Ripping and writing Blurays. Goal: reducing your storage footprint.

[Santilli]

Hi
I'm wondering how people are reducing their Bluray disks for storage?

One of the reasons here is the price differential for 25 gig vs. 50 gig Bluray disks.

A lot of movies are under 25 Gigs, but, with all the bundled previews they come in at 40 gigs, or more.

So: What software have you used to pretty much do the same things Ripit4me, DVDShrink, and DVD Decrypter
did with DVDs?

Another question would be how to take a 45 gig iso disk and reduce it's foot print, then save it, either still as an iso, another iso, or on a hard drive.

Software that has been suggested in decreasing order:

Imgburn
DVDFAB
VSO Dyeso?
LEOW
Aisee Soft
UM player
ADS software

Part of this came about when my neighbor asked my advice on how to burn an Iso to image.
He said Imgburn worked, and the movie played.

Currently I'm using AnyDVD to add my own menu, and not be forced to watch previews, mounted in
Virtual Clone Drive, and played with PowerDVD 10, as long as I don't use update, and check the web for information.

I would also need a Blu-ray writer. Suggestions for one that keeps up with their firmware updates, and the changes in Blu-ray?

Thoughts? Experience? Ideas?

 

[Stereodude]

Need more details on what you plan to do with them.

So you plan to burn them to BD-R and watch them on a stand alone player? Or watch discs from a HTPC?
Are you willing to re-compress them to make them smaller?
Do you care about special features or would you be okay with just the movie?
Do you care about the lossless audio tracks?
How much time are you willing to spend per movie?

 

[MaxBurn]

I don't rip as much as I used to but when I did I just did AnyDVD HD to file mode and that's it. I don't do any down scaling or removing stuff, my network player can read all that and sometimes I want to see it, especially extras.

 

[Santilli]

SD:

I was really wondering what others are using, and how they are doing it. To answer your questions:

So you plan to burn them to BD-R and watch them on a stand alone player? Or watch discs from a HTPC?
My neighbor does the above. Since my girlfriend is taking care of a terminal cancer patient, I watch most of the movies on my home PC, and so does she when she comes over.
He likes to burn movies, and the exchange. It's expensive, but he's kind of rich, so he's giving me disks. I gave him an iso, but right now the gig limit on my mobile hard drive is 40 gigs,
just small enough to stop a lot of isos from being able to copy to the drive. I was thinking I might rip the isos, and reduce the size a bit, so I can give him the movie as an iso he can watch.

Are you willing to re-compress them to make them smaller?

I'd rather have non-compressed video and audio.

Do you care about special features or would you be okay with just the movie?

If I can get the movie under 37 gigs I'm gold. So getting rid of the special features, previews, etc. would be great.

Do you care about the lossless audio tracks?

Yes. I like good audio.

How much time are you willing to spend per movie?

With this economy, time is something I have a bit more of then I would like. Can't give you an exact figure.

As an off shoot of this:

A way to video edit certain movies, mainly porn, to keep just my favorite scenes???
;-)

Maxburn:

I rip using AnyDVD as well. I use their startup menu to get right to the movie. It would be neat to be able to delete previews. Perhaps their feature to delete scenes under a certain length of time?
Haven't used that feature. I was wondering if anyon had, and how it worked for them.

 

[ddrueding]

I can't help with most of the above, as that isn't how I do it. I just use MakeMKV to rip Bluerays to networked hard drive, I only preserve the main movie, highest quality audio, and any forced subtitles. Playback via Media Player Classic Homecinema.

 

[Santilli]

Thanks. Downloading MakeMKV right now.

Has anyone tried PowerIso, or IsoBuster?

MakeMKV works better then AnyDVD?

 

[Stereodude]

SD:

I was really wondering what others are using, and how they are doing it. To answer your questions:

So you plan to burn them to BD-R and watch them on a stand alone player? Or watch discs from a HTPC?
My neighbor does the above. Since my girlfriend is taking care of a terminal cancer patient, I watch most of the movies on my home PC, and so does she when she comes over.
He likes to burn movies, and the exchange. It's expensive, but he's kind of rich, so he's giving me disks. I gave him an iso, but right now the gig limit on my mobile hard drive is 40 gigs,
just small enough to stop a lot of isos from being able to copy to the drive. I was thinking I might rip the isos, and reduce the size a bit, so I can give him the movie as an iso he can watch.

Are you willing to re-compress them to make them smaller?

I'd rather have non-compressed video and audio.

Do you care about special features or would you be okay with just the movie?

If I can get the movie under 37 gigs I'm gold. So getting rid of the special features, previews, etc. would be great.

Do you care about the lossless audio tracks?

Yes. I like good audio.

How much time are you willing to spend per movie?

With this economy, time is something I have a bit more of then I would like. Can't give you an exact figure.

As an off shoot of this:

A way to video edit certain movies, mainly porn, to keep just my favorite scenes???
;-)

Maxburn:

I rip using AnyDVD as well. I use their startup menu to get right to the movie. It would be neat to be able to delete previews. Perhaps their feature to delete scenes under a certain length of time?
Haven't used that feature. I was wondering if anyon had, and how it worked for them.

AnyDVD HD + ClownBD is probably your best bet if you want to keep something that's still a Blu-Ray and have the process be highly automated. This spits out a "movie only" disc with no menu and only the audio tracks and subtitles you choose. There's still no guarantee that a "movie only" disc will always be under 40gig, but it's pretty likely.

If you want to keep menus and control which previews and extras stay or go AnyDVD HD + ClownBD Copier is a good choice, but it's not as automated and is more involved from a picking what stays and goes standpoint.

Or, you could do something crazy like get a 64GB USB flash drive and not worry about it.

BTW, you can reduce the size of a Blu-Ray significantly and have no perceptible loss in picture quality (if done correctly). But it's not a fast process or remotely automated.

 

[Santilli]

ClownBD?
Haven't been able to find a copy, or a location.
Comments seem to be that it's perfect for getting just the movie and menus, and, it was designed for external players. Not exactly what I had in mind, but might work.

 

[Stereodude]

ClownBD?
Haven't been able to find a copy, or a location.

Uh... You can't be serious...

 

[Santilli]

Thank you.

We'll see how this goes.

I tend to like MKV so far, and ANYDVD HD.

 

[Mercutio]

I copy the whole BD structure on a machine using AnyDVD HD and feed the output folders to Handbrake. Handbrake supports fully preserving soundtracks and can operate in batch mode through the GUI or from a command line. My output from a typical BD is between 3.5 and 15GB, depending on my personal interest in fully preserving video quality. It takes me perhaps 10 minutes to set up eight encodes across the three machines I run them on. I usually start them in the morning before I go to work.

I prefer to use .mkv as a container format rather than .m4v because .mkv can roll up subtitles in the container without burning them in to the video or requiring a separate file. .mkv is less convenient if your playback device is a game console or Apple device since the format is not directly supported. You can obviate that issue with a transcoding DLNA server if necessary.

I do not worry about capturing menus or disc extras. If I care enough about the extras, I bought the movie and still have the disc that I can use to watch those things.