to accomplish) on the non-4k set. The Shield connected to the 1080 TV gets the "cut back" selections user.
The Shield TV's are set up to Direct Play so no transcoding is required or needed, meaning no/little CPU use. The Shield TV handles HDR10 and HD audio/Atmos very well.

I do understand that not everyone needs uncompressed video and audio, for those playing back on mobile devices it's not necessary. With the significant amount of time it takes to add content to the library, I only want to handle the media once, and I don't want to some day kick myself because playback is "dull" due to compression. This also leaves the option for anyone that wants to "back up" my library to compress to their preference, which anyone that ever obtained MP3's way back when knows all too well that some people just don't care or cannot tell any difference no matter what is being played.
 
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wickedld9 said:
It really depends on how you plan to play them back and what quality you prefer. I prefer uncompressed audio and video for my home playback and have built my environment to support that. My go to is Plex Media Server, as it is a very capable platform and can support any number of different playback scenarios.

Rip feature track from disc (including UHD) through MakeMKV with HD/Atmos audio (HDR on the UHD discs). The UHD copies have their own folder for reasons explained below.
Storage is an unRAID server, which is also the Plex Media Server (among several other things). It's currently got 3x 8TB drives, one of those is parity. I can easily expand this to 6 or more drives by just simply plugging them in.
Playback is primarily to Nvidia Shield TV's through of course, Plex. One is connected to a 4k HDR TV, the other a 1080.
I have two users created in Plex, one of which does not have access to the 4K movies folder since it would force a transcode from 4k to 1080 (requires a lot of CPU to accomplish) on the non-4k set. The Shield connected to the 1080 TV gets the "cut back" selections user.
The Shield TV's are set up to Direct Play so no transcoding is required or needed, meaning no/little CPU use. The Shield TV handles HDR10 and HD audio/Atmos very well.

I do understand that not everyone needs uncompressed video and audio, for those playing back on mobile devices it's not necessary. With the significant amount of time it takes to add content to the library, I only want to handle the media once, and I don't want to some day kick myself because playback is "dull" due to compression. This also leaves the option for anyone that wants to "back up" my library to compress to their preference, which anyone that ever obtained MP3's way back when knows all too well that some people just don't care or cannot tell any difference no matter what is being played.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I've been leaning towards just ripping to an MKV. So far, however, I've had better luck ripping with anydvd and using makemkv after that (on UHD disks). Hopefully MakeMKV will continue to do that without a sub, but I'm not completely clear what is free and what requires a sub.
 
nilepez said:
Hopefully MakeMKV will continue to do that without a sub, but I'm not completely clear what is free and what requires a sub.
Click to expand...

That 30day countdown never starts, and I've literally ripped hundreds of MKVs; haven't paid a nickel.
 
Saturn_V said:
That 30day countdown never starts, and I've literally ripped hundreds of MKVs; haven't paid a nickel.
Click to expand...
May be because it's still in beta. I just assumed that the decryption part required a sub. I'm OK with AnyDVD, mostly because when I tried to decrypt my Hunger Games UHD using Make MKV (after I'd already done it with Anydvd) it couldn't do it. But that's good to know, because I've got a bunch of stuff to rip and I won't get to it all in 30 days.
 
DVD Fab has a "30-day trial," but all you have to do to restart that trial is uninstall and download the latest copy. And their 64-bit version has added UHD Blu-Ray ripping.

I like their tool's GUI much better than MakeMKV.
 
I use makemkv, and then handbrake to encode. I keep original DTS-HD audio, and only do compression I can't see or notice. Typical Bluray ends up being around 9GB. I think I use 18 for compression on handbrake.

The encoding is needed for my wireless tv in my bedroom. Unencoded movies will buffer while streaming, encoded ones won't. I know I can just a lower streaming quality, but I prefer to just compress once, rather than every time the movie is played
 
defaultluser said:
Your post sounds like you ALREADY do what you are asking about.


WTF MATE?
Click to expand...
I thought maybe some were copying the contents of the disc to the hard drive and then using Handbrake. Seemed like an extra and unnecessary step. But, I may just be confused on the terminology.
 
I don't even think tools like AnyDVD wlll work with a copied disc. I think they're searching for the raw disc or nothing.

But even if they did, it wouldn't save you any time. The slowest process is still copying the disc to the hard drive. The tool just does decryption at the same time.
 
Saturn_V said:
Use MakeMKV. It's pretty easy to use, just checkbox what you want to keep.
View attachment 58927

I think you only need anydvd to transcode to smaller bitrates or mp4.
Click to expand...

1. I use MakeMKV like this.. and just select the main video and the highest quality audio available. Export to temp folder.
2. Handbrake to encode to .mp4 and put on Plex drive.
3. Refresh plex and enjoy.

I have four kids under 10 and they are not gentle with discs. Now they can watch their movie on plex instead. No disc shuffle, and no scratched/lost discs.
 
ironforge said:
1. I use MakeMKV like this.. and just select the main video and the highest quality audio available. Export to temp folder.
2. Handbrake to encode to .mp4 and put on Plex drive.
3. Refresh plex and enjoy.

I have four kids under 10 and they are not gentle with discs. Now they can watch their movie on plex instead. No disc shuffle, and no scratched/lost discs.
Click to expand...
If you start ripping UHD disks, IME, AnyDVD is better at decrypting. I know it failed with some (all?) of my Hunger Games disks and it also failed with Westworld S1. There's some irony there, since apparently the author of MakeMKV thought (thinks?) that Redfox was just copying his keys into Anydvd.

That said, I do like MakeMKV for ripping to a file. However, I found it odd how it puts the same exactly files 2x (thinking mostly of westworld). I guess there's some files pointing to the episode files 2x.

Regardless, it's a good tool...the fact that it doesn't work for some disks without Anydvd makes me happy I bought a license for that tool (I was kinda bummed for about a week or 2...but no more :D
 
nilepez said:
If you start ripping UHD disks, IME, AnyDVD is better at decrypting. I know it failed with some (all?) of my Hunger Games disks and it also failed with Westworld S1. There's some irony there, since apparently the author of MakeMKV thought (thinks?) that Redfox was just copying his keys into Anydvd.

That said, I do like MakeMKV for ripping to a file. However, I found it odd how it puts the same exactly files 2x (thinking mostly of westworld). I guess there's some files pointing to the episode files 2x.

Regardless, it's a good tool...the fact that it doesn't work for some disks without Anydvd makes me happy I bought a license for that tool (I was kinda bummed for about a week or 2...but no more :D
Click to expand...

I've only had one error so far on MakeMKV (dirty dancing blu-ray). As far as UHD discs go.. I didn't think you could rip those yet.
AnyDVD/CloneDVD I have used going way far back. I had an issue with Cars 3 blu-ray, where I could ONLY get dolby stereo audio track with AnyDVD. Switch to MakeMKV and I could get the 7.1 HD audio track.
 
ironforge said:
I've only had one error so far on MakeMKV (dirty dancing blu-ray). As far as UHD discs go.. I didn't think you could rip those yet.
AnyDVD/CloneDVD I have used going way far back. I had an issue with Cars 3 blu-ray, where I could ONLY get dolby stereo audio track with AnyDVD. Switch to MakeMKV and I could get the 7.1 HD audio track.
Click to expand...
UHD can be ripped if you have certain Blu Ray drives that have a bug that allows it to read the UHD directory strucuture (or something like that).

Personally haven' never ripped anything with Anydvd that didn't have 5.1. A good chunk of the time I rip to an ISO.
 
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