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temptor224

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 24, 2012
11
0
Hey,

So, after deciding I want to create a Media Centre to view all of my DVD's on, I researched into it and came across Plex. It seems really cool and it's all installed and set up now ready for me to import my DVD's.

Now the issue I have is getting the DVD's from the disk to the Mac!

The process I've TRIED using is
DVD rip in Ripit and then Handbrake to just get the movie file itself, as I don't want all the DVD menu's and the warnings etc.

Ripit works FINE, perfectly infact, exactly as the DVD itself does. However when I look at the verson of the movie after handbrake, EVEN though the quality is exactly the same, the colours are WASHED OUT, and are under contrasted.

why?!

Can someone also just please tell me a way of getting:

My hard copy DVD collection onto my computer/mac JUST being the main movie and with NO quality or audio loss, uncompressed if you like.

EDIT - If any help at all, I'm looking to then run this through Plex and play through a 42" tv with 5.1 surround sound in my room. So making sure it's supported in Plex is a good start!

It's doing my head in!

Thankyou.:mad:
 
Last edited:

DisMyMac

macrumors 65816
Sep 30, 2009
1,087
11
I know how popular Handbrake is, but I've had very bad luck with it.... terrible artifacts (no matter what presets or filters I use), plus it has strange limitations... at least Streamclip lets you adjust the brightness and color balance. Also, converting 4 or 8GB to maybe 1.4 GB seems like a foolish trade for the loss in quality. It made sense years ago, but not today with storage so cheap.

For ripping, I recommend MDRP or the more powerful DVDremaster. Both will let you rip only the main movie if you wish. Just make sure you select the right settings, which is easy to do.
 

temptor224

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 24, 2012
11
0
For ripping, I recommend MDRP or the more powerful DVDremaster. Both will let you rip only the main movie if you wish. Just make sure you select the right settings, which is easy to do.

I'm sure I've tried both of these and they gave me the same washed out color. Any other idea's?

Or, if it's just a problem with me, what's going on?
 

temptor224

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 24, 2012
11
0
Does anyone else have ANY other idea's?

I've been trying all day and every single ripping software I use does this!

Ripit is the ONLY thing I can find that will not create the silly color problems but I only want the main movie!

argh!
 

DisMyMac

macrumors 65816
Sep 30, 2009
1,087
11
I'm sure I've tried both of these and they gave me the same washed out color. Any other idea's?

The only big difference in rippers is how they each handle bad data blocks when extracting the tracks, which shouldn't affect colors at all. Don't confuse this with exporting, which DVDremaster is capable of doing (like Handbrake). That's where bad colors and artifacts can appear.

Check that it's not set to transcode 8GB DVDs into 4GB... discarding half your data would certainly degrade quality. Also check if there are adjustable region settings... I would assume it detects NTSC or PAL automatically, but if something is swapped then that may explain things.
 

temptor224

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 24, 2012
11
0
The only big difference in rippers is how they each handle bad data blocks when extracting the tracks, which shouldn't affect colors at all. Don't confuse this with exporting, which DVDremaster is capable of doing (like Handbrake). That's where bad colors and artifacts can appear.

Check that it's not set to transcode 8GB DVDs into 4GB... discarding half your data would certainly degrade quality. Also check if there are adjustable region settings... I would assume it detects NTSC or PAL automatically, but if something is swapped then that may explain things.

Thanks for your support.

The actual quality of the video is perfect, it's just the color problems. I read something about Mac having some sort of gamma bug with x264 or something causing this?

Solution?!
 

DisMyMac

macrumors 65816
Sep 30, 2009
1,087
11
I believe there are (or were) two gamma bugs - one of them is a real bug, and the other is a problem with settings. I really don't understand either of them unfortunately.

Try MPEGstreamclip- go to "Open DVD...", navigate to the VIDEO_TS folder, then "Export to MPEG-4...". Try different codecs. Deinterlace if needed... I think you can even extract the main feature by skipping all of that and selecting "Convert to MPEG...".

For a really inelegant solution, you can concatenate VOB segments in the Terminal (you'll need to look up UNIX commands - something like "cat VTS_01_1.VOB VTS_01_2.VOB VTS_01_3.VOB VTS_01_4.VOB > my_movie.VOB"). I don't know if that preserves subtitles or multiple audio tracks, but it works with a single video and audio track.

One tool that's essential is VideoSpec. It will tell you everything about any video file, so you'll know where you messed up if your conversion was bad.
 

fpnc

macrumors 68000
Oct 30, 2002
1,979
134
San Diego, CA
What you are likely seeing are the gamma and color space differences that exist between a TV and your computer monitor. Think of gamma as a form of contrast and/or brightness.

DVDs are created to be viewed on a TV, not a computer display and thus if you want them to look as "good" on a computer screen as they do on a TV (or vice versa) you will either have to adjust the color and gamma setting on the computer display or the TV, or adjust the ripped video.

Applications (like Apple's DVD Player) can be written to allow for this difference but when you "string" multiple applications together in a ripping/compressing sequence it's kind of hard to know exactly what will happen. Note that the same is true when you go in the opposite direction, taking a video that has been processed to be viewed on a computer display and then sending that same video to a TV which may have a completely different setup for color and gamma. Apple's ColorSync and other types of software/hardware-based color matching are supposed to take care of most of this problem but they seldom do a perfect job (i.e. your mileage may vary).

One thing that may help is to go into your System Preferences and create a custom display setting for your TV (try adjusting the gamma setting in the Displays -> Color -> Calibrate panel). In fact, you may just need to check if you are using the correct display profile for your computer's display and the TV.

In any case, note that the color space and color reproduction on a computer display will not typically match that of a TV so you're never going to get an exact match unless you color calibrate both displays and have a computer display that can accurately reproduce the color space that is used for television.
 

temptor224

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 24, 2012
11
0
What you are likely seeing are the gamma and color space differences that exist between a TV and your computer monitor. Think of gamma as a form of contrast and/or brightness.

DVDs are created to be viewed on a TV, not a computer display and thus if you want them to look as "good" on a computer screen as they do on a TV (or vice versa) you will either have to adjust the color and gamma setting on the computer display or the TV, or adjust the ripped video.

Applications (like Apple's DVD Player) can be written to allow for this difference but when you "string" multiple applications together in a ripping/compressing sequence it's kind of hard to know exactly what will happen. Note that the same is true when you go in the opposite direction, taking a video that has been processed to be viewed on a computer display and then sending that same video to a TV which may have a completely different setup for color and gamma. Apple's ColorSync and other types of software/hardware-based color matching are supposed to take care of most of this problem but they seldom do a perfect job (i.e. your mileage may vary).

One thing that may help is to go into your System Preferences and create a custom display setting for your TV (try adjusting the gamma setting in the Displays -> Color -> Calibrate panel). In fact, you may just need to check if you are using the correct display profile for your computer's display and the TV.

In any case, note that the color space and color reproduction on a computer display will not typically match that of a TV so you're never going to get an exact match unless you color calibrate both displays and have a computer display that can accurately reproduce the color space that is used for television.

Thanks for the great reply,

However,

It's not the monitor settings or anything as far as I'm aware of becuase the colour change is all on the same monitor, it's literally that ONE file that has the issue.
 

MrHyde85

macrumors member
Dec 28, 2009
38
3
UK
Providing you only will be using Plex, just use MakeMkv to rip the main movie to a Mkv file. It will also give you no loss of quality.
 

temptor224

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 24, 2012
11
0
Providing you only will be using Plex, just use MakeMkv to rip the main movie to a Mkv file. It will also give you no loss of quality.

Thanks for your input.
I've downloaded MakeMkv and I'm currently trying it, I will let you know how the results look. Thanks
 

temptor224

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 24, 2012
11
0
Providing you only will be using Plex, just use MakeMkv to rip the main movie to a Mkv file. It will also give you no loss of quality.

The video complete, and the video quality is fine. The only issue this time is the silly change in color as explained. Ripped straight from DVD, if I play it next to the dvd playing itself, on the same monitor etc, the color is washed out slightly.

Dammit!!!
 

Sedulous

macrumors 68030
Dec 10, 2002
2,530
2,577
Could just keep the DVD rip and not bother transcoding.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

blueroom

macrumors 603
Feb 15, 2009
6,381
26
Toronto, Canada
Sounds like something is wrong with the machine connected to the TV. Which Mac is it, how is it connected, what version of OSX are you running?

I use an AppleTV2 to playback movies on a TV. Black levels are fine. For $99 it's a great solution plus you can AirPlay stuff directly from iTunes.

PS you just need Handbrake & VLC. No need for RipIt.
 

2012Tony2012

macrumors 6502a
Dec 2, 2012
741
3
I tried Handbrake to rip a DVD, but the end result was a bad quality m4v video that is lesser quality than the DVD! What can I do?
 

blackmoses

macrumors member
Mar 10, 2009
33
2
I tried Handbrake to rip a DVD, but the end result was a bad quality m4v video that is lesser quality than the DVD! What can I do?

Check your settings. Using the "Apple TV 3" preset in Handbrake should create a H.264 file decently comparable to the DVD's original quality. Note that you will not get a perfect translation unless you opt to make a file too large ot warrant doing the transcode in the first place.

----------

Hey,

So, after deciding I want to create a Media Centre to view all of my DVD's on, I researched into it and came across Plex. It seems really cool and it's all installed and set up now ready for me to import my DVD's.

Now the issue I have is getting the DVD's from the disk to the Mac!

The process I've TRIED using is
DVD rip in Ripit and then Handbrake to just get the movie file itself, as I don't want all the DVD menu's and the warnings etc.

Ripit works FINE, perfectly infact, exactly as the DVD itself does. However when I look at the verson of the movie after handbrake, EVEN though the quality is exactly the same, the colours are WASHED OUT, and are under contrasted.

why?!

Can someone also just please tell me a way of getting:

My hard copy DVD collection onto my computer/mac JUST being the main movie and with NO quality or audio loss, uncompressed if you like.

EDIT - If any help at all, I'm looking to then run this through Plex and play through a 42" tv with 5.1 surround sound in my room. So making sure it's supported in Plex is a good start!

It's doing my head in!

Thankyou.:mad:

I've been using MDRP and Handbrake to do the same thing for years, and I don't have any color-gamma shift issues. Which version of OS X are you running? Maybe try using MDRP instead, or ripping directly in Handbrake.

You could choose to manually change the color profile in your final MP4/M4V file. Use Automator to create a workflow that allows you to add the HD color profile to your MP4/M4V files
 

zen

macrumors 68000
Jun 26, 2003
1,713
472
Is Mac the Ripper still around? You could extract any part of a DVD individually with that app.
 

2012Tony2012

macrumors 6502a
Dec 2, 2012
741
3
I ripped movie last night using Handbrake and preset Apple TV 3, and the video file looks great, same quality as the DVD, however, the sound is lower than original DVD and in many places it's hard to hear what they are saying on the video. Solution?
 
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