I always enjoy seeing how others handle their library. My preference is to not transcode. I keep the original video and audio files, and simply wrap them in an mkv container. Of course this method takes more hard drive space, but you get full quality playback. For devices that can't handle a given codec my server will transcode on the fly. Of course your method does allow for a much larger library per terabyte. There is no right or wrong answer, and seeing how others handle their setup is always super interesting.
@@yannisgk I used to keep everything as iso files as well, but when I went with a full on Emby server a couple of years ago I had to convert everything. Emby won't play from an iso container. It wasn't a big deal to convert though since all I ever kept was the movie itself, no menus, no extras. With everything already on the server the container conversion was trivia.
Total newbie here looking to get into this. Your method sounds like what I would prefer as well. May I ask what server model you're using to transcode on the fly? Can you also point me in the direction of learning how to wrap the original files into an mkv container? Thanks in advance!
@@ryanw8664 the program I use rip my movies is called Makemkv. My server is not an off the shelf model. I built it myself. It runs an operating system called Unraid, and I use Emby, which is similar to Plex, to host my movie collection. If you want go down this rabbit hole it is very rewarding, but it is a lot of hard work. I wish you luck.
I would like to take this opportunity to remind people that especially with the Way digital media is able to be modified changed and or removed from content libraries even after you have purchased said digital media as the most recent debacle with Sony has shown, in addition to the fact that many if not all video game companies that distribute their content digitally shut down stores and remove the ability of people to play games that they have purchased on a semi regular basis that piracy has ceased to become an ethical gray area and has instead become a moral good. If you want to give the creators of the content you enjoy money by all means purchase their Wares but understand that you should also be compiling backups on your own Hardware of literally everything
I usually do the Windows PC to Make MKV to Handbrake route for ripping, but I’m used to all the hoops to jump thru since I’ve done this for years, but will give that software a try. I usually don’t trust those types of software companies but seeing your experience is a good reference. Thanks.
Thank you!! This was a really great video. I want to be able to rip movies and tv shows in order to watch them on plex, but I'm finding the hardest part is a good piece of software to help me do the job. I've looked at the software your using and it looks very good, and it's also inexpensive. Thank you again for the walk through on this. I've saved your video to one of my play lists so I can refer back to it. Good job!! All the best - Neil (UK)
Awesome video. I’m saving this for later. I just started building my unraid nas. We have about 500 or more of BluRays. So it’ll be easy to navigate a menu and pick what we want. Also for DvDs I use DVD Shrink. Works great and it’s been around for 20 years or so.
I've only ever tried ripping a DVD once. I used Handbrake because it was free and came highly recommended. I expected I might have issues, like the video quality not coming out that good, and I was prepared for that. To my surprise, the video looked fine. What wasn't fine though was the audio sync. It started out fine, but was off by about a minute by the end of the movie. I still have no idea what went wrong with a process that's supposedly pretty much automatic. As for MP4 vs. MKV: While MP4 is more compatible, MKV does have advantages, such as being able to contain multiple audio streams, and to include "soft" subtitles. Most Blu-Ray players will play MKV files from a disc or a USB flash drive, however I haven't seen one yet that will let you use a separate subtitle file. However, they will usually play the subs in an MKV file. Another plus is that you can add and remove audio, video, and subtitle tracks from an MKV file without needing to re-encode any of it.
MP4 now can have most of those features, the newest version of this software gives you these options. I just updated, but I am not opposed to MKV its great it just depends on how and where you will play these files. Thanks for watching!
Excellent intro and very well said. I personally like doing mine in MKV for one reason and one reason only. I can directly put in chapters in the container for each of my movies or TV shows and plex handles them wonderfully. That is a very big plus for me. With mp4 container you cannot do that. You have to have an external file. Any whooo.. cheers!
@@Mrshoujo by specs the mp4 container does not officially support chapter markers and most players don't support chapter markers from mp4 container. For example vlc support chapter markers embedded in the container. Even powerdvd but windows media player does not. The main issues is player the support. Can you put chapter markers in a mp4 container? sure... it is a container. You can used apps likes drax, chaptermaker, handbreak, or even FFMPEG etc. But all those are re-encoding the actually video file you have and insert that external chapter marker file differently. For example FFMPEG will write the chapter info right into the stream, YMMWV when it comes to playback. At the end of the day it is based on what you want. I don't much care for things that are un-supported. Makes this very difficult for playback. Plus, I don't like re-encoding my rips. Lastly, in all my years of ripping (30 years and counting), I have never come across any mp4 that had embedded chapter markers straight of a DVD or blu-ray. it was always a separate file that gets reference by a MPLS file. On DVD is it the ifo file. If you don't mind sharing how you came across those mp4 files with chapter markers? Just because I have not seen it doesn't mean it doesn't exist and I am always up for learning new things. Cheers! and sorry for such a long post :)
With high-speed internet and cheap SSDs widely available, I'd argue DVDs (and to a lesser degree Blu-rays) shouldn't be backed-up or distributed online as .MP4s, but as .ISO rips containing the _entire_ disc. Maybe we can even get a nice app or Linux distro that lets you browse your digital collection by the box art, similar to browsing a rental store inthe early 2000s, which "plays" the .ISO for a complete viewing experience. Add optional scanline emulation and the ability to view DVD booklet scans before launching the .ISO and you've got the best of *all* worlds.
Well considering that Matryoshka files which is the name of the file with the extension MKV are just an AVI or MP4 packed inside of a container with the potential for multiple subtitle files or multiple audio files to be included in it there's no reason to use a Matryoshka unless you intend to have multiple audio or subtitle files included . So that's great advice if you're just going to be watching movies in your native language and don't need a subtitle to go with it but I would recommend if you are talking about Japanese anime or foreign language films with subtitles and potentially the original audio as well as an English dub to instead go MKV in order to make use of those additional features especially if the media server you using is Plex as it handles those file formats natively
I don't find most movies to be worthy of buying in 2K Blu-ray so good movies in DVD, great movies in Blu-ray and only the greatest movies get to avoid a lot of compression. Thanks for watching!
@@GTKTheater heh, that was my initial plan. BD ISO for favorite/great movies, and 720p for the rest. then a 43’’ tv happened and BD ISOs can go up to 100gb per (lets say 40 is the median), so i went with 1080p encodes for movies and 720p for TV shows (favs get 1080p treatment, tho). then a 65’’ TV happened and almost everything 720p became meh. then HEVC happened, replaced a tonne of x264s with HEVC and then i realized anything lowlight or grainy just looks better in x264. so then i replaced almost all HEVC with x264s. that i deleted prior. lol. now… i dont care. 700gb for a 14 season series? so be it. and im no fancy hoity toity quality snob. i… i… i just get heebie jeebies when i see a sheet of blocks and pixels in lowlight scenes, i… i… i just cant so it. i dont care about sharpness and whatnot, i… i… i need help. hahaha. im just hoarding at this point. ill never watch ‘em, but hey. if. i. wanted. to… anyways, my name is tony and im an addict.
It depends on what you want to spend, if you just get a cheap $30 drive it may work well but if you want something solid get a good brand like Asus or LG, just look at the price and the rating and be sure to test 10-20 DVDs as soon as you get it, if it works great with them than you should be good to go, if not return it and try different one. I have an Asus drive and it works great! Thanks for the question!
Good information thank you. I use the .mkv format because I'm lazy, I don't to copy very many of our movies onto the computer, and I only play movies back on either a PC desktop or laptop machine and VLC Media player works with .mkv. If I were ever to get serious about copying over many movies and doing more with home theater I'd do it they way you do.
There is nothing wrong with keeping them as MKV its awesome, I only pick MP4 because I use different devices and don't want to have to convert them in those situations. Thanks for Watching!
@@GTKTheater Yup, you've got a great process. I started out planning on converting everything to MP4, but looking at all the settings on the software I was using I decided just to leave them as mkv files. Copying some DVD/Bluray discs sure is more complex than you think it would be :) I'm glad you took the time to put this video together.
I would say as an mkv user for years it is much easier to use then this u put disc in pick language and hit start. Then encode with handbrake where u pick codex pick same as disc and hit start. Much easier then this
"... to avoid a lot of frustration, I recommend investing around $50 in a software ..." This one sentence is the best and most important piece of advice in the video. Probably at least 95% of all the frustrations people have with things like this comes from free garbageware. Including the free garbageware built into Windows. It's worth paying to avoid all the hidden costs in "free" garbage.
This if the point of the video, handbrake is not as user friendly, download Leawo Blu-ray ripper free trial and see if it works, if it does than this is just another reason to move away from handbrake. Thanks for watching
1. Try an older version of Handbrake. 2. Do you have a concurrently running disc decryptor removing copy protection? 3. For Source, I would drag the VIDEO_TS folder on a DVD into Handbrake & had no problems... but then I also had the mysterious decryptor running. Take it for what it's worth!
Hi! Very interesting video. Can you advice on the audio bit rate? From the screen shown, it seems you use as default 192. Do you also customise for movies and tv shows? If so, what do you recommend? Thanks!
Audio takes up such little space compared to the video so no, I just leave it at 192 everything sounds great. If I want to just take a movie to limit I pop in the Blu-ray so nothing is compressed. Thanks for watching!
For surround, just use 448kbps or 640kbps AC3 5.1. Good enough quality you won't tell a difference from the original. Stereo or mono audio use either 192kbps or 224kbps. Stay with AC3 for compatibility. If you're using these on a phone or mobile device, use the VLC app works just fine with AC3 audio.
@@WarTheory MakeMKV will rip the disc, then I reimport it into BD Rebuilder to make a compressed copy either onto a 25gb BD-R or an .mkv file stored on my NAS.
If your Mac is newer and doesn't have an internal DVD drive you just need to get an external Blu-ray drive and the software. That's all you need... As long as you computer can play the movie it will be able to rip the movie. Thanks for watching!
i own 800+ DVDs, and i am trying to get the best resolution out of them, but the resolution is only 720x576 (PAL) for a standard DVD making them 576p is doable, however, upscaling them to 720p or 1080p is impossible, as it takes more than a day to code one DVD maybe it will go faster if you have a high end graphics card, but thats too expensive for me
The system, software, and graphics care could make a difference, I enjoy them in their native resolution unless it its a classic. Then I will pay for a Blu-ray version to have at the higher resolution. Thanks for the comment!
You can upscale to FullHD or higher later when video enhancer Software and you're PCs gets more powerfull/faster. Important today: Take care correct aspect ratio 16:9 or 4:3 and don't waste pixels! You can encode a 720x576 - 16:9 DVD to 1024 x 576 or 1280 x 720. For a 4:3 720x576 DVD choose 768 x 576 or 960 x 720
Hey there, this is interesting but my question is how could someone do the opposite ? Make a physical copy of a digitally bought movie ? So many series don’t have a DVD release anyway. (Asking for a friend)
Technically you could but there would be video and sound quality issues not to mention possible legal issues be cause you never own rights to the show or movie just the media such as a DVD. In my opinion you would not have rights to a local copy so it would not be legal to have a digital copy. This is the problem with the direction we are going with streaming services and digital content. You have no control and until we all have 50GB internet you will always be watching your favorite movies compressed when streaming them... Thanks for watching!
hey man thank you for your videos they are helping me so much with my own personal home theater build, I was wondering if you knew if it were possible to rip 4k UHD discs the same way?
According to Leawo Rip Blu-ray to HD 4K MP4, 4K MKV, 1080P or 720P video. I would assume if you have a Ultra 4k drive in your computer then you should be able to rip them... Thanks for watching!
AAC is a lossless audio format in comparison to AC3. AAC produces better audio quality even at low bitrates. AAC provides an excellent way for 400 kbps output for 5.1 audio channels and 180 kbps for stereo.
I think you're better off buying a few of those 336-disc Case Logic binders and copying stuff onto BD-R. 25GB discs are incredibly cheap and you maintain better quality vs a compressed copy streamed over Plex. Plus you don't have to maintain a home data center and all the electricity/energy costs that go with it, replacing drives when they fail, corrupted data, tagging everything, etc.
Is there any issues with the particular blu ray player and firmware that would prevent ripping blu ray discs? I’ve been reading some stuff about firmware updates that prevent digitizing your movies, but I’m just now starting to really research it a bit more. Does the mp4 format avoid these issues?
I have a very large collection of Blu-ray discs and am looking for a good way to transcode, so far I have hit a roadblock due to the copy protections on these, I just want to make a good digital back of the discs for my own purposes... what software have you had success with for this?
Be sure to subscribe I am going to cover all this and more in the coming days and months. Leawo Blu-ray Ripper Software is what I use most at the moment.
How does this method handle damaged disks? Makemkv will just fail a rip of the file if part is damaged, where a blu ray player would skip over the damaged (maybe with a second or two of screen junk).
Honestly I change computers all the time, you just want to be sure you have something that is powerful. I recommend an Intel i7 processor and lots of RAM. But most importantly a quality blu-ray drive internal or external. More to come on the subject soon. Thanks for the comment!
You mention DVD and Bluray but you don't mention a very popular format that had more than 30.000 titles and lasted 30 years. I'm referring to Laserdisc or laser video disc player used from 1978 thru 2009. Your suggestions are good for this wonderful format?
I backed up some of my movies on a hard drive and i keep getting a small skip through out the movie. For Blu-ray’s I’m doing 4gb I also tried 8gb but I keep getting the same skip. Why does this happen?
This depends on what you select, if you want to keep all the content from the disk together like the original DVD you need to learn how to create and use an ISO file. Thanks for watching!
Yes, if you have the newest version, I don't show it in the video but in the new version you can keep the chapters even if you convert to MP4 or MKV. Thanks for the question!
Stay tunned, I getting ready release reviews of a number of different ripping software, I think Leawo Blu-ray Ripper, is one of the easiest and best but more to come on the subject so be sure to subscribe.
I want an exact copy of my blue-ray including the menu and all the extras. I haven’t been able to replicate it when I rip my Blu-ray using MKV. I did manage to get Menu on one of my anime DVD movies with English,Spanish, Japanese Audio & subtitles using HandBreak. But my HandBreak doesn’t read Blu-Ray and MKV just has them as episodes no menu or special features. I have to exit and look for second episode instead of just hitting the menu like the DVD ripp or having it on regular blue-ray player. Is there a way to have an exact copy of blue-ray menus with episodes and extra features. I don’t mind the storage space it’ll take.
I would guess that you need to consider making your Blu-rays into ISO files, this keeps everything just like it was on the disc. Look up how to convert Blu-ray to an ISO. Thanks for watching!
The biggest question for me is: Why is it that a DVD player will play a video even if it is corrupted but computer players will not? I wouldn't mind being able to copy the bits that will play on a DVD player, from home videos warts and all, but can not successfully get anything at all on a PC! Is this only a Windows problem? Or is this common across different OS players/converters?
@@GTKTheater Thank you for your answer. Are there any pc drives manufactured to be more tolerant? Or is it possible to hook a pc somehow to any 'standalone' players and read/transfer the data?
You could use a screen capture software such as OBS but the quality will go down, but it would work to copy from a regular DVD player. Sorry it that starts to get a little too tech...
Well the video title should have been : "How to make a low quality copy of your physical media". As you said, there are meny ways to do that but the real challenge is how to do this and end up with a copy identical to the original.
I will show this in my next video but to make a 50GB copy of your Blu-ray I don't think is very realistic. But thanks for watching and for the comment!
DumboFab Blu-ray Ripper is an easy-to-use yet professional Blu-ray ripping and copying program. It is skilled in removing copy protections and making discs region free. With it, you can easily extract the content out of a Blu-ray (DVD) and save it in popular video format such as MP4, AVI, WMV, MOV, etc which is readable by external hard drive HDD, SSD, NAS, USB, thumb drive, and the like. You can also make 1:1 Blu-ray copy to BDMV folder/M2TS/MKV losslessly and keep 100% original videos/audios/subtitles within only 5 mins.
If your computer can play it should be able to copy it with this software... BD25/BD50/BD66/BD100 disc, folder (in BDMV and BDAV), and ISO image file "DVD-5/DVD-9 disc", folder (DVD Video only), and ISO image file Multi-angle Blu-ray/DVD disc and files. Thanks for watching!
I used the same software and copy my UHD Blueray 4k exactly how they are on UHD Blueray . I want same quantity as UHD. I play it back on Zidoo Z2000 pro . Once I buy the UHD Blueray 4k ripped it, and never used the Blueray again 🤔 I have invested in an expensive Audio video system and I want to watch ans hear the movie at its highest quality. So I have an Nas that's 88 Terabytes and I've only used 18 so far. I have 425 UHD Blueray ripped, 300 Bluerays ripped, 100 in 3d.
Piracy is a funny word made up by people who don't own something, but want to force you to pay for it. Lets examine this topic a bit. No one owns words, sounds numbers or the air we breath. It would be illogical for your neighbor to say that he owns all the air that is on his land and then demands you pay to breath "HIS AIR" when it floats over your home. Same with words, sounds and numbers. No One owns them, they are community property. Someone can own the container they are stored in, but nothing beyond that. More specifically, I can own a movie or music DISK because it is real and physical, but the movie and music itself is nothing more than binary code, 1's and 0's. Further, music is words and sounds. Who owns words and sounds? NO ONE, they are community property. It does not matter what order someone puts those words in and what sounds they make with them. No one owns words, sounds or numbers. Of course you can choose to pay someone for something that they do not own if you want to. I do purchase music sometimes because I want to support the artist (Tom MacDonald is one), but no one is under any moral obligation to do so. It is not stealing if the item does not exist in the physical realm or if it is community property. On one final note. When I buy a movie, I make NO agreement to use MY movie in any particular way. That is MY movie, because I traded part of MY life (In the form of money) and I am under NO moral obligation to use it according to someone elses rules. Movie studios can KMA. In closing, no one cares if you choose to use the term "Piracy" and by extension legitimize the coercion that movie studios attempt to use on the public. It is not a moral dilemma either way. Cheers and good day.
I guess as an IT professional I value simple solutions that I can manage and keep backed up but if you have the space and don't mind keeping up with a monster, more power to ya. Thanks for watching, much more to come soon...
This is still a thing? Cool! I used to rip them many years ago. I haven't had an optical drive in more than7 years, though. Actually, that is technically not true- I have a laptop drive scavenged from a dead computer in a box somewhere that may work if I put it in an external enclosure. I'll pass for now.