Wow, great information on how to make digital backups of your digital media. This is the most clear and concise information about the process and pitfalls of ripping movies I have seen in a long time. Looking forward to part two!
Came across your video as I am in the middle of archiving all of my physical media. I always welcome people making videos like this, but I have some different views to yours after also doing this since DVDs came out, and figure I should share in case it helps anyone out there. This runs long, so skip if you don't feel like reading. 1. It is easy to find the right drives and firmware/guides to flash yourself. I even stumbled upon a Verbatim Ultra HD 4K External Slimline Blu-ray Writer model directly sold on Amazon that is already Libredrive compatible out of the box. I've bought and currently use four of them, plus a couple of spares. Even if you do need to flash a drive, there are many very easy to follow guides with links to where to buy the drives and find the right firmware. Or you can still buy pre-flashed like you did. 2. You mentioned picking just the movie from each disc and possibly later compressing it down is a waste of time due to lower quality, when you can just buy it from Apple or similar. I disagree. I pick out the main title(s) using MakeMkv and unselect languages/soundtracks I don't need to make better use of my storage space. I then keep the original ripped files as backups, but I also go ahead and compress them down to more compact copies and adding those to my media server. After some testing I have found the right settings where there is no visible difference to quality with how I watch my movies, and the smaller files minimise network resources etc when streaming around my house. I still have the original uncompressed rips on a backup server if I come across a quality issue later. 3. Another reason for ripping and compressing titles down is that I own and retain full control of each file and its quality. This is not the case with files purchased from Apple, Prime etc. Apple is not going away anytime soon, but if they do or decide to change the license, you are screwed as purchased files may become unplayable. My compressed quality is also better than any of the services when compared side by side. 4. As I type this, I am ripping my 1076th, 1077th, 1078th and 1079th discs. I have experienced less than 10 disc errors in my first 1000 rips, and I don't wipe the discs down each time. Your high error count is pointing to an issue with your drive or the PC such as a loose cable connection, underpowered USB port, a tired drive etc. The main sources of errors I have found are either mastering errors on a new disc just purchased , or disc rot in some older discs. Not only do I only rarely get errors, but I rip using four of the Verbatim drives plugged into one relatively low CPU powered windows PC, running four instances of MakeMkv, ripping just the main movie titles with unnecessary audio tracks removed simultaneously. I am ripping the files straight to my home built NAS across a wired ethernet connection without any issues. Four drives simultaneously are not enough to saturate my local network or the maximum NAS write speed. I suspect I could add another drive or two, but four at a time is enough for me to keep feeding discs. 5. MakeMkv really is all anyone needs. Whenever I find a really new UHD that can't be ripped, I email the dump file to the author(s) and try again a couple of days later. They patch it in the meantime and it then rips perfectly. Well worth the purchase to thank the them for this escellent utility. I do recommend always using it in advanced mode though. There are so many different opinions and ways to rip and store physical media. No one is right or wrong, but I thought it was worth sharing my experience. I think sometimes people make this harder for themselves than it needs to be. One last tip for anyone considering getting into this. Spend time first thinking about what you are trying to achieve. In my case I wanted to have everything accessible from one place, store my discs elsewhere as I have run out of shelf space, and archive or preserve all of my movie, TV series and music against theft, fire and media failure. That determined which file types I wanted to keep and how to store them. Then watch/read a lot of guides and design your own workflow. You will need to restart a few times to find what works best for you, but then just rip a few every day and before you know it, you have more than 1000 discs stored. Don't be afraid to spend a little extra on a reliable computer dedicated just for ripping, and get a few drives unless you don't have many discs to rip. Apart from ripping in parallel, some drives just wear out faster than others when having to rip everyday. You'll thank me later.
Thanks so much for sharing such a detailed perspective! I agree on focusing on using MakeMKV. In my more recent process and updated videos, I've done that now and no longer mess with the ISO step. I think it is can be sometimes too easy to call something easy, I would caution. You have a solid grasp of what you're doing and why, which is awesome, but there is still lots of technical stuff to understand for people and even more when you are also compressing the movie files. Thanks!
@@Techthusiasm Thanks. I look forward to watching your other videos to see your final process. Am happy with how mine is progressing now but always good to see what others are doing.
I'm about to rip my one thousand movie collection as well, a mix of dvds, blu-rays and just a few 4ks. Since you have all that experience, is there anything I should make sure to do so I don't have to go back in the future, like tags or such in makemkv. For example, do you bother getting the forced subtitles tagged correctly, and if so what is your process to do that? Thanks for the detailed comment, very informative.
Nice to see a reply to something I sent a year ago. I have never worried about tags too much, but it depends on your own use case. In my case, movies and TV series are played back on Plex clients served from my local Plex server. My family and friends only need English subs (forced or full), so my approach is to always select all English subtitle tracks, plus the forced only English in Makemkv. Nearly every time, the tags correctly carry across. Once I have compressed the original movie file using handbrake or ffmpeg, my final mkv file just plays as expected with the forced subs coming on when required. On the rare occasion where the source has incorrect tags and forced subs are not kicking in, I can still switch on the full length subs so I'm covered whether English or foreign dialogue is playing for the rest of the playback. Sometimes there can be more than one English subtitle to choose because of a director's commentary track or similar, but if I have already included all of them, it doesn't take long to scroll through each subtitle track until I get the right one. I did once have an early disc that was badly authored with most of the subtitles showing as incorrect languages. This can be a real pain. After that, I always do a five second check after every encode before I file it away. I just turn on subtitles and scrub through to somewhere in the middle and play five seconds to make sure the "English" subs are actually in English! Not a bad time to check the audio as well, as the same early disc also had the audio tracks labelled incorrectly! >_< Purists will always want to have every movie file and its individual streams perfectly tagged so they show up correctly without fail. Nothing wrong with that. I can live with them being correct 99% of the time, with an easy workaround for when they don't. Someone once said it is a waste of space storing potentially unrequired subtitles, but at a one megabyte give or take per movie, even a couple of thousand movies is only another 2 Gb across an very large archive. Went a bit long and rambly here, but hope it is useful. In short, I have never been to worried about tags for subs and language. If in doubt I make sure I grab all subs for the languages I'm after so that even if the forced don't work correctly on the rare occasion, I just turn general subs on instead to make sure I don't miss anything.
Another great story, I don’t encounter the pitfalls you have described but I appreciate the care and info you have provided. Looking forward to the final stage of the NAS, where I am experiencing disappointing speed results from Synology system. Thanks
DumboFab Blu-ray Ripper is our top pick for the best Blu-ray ripper for Windows. It can easily cope with any protected Blu-rays, old and new titles, homemade/burned discs. It can convert any 2D/3D/UHD 4K Blu-ray into a lossless MKV file which can store multiple video/audio tracks with all meta-information and preserve chapters. And it can do the job in about five minutes.
Very good information for those wanting and needing to do that. I personally went from VHS to Laserdisc to DVD to Blu ray to UHD(yes I know it’s Blu ray too) to streaming. I have been buying and rebuying movies since the beginning. At the time I started moving over to Blu ray I was at over 600 movies and tv shows(remember when that was a thing?). And then rebuying in UHD. Now of course it was never one for one. I only bought DVDs I deemed rewatchable but rebuying over 600 dvd movies and tv shows just didn’t make sense to me. Back in 2010 I acquired a hard drive with over 2000 movies and the quality is a mix of dvd and Blu Ray quality. For me ripping disc doesn’t make sense because all current movies come with a digital copy and most older movies that I have are on the iTunes Store and if you wait long enough some sale will happen where you can pick them up for 4.99. The problem with all streaming services Kaleidscape included is you don’t actually own the movie. You are paying for use. Like Ultraviolet, if that company goes out of business you may or may not get access to that movie from another service. The good thing about ripping is you physically own the disc so even if your hard drive crashed you still own the movie to re-rip it. Ok not sure where I was going with this thread so I will end it with this. I appreciate you showing us how to rip disc and what software and hardware is required. I’m too lazy for that and just rebought them on digitally while more expensive just easier for me and has other benefits if you are in the right eco-sphere. Keep up the great videos!
Saw a video tutorial on how to flash an optical drive and they had to load up windows xp 32-bit in dos compatibility mode and run some command line utility.
What are good ISO play back. My VLC media player doesn’t play the menu but the movie when it comes to Blu-Ray. My DVD copy does play well with menus on movies & TV shows.
Agree with most of your points. I would never touch a sealed disc for first attempt. If Make MKV insta-fails and the movie is a new release it will probably require an update to properly rip that disc.
Thanks for taking the time to create these tutorials. I'm pretty much where this video ends. I got the right drive, the hardware, and rolled back the software (I'm not very pc tech savvy, so this took awhile, even those the tools were fairly easy to follow). My goal is to put together a series of clips from movies that have a reference audio track, especially ones that showcase reference ULF bass. I believe there's another editing software program for that, but I'm still kinda stuck figuring out where to save and modify the ISOs. So I'm looking forward to your next set of clips, since I only have MakeMKV right now.
My pleasure! It is fun exploring this again, and I will be keeping some focused about of ripped media in my system despite upgrading my Kaleidescape. Next week will be a 3 part MakeMKV series of videos.
A Zappiti NAS fully loaded with drives is up there in cost near a K, but yeah, I think there are levels. K or go Zappiti NAS to rip or go other NAS and rip. They each come with different balances of cost and effort required to use them. I hear Zappiti can't sell the NAS in the USA any more though. It was pulled from their store for sale here.
@@Techthusiasm I didn't know until I totaled everything. I got the Audiocom edition, and 5 - 16tb drives. I bought the drives from Cruchfield. Really? I had like 600 Blu rays, so I didn't want to buy them over again made sense to get it. I would reach out to them and see. They sell there players, so I don't see why.
It's no longer in their US store. www.zappiti.us.com/store Something cracked down on them just recently and they were forced to stop selling the NAS. I think it was literally just like week or so it happened.
I used AnyDvd in the past until I ran across MakeMKV. That was perhaps 8/10yrs ago. I have 3 or 4 Ripping programs but I solely use MakeMKV now with a 95% or more success rate. When I do run into a problem I then make an ISO and that usually works. I can’t tell you the last time I wasn’t able to Rip a Bluray. You are 100% correct in making sure your DVDs are clean. I sometimes forget to check and have run across an error after Ripping only to find out I have a fingerprint on the Disc. I so far haven’t Ripped 4ks because I want those to be seen at the absolute highest quality so I pop in the Disc. Kaleidoscope is too Rich for my Blood so I digress to 4k’s! I have an i7 Pc and it usually takes Me 20-30mins to Rip a Bluray. I also have a Lg external Bluray drive and LibreDrive isn’t installed but I think the Drive is compatible. My Ripping experience is relatively pain free. I also have all my equipment connected through Ethernet from my Pc. I use my Pc as a NAS. I only go Wireless when there’s No option for Wired! Waiting for more of your Tips & Tricks!! 👴🏽
So far been using makemkv with my M1 Mac mini No errors yet. However until the zappiti neo comes into stock next week or so I won’t be able to verifying if I’ve done it correctly. I tried once turning it into a mkv file but like 3 flies showed up like u said it would…have more than one file. Now after watching I switched it to iso. It’s running now and I’ll confirm if I did it right when my zappiti player comes in. Thanks for the video. Looking forward to the next couple on this process Update: nope. Some error came up. Back to mkv for now lol
I think I had trouble with the external drive on the laptop ports. Not sure. I have a 3 part series on using MakeMKV for next week, so you can follow that and see if MKV is for you.
If you are going to use MakeMKV to rip movies here is how it is done. Steps the RIP movies using Makemkv. 1.) Insert Movie in drive Once drive starts spinning a you see drive letter launch MakeMkv 2.) Double-CLICK the drive in the middle of the screen. (You will then see a lots titles for the same movie). 3.) (Right-click) on the first title the click "un-select". This will de-select all the files/folders so you can select the one you want. Since you only want to rip the main movie select the title with the most chapters AND highest GB. This is VERY Important if you only want to rip the main movie. 4.) Once you select the main movie, hit the down-arrow next to it. It will then show you the Video and Audio formats and sub-titles. 5.) Click next to the first audio file, right-click then select "unselect all" This allows you to select the audio format and sub-titles you want to add to your movie. 6.) Once this is done on the right side of MakeMkv in the output folder, tell MakeMkv where you want to rip the movie to and in what folder 7.) Then click the green MakeMKV box to the right. This is the tried/true process I have been using the past 10 years or so. To rip to BDMV folders that has the menus etc. 1.) Insert disc into drive 2.) Once drive starts spinning a you see drive letter launch MakeMkv 3.) Click the yellow folder that is right below the view menu It will prompt you if you want to back up this disk. Make sure you select "decrypt disk option" is checked 4.) select output folder 5.) Then click the green MakeMKV box to the right. Good Luck PM
There's a bit more nuance to getting the right contents from the disc using MakeMKV, particularly for subtitles or when a disc has multiple playlists on it for the same movie. I have a 3 part MakeMKV video set going live next week and will really get into this in detail. Note, I have decided to move past ISO for media I am ripping and keeping and using MKV again.
Ripped my entire multi hundred dvd collection to iso. Currently the only blurays i rip for my media player (libreelec mini PC) are imports and rarities. Just started with 4K ripping.
Hello Jaremey, Sorry to see you are going thru all of this with ripping disks using that drive. I would consider if you bought the drive off the guy on the forums the two most reliable drives are the Asus and LG Libre UHD friendly drives. Like you I have been ripping moves since 2009 and recently started ripping all of my 4K disks. I have over 500+ DVD/Blue ray moves ripped to my WD MycloudEX4100 and have Plex media server running on my HTPC RIG I built. I started out ripping DVD's using DVD Fab version 4 back in 2009. In 2010 I downloaded MakeMKV and Handbrake then started ripping all of my BlueRay disks after upgrading my DVD drive to a BlueRay drive. Then last year after seeing TechnoDad's YT video on ripping 4K disk I took a crack at it. He has a very thorough video as same as this one. I followed his process and bought the 4k drive from the guy he recommended. I then purchased the latest version of DVDFab to go along with MakeMKV. I then saw the same issues you were having with read errors etc on the Asus drive I bought. I fixed a few on them by making sure the disk was clean etc. A lot of these issues are the drive sensitivity to the disk. I found this out by buying another copy of the same disk I was getting read errors on and it worked with the new disk. Both disk worked normal in my Oppo 203 Blue Ray player with out issue. When I decided to do ISO disk with makemkv or BDMV folders using make mkv Plex does not support those files. Since I cannot afford kaleidescape. I purchased a Zappiti Neo and It is the next best thing. It will play anything I throw at it, ISO, BDMV, 3D ISO etc. The PQ matches is same if not better than my OPPO 203. The SQ is great as well and the picture looks just like the kaleidescape wall. In your case if you are going down this road and to compliment your kaleidescape. Zappiti even has their own NAS with built-in UHD disk drive. look into the Zappiti products at Zappiti USA. www.zappiti.us.com Your video was very informative. Thanks Paul Mardis
I think the core of my issues was using an external drive on the MacBook, which inherently shouldn't have been a problem, but such is life. I'm good with doing ripping on my wife's NUC. Aside from getting the drive right, there's nothing extra special about ripping 4K vs. HD discs as long as the software decrypts them. In fact, I would say 4K are mastered "simpler" than HD discs and so doing MKVs of 4K is actually easier. Zappiti makes nice stuff for sure. I had a prior player of theirs and was mixed on it, but the new ones look great. I've evolved what I'm doing and my scope for DIY media as well since this video, so more to come on that.
Hey man do you have a video on your channel about compressing a 50gb ISO to fit into a 25gb ISO? I rip 1:1 and like to burn to BDR but 50gb BDR can be pricey and I’ve done a lot of research and even when I’ve tried it, the iso file becomes corrupted in some ways so wondering if you have covered this, new to your channel.
I compress for portability and space. The upscale on fire stick has be good enough for us. Think your overlooking used media. Being much cheaper then iTunes.
@@Techthusiasm given how you like to do things I can imagine if your ok with randomness bulk lots would work and you could cherry pick what your interested in for the kalo discounts. I been buying bulk disc for a while. That 30 sec recognizer for your kalo would get you discounts then you can just repackage and sell it back on eBay.
Just one thing to add about the cleaning of the discs: use isopropyl alcohol (70% or better). You can get a bottle at your local store for < $2, and use micro-fiber cloths. Use a vertical swiping motion up and down the disc and don't swirl around (which seems the best way but it's not). I fixed about 75% of my read problems simply by cleaning.
Will something like VLC play MKV files without any trouble with the DRM as long as I ripped the bluray files OK? Will ISO work on playback given Intel has ditched the DRM support codec?
VLC plays MKVs great. I think it has some ISO support too. The Intel support was for playing protected content. If you decrypt and rip that lack of native support shouldn't matter any more.
question, if I rip 4k UHD movies to a NAS pc with MKV- the pc nas will not perform any transcoding, simply hold the movie files - can I watch them without losing bitrate or UHD sound quality from a Nvidia Sheild Pro with PLEX on the Nvidia Shield PRO. ? Also does the NAS host pc have to have a good CPU and RAM to stream more than one 4k UHD movie at at time ?
Plex apps should know the capability of the device they are running on, and shouldn't force transcodes when none are needed. A Shield shouldn't require any transcoding for any of these formats. To just serve content, you really don't need a super strong NAS. If the NAS were transcoding, then that is where more horsepower is needed. Any of these new Synology or other brand models are generally pretty good and plenty to just share and serve content.
There’s another video here on the channel ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-SOsWJ1Fthfk.html where I looked at like 40+ movies to compare the K download size vs. the ripped movie size off disc and in many cases the K download outsized the physical release by a good amount.
You don’t have to learn terminal commands or use a CLI flasher now there’s a really easy and really good gui flasher and there’s also someone who sells an auto flasher. Flashing your UHD friendly drive isn’t as hard these days like this guy makes it seem you don’t need to buy a pre flashed drive just read the tutorial THOROUGHLY before you buy and if you’re still not sure ask the forums they will help you and they’re super quick and friendly.
I have zero Blu Ray discs. And.... wait for it, no intention of ever getting any. The DVDS I have and video CDs (lol) plus a few scattered movies and uncompleted series I have collected are the end of my collection. I have chosen to just watch it and forget it. And if I really liked it, remember it and watch it again, then forget it. Also I am not paying for any streaming service whatsoever. And here is the thing I am not pirating either, I am choosing RU-vid, as there is more junk and genius on here to keep my focus along with my real life that there is very little drive space for anything else, maybe a movie every once in a while. That's it.
Just found this video while looking around for answers to my situation - nice video presentation. Now, to actually reply to the above...I've been ripping movies from DVD and Blu Ray for close to 20 years. I've used DVDFab, AnyDVD, MakeMKV, etc. I just recently built my own NAS-style PC using a Linux OS and then put Jellyfin on it (I'm really good at building PCs) and slapped a 12TB NAS HDD in it to store my 1100+ movies. I've been using MakeMKV and Handbrake (and occasionally AnyDVD) to rip and transcode all my movies and store them into MP4 files (you actually don't lose quality when transcoding from .mkv to .mp4). Aside from 6 movies that absolutely refuse to rip, I've had great success. However, I will admit I've been doing this for close to 2 months now and am finally near the very end of this journey. I've played a few movies on TVs that have the Jellyfin app installed (in the case of 1 TV that's too old to install apps I have an Amazon Firestick installed and I put the Jellyfin app on that), and all the movies thus far have played perfectly.
I am a true novice! I have memorex DVD-R I made when the grandchildren were little. Not knowing what I was doing, I transfered them from the camcorder into BluRay, Standard, High def. No clue what I was doing. I bought a WinX DVD Copy Pro program. Then I READ no good for BluRay ripping. (no blu ray playback machine) I want now to rip them to MP2 or MP4. Have I now "lost" all the videos I made into BluRay. Have I lost you? The ones I made, originally to standard are fine.
WinX DVD is only for DVD, so it won't process Blu-rays. If you want to get content off a Blu-ray disc, check out MakeMKV. There are videos about that here on the channel. I just recently discovered that my local library actually has equipment and offers help to folks wanting to convert old home video content to newer digital files. If you're lucky, you might want to inquire as yours for some help too.
Can’t you just rip movies to your hard drive and put them onto usb flash drives and insert it into your smart tv instead of going through the trouble of servers and all this stuff?
Yeah, it's not as bad as it used to be though. It wasn't that long ago we had 6TB hard drives. Now we have 18TB, 20TB, and more coming. So you get a lot more storage today.
I don't have a lot of pleasant things to say about this video. For a high end home theatre enthusiast, I have no clue why you didn't choose the Asus BW16, which is pretty much universally accepted as the best drive. I have one and after hundreds of discs I've never experienced disc read errors and Ive never had to abort a rip. The drive is done with a bluray in 18 to 25 minutes and a UHD takes 50 minutes tops. Sell that drive and get a better one. You're ripping your hair out for no reason.
As I admitted, I’ve been out of the ripping scene for a couple of years. www.asus.com/us/Motherboards-Components/Optical-Drives/External-Blu-ray-Drive/BW-16D1X-U/ is this the drive you are suggesting? Does it work for HD and 4K Blu-ray rips out of the box without needing to change firmware?
You might also have an earlier incarnation of this drive with all of the proper support for ripping. forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24990 seems there’s maybe more to it with recent variants.
That might have been the same drive I had some time back when I using a custom built desktop PC for my computing and ripping then. Full 5.25" drives certainly are more reliable and rip data faster than externals, in my experience. That drive is available on Amazon still for $94, but I suspect buying it for ripping would require rollback firmware and such to be rip capable for HD and 4K.
I choose physical media so that I'm not a slave to the political whims of some company who decides to remove certain songs or albums or movies because they are no longer acceptable to them. We all know that certain companies like Disney have modified their movies for streaming to fit a political narrative, I like the movie as it was originally released thank you!!
