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pedz

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 2, 2007
188
15
Before I got a Blu Ray drive I would always tell people how good movies looked on the ATV from ripping the DVD with Handbrake. But now that I have started ripping my Blu Ray disks the DVD rips look pretty bad. To be fair they are still perfectly usable, but wide shots are often muttled and it is just night and day from the Blu Rays. I always thought I might get a few key action movies in Blu Ray that I already had on DVD, but now I want to upgrade them all (though I won't, for many movies I can live with it).

Just a random thought I wanted to throw out there.
Peter
 

rayward

macrumors 68000
Mar 13, 2007
1,697
88
Houston, TX
+1

But this is true of regular TV too. I rarely watching anything that's not on an HD channel anymore. It hurts my eyes. How quickly we get used to something new.
 

pedz

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 2, 2007
188
15
same here with tv. on my fios box i only show hd channels in my guide. my wife thinks i am nuts but i don't watch sd tv anymore.
 

GreatDrok

macrumors 6502a
May 1, 2006
561
22
New Zealand
Before I got a Blu Ray drive I would always tell people how good movies looked on the ATV from ripping the DVD with Handbrake. But now that I have started ripping my Blu Ray disks the DVD rips look pretty bad. To be fair they are still perfectly usable, but wide shots are often muttled and it is just night and day from the Blu Rays. I always thought I might get a few key action movies in Blu Ray that I already had on DVD, but now I want to upgrade them all (though I won't, for many movies I can live with it).

Just a random thought I wanted to throw out there.
Peter

Get your TV calibrated. I have a 100" HD screen and while Blu-ray definitely looks much better, SD material at a high enough bit rate (1.5 Mbps H.264) is quite watchable. Often sets have their contrast too high or even enhancements like sharpness on all of which can make SD look poor but a proper calibration will make the image look clearer and more natural.
 

pedz

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 2, 2007
188
15
TV is calibrated fine. I wasn't suggesting dvd's are unwatchable, just that they don't look as good as they used to now that I have Blu Rays. As you said, they are 'watchable'. I actually think DVDs look better than watchable from the right sitting distance. It was just an observation, it is not a problem per se.
 

philipk

macrumors 6502
Jun 11, 2008
438
190
I hear you.

I received my Blu-Ray drive on Wednesday and have ripped four movies in 720p.

I am amazed at the quality than I am getting in a 3 to 4 gig file.

On my 24" iMac, I can see the difference between 1080p MKV file and 720p iTunes file.

However, on my 46" Sony LCD at my chair (about 7 feet) I can tell very slight differences between the 1080p from the PS3 and 720p from ATV2. Those differences are so little that I will probably use the ATV2 stream instead of the Blu-Ray disc when I watch the movies.

I am shocked at how good the rips look.

I like the almost instant on; no copyright warnings; no trailers; the fast forward always works; etc. with streaming.
 

philipk

macrumors 6502
Jun 11, 2008
438
190
how are you ripping these? just curious

OSX

MakeMKV
Strip everything but main title and one DTS or AC3 audio track.

Handbrake (nightly build)

Custom profile based on High Profile with the following changes
Large file checked
RF = 20
NTSC 29.97 with Peak Framerate Box checked
First Audio DTS or Dolby Digital converted to Dolby Digital Pro Logic (Stereo for Computer)
Second Audio DTS or Dolby Digital converted to AC3 (Discrete 6 Channel)

Picture settings
1280 width
Anamorphic NONE
Filters, NONE

This is not my recipe as I read it in another thread. It works well for me.

Good luck!
 

ActionableMango

macrumors G3
Sep 21, 2010
9,612
6,907
NTSC 29.97 with Peak Framerate Box checked

That works well? I thought blu-rays were generally 1080p/24 or 1080i/60 FPS. I suppose 1080i/60 would convert nicely via deinterlacing to 1080p/30 (29.97), but what happens to 24FPS content like most movies?
 

newagemac

macrumors 68020
Mar 31, 2010
2,091
23
That works well? I thought blu-rays were generally 1080p/24 or 1080i/60 FPS. I suppose 1080i/60 would convert nicely via deinterlacing to 1080p/30 (29.97), but what happens to 24FPS content like most movies?

That setting in Handbrake does not mean what you think it means. It means it will encode using whatever the original is but it won't allow higher than 29.97. So therefore 24fps will be encoded in 24fps.
 

philipk

macrumors 6502
Jun 11, 2008
438
190
That setting in Handbrake does not mean what you think it means. It means it will encode using whatever the original is but it won't allow higher than 29.97. So therefore 24fps will be encoded in 24fps.

Exactly!
 

superericla

macrumors 6502
Sep 27, 2010
301
0
You could probably go down to rf 21 or 22 to get very similar quality with a much smaller file size. :p

Edit: You could also change some advanced settings to reduce filesize/raise quality further at a speed cost. You would also need to make sure the new settings would be compatible with whatever device they are being played on. I recommend browsing the handbrake forum for more info if you're interested.
 
Last edited:

pedz

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 2, 2007
188
15
I agree with superericla, I use 21 and the results are perfect. Even considering dropping to 22. 21 saves some space, it adds up over time and the quality is great.
 

Murl

macrumors member
Oct 30, 2010
62
0
I am getting ready to buy a new MacBook air and I am very interested in picking up an external hdd to rip blurays too. I plan to buy my wife an apple tv for Xmas to watch netflix. Which leads me to my questions.

1. Will there be a problem ripping them with the new macbok air 2.13ghz 4gb ram.

2. Will there be a problem streaming them from a network drive to atv?

3. I am more of an audiophile than videophile, I only have a 720P tv, is there a way to rip it and keep the lossless audio codec, dts HD master Dolby truehd etc?

4. How much space would something like this take up?

Thanks!
 

pedz

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 2, 2007
188
15
I am getting ready to buy a new MacBook air and I am very interested in picking up an external hdd to rip blurays too. I plan to buy my wife an apple tv for Xmas to watch netflix. Which leads me to my questions.

1. Will there be a problem ripping them with the new macbok air 2.13ghz 4gb ram.

2. Will there be a problem streaming them from a network drive to atv?

3. I am more of an audiophile than videophile, I only have a 720P tv, is there a way to rip it and keep the lossless audio codec, dts HD master Dolby truehd etc?

4. How much space would something like this take up?

Thanks!

Assuming you can connect a blu Ray drive to it you should be able to rip it on the Mac. I don't know much about connecting blu Ray drives to it though.

I stream from a network drive without a problem. To do so you need to have iTunes running with the network drive content in the iTunes library on the running computer, the atv needs to connect to iTunes to stream.

I believe atv only supports ac3 surround. I can say it sounds excellent on my system, but I am not an audiophile.

My blu Ray rips take up 2.5-5 gigs each, with really long movies taking a bit more.

Peter
 

philipk

macrumors 6502
Jun 11, 2008
438
190
I agree with superericla, I use 21 and the results are perfect. Even considering dropping to 22. 21 saves some space, it adds up over time and the quality is great.

I did my last two rips with 21 and I like the results.

Thanks!
 

emaja

macrumors 68000
May 3, 2005
1,706
11
Chicago, IL
I have that same drive but for some reason it's not reading my Avatar Blu Ray. Have you had any problems with it reading discs? Is there possibly a firmware update or something available for it? If not, I'm pretty disappointed and wouldn't recommend it.

That's my drive too and I haven't had any problems yet. I don't have Avatar, so maybe it is something with that movie and not the drive.
 
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