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Cave Man

macrumors 604
Original poster
It requires AnyDVD HD. Some have reported success with Parallels and Fusion, but I couldn't get it to work with either. I use Boot Camp with Sony's SATA Blu-ray ROM drive retail package in an external USB2 enclosure. It works with about half the Blu-ray discs that I've tried.
 

hitekalex

macrumors 68000
Feb 4, 2008
1,624
0
Chicago, USA
Sweet! I'll attempt to use the PS3 w/ Ubuntu to generate an ISO using dd.

Let us know that that goes! I have a PS3, which I only use for Blu-ray playback.. Haven't played with Ubuntu or anything else.

How difficult of a process is it to make an ISO image on PS3 and transfer it onto a PC/Mac? Would love to save the hassle of buying a BR-ROM drive.
 

northy124

macrumors 68020
Nov 18, 2007
2,293
8
Cave Man your updated guide is much better to understand (From my point of view) than your old one with VH (Maybe I just didn't get VH:confused:)

Well what ever it was your guide is great :D
 

heyp

macrumors 6502
Jan 29, 2008
312
0
Let us know that that goes! I have a PS3, which I only use for Blu-ray playback.. Haven't played with Ubuntu or anything else.

How difficult of a process is it to make an ISO image on PS3 and transfer it onto a PC/Mac? Would love to save the hassle of buying a BR-ROM drive.

i'm wondering the same... it sounds like making the iso image isn't too difficult, but you would have to put it on an external drive since the ps3 internal drive is fat32 formatted... then i think you'd have to hook the external drive with the blu ray iso up to your mac running windows and decrypt it using anydvd... then take the external drive with the decrypted blu ray iso back to the ps3 for playback as i don't think streaming would work very well... i could be very wrong about this
 

mmccaskill

macrumors 6502
Jan 3, 2007
349
0
i'm wondering the same... it sounds like making the iso image isn't too difficult, but you would have to put it on an external drive since the ps3 internal drive is fat32 formatted... then i think you'd have to hook the external drive with the blu ray iso up to your mac running windows and decrypt it using anydvd... then take the external drive with the decrypted blu ray iso back to the ps3 for playback as i don't think streaming would work very well... i could be very wrong about this

I plan on sending it directly to my Mac Pro through the gigabit network. I'm expecting some Blu-ray discs today from Netflix.
 

NightStorm

macrumors 68000
Jan 26, 2006
1,860
66
Whitehouse, OH
For the most part, the info provided here is pretty good; thanks Cave Man for posting and updating this thread. That said, I would still recommend using CQ @ 55-59% rather than ABR @ 6000. It is also important to note that setting the width to 1280 may not work for all sources (if output FPS > 24, or 25 depending on who you ask, the AppleTV will not accept the file).

I use the new AppleTV preset and lower the CQ to 55-57 for my HD encodes.
 

rWally

macrumors regular
Sep 17, 2006
165
0
Denver, CO
It requires AnyDVD HD. Some have reported success with Parallels and Fusion, but I couldn't get it to work with either. I use Boot Camp with Sony's SATA Blu-ray ROM drive retail package in an external USB2 enclosure. It works with about half the Blu-ray discs that I've tried.

Why does it only work with half your Blu-ray discs? DRM? Not sure if I want to go through the trouble of buying all this stuff if it will only work with half my blu-rays.
 

NightStorm

macrumors 68000
Jan 26, 2006
1,860
66
Whitehouse, OH
Why does it only work with half your Blu-ray discs? DRM? Not sure if I want to go through the trouble of buying all this stuff if it will only work with half my blu-rays.

Well, AnyDVD HD has not been updated to deal with the recent upgrade to BD+... this makes it incompatible with some of the new discs out there (both "X-Files" movies immediately to mind, as I have them). The company hopes to have an update out by February 2009.

EDIT: They have a list of movies that are currently imcompatible with AnyDVD HD available at: http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=21985
 

Cave Man

macrumors 604
Original poster
I would still recommend using CQ @ 55-59% rather than ABR @ 6000.

When I tried that a few weeks ago the result was major video blocking that was unacceptable. Unless there's something else to set, that does not work for me.

It is also important to note that setting the width to 1280 may not work for all sources (if output FPS > 24, or 25 depending on who you ask, the AppleTV will not accept the file).

I'm pretty sure that for Blu-ray it is 24 fps, thus using the default setting in HB (i.e., whatever the source is) you should get compatible files. All of mine that have been successfully transcoded by HB have sync'd and played on my Apple TV.

Why does it only work with half your Blu-ray discs? DRM? Not sure if I want to go through the trouble of buying all this stuff if it will only work with half my blu-rays.

I suspect the problem are the DTS tracks or the way tsmuxer handles DTS extractions. The only Blu-rays that have been difficult are those with DTS or DTS-HD audio. For instance, just this morning I tried to open the m2ts of Rush Hour 3 (DTS-HD audio) and HB crashed while opening the file. Every Blu-ray with AC3 audio has transcoded without problems.
 

rWally

macrumors regular
Sep 17, 2006
165
0
Denver, CO
Well, AnyDVD HD has not been updated to deal with the recent upgrade to BD+... this makes it incompatible with some of the new discs out there (both "X-Files" movies immediately to mind, as I have them). The company hopes to have an update out by February 2009.

EDIT: They have a list of movies that are currently imcompatible with AnyDVD HD available at: http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=21985

Thanks for the reply. Doesn't sound like as big of an issue as I thought. I definitely want to move to HD rips for my AppleTV but I think I'm better off waiting a couple months to see what happens with Snow Leopard as far as blu-ray support goes, although I'm not sure it will matter much since there isn't a blu-ray ripper out there for Macs yet.

Who knows, maybe they'll upgrade the AppleTV to support 1080p video as well... ;)

When I tried that a few weeks ago the result was major video blocking that was unacceptable. Unless there's something else to set, that does not work for me.



I'm pretty sure that for Blu-ray it is 24 fps, thus using the default setting in HB (i.e., whatever the source is) you should get compatible files. All of mine that have been successfully transcoded by HB have sync'd and played on my Apple TV.



I suspect the problem are the DTS tracks or the way tsmuxer handles DTS extractions. The only Blu-rays that have been difficult are those with DTS or DTS-HD audio. For instance, just this morning I tried to open the m2ts of Rush Hour 3 (DTS-HD audio) and HB crashed while opening the file. Every Blu-ray with AC3 audio has transcoded without problems.

Do blu-rays come with a traditional 5.1 dolby digital track as well as a DTS track? I seem to remember most DVD's with DTS also having the DD5.1 track as well.
 

NightStorm

macrumors 68000
Jan 26, 2006
1,860
66
Whitehouse, OH
Do blu-rays come with a traditional 5.1 dolby digital track as well as a DTS track? I seem to remember most DVD's with DTS also having the DD5.1 track as well.
The Bluray spec mandates either at least one Dolby Digital, DTS, or linear PCM soundtrack; True-HD and DTS-HD are optional codecs.
 

rWally

macrumors regular
Sep 17, 2006
165
0
Denver, CO
When I tried that a few weeks ago the result was major video blocking that was unacceptable. Unless there's something else to set, that does not work for me.



I'm pretty sure that for Blu-ray it is 24 fps, thus using the default setting in HB (i.e., whatever the source is) you should get compatible files. All of mine that have been successfully transcoded by HB have sync'd and played on my Apple TV.



I suspect the problem are the DTS tracks or the way tsmuxer handles DTS extractions. The only Blu-rays that have been difficult are those with DTS or DTS-HD audio. For instance, just this morning I tried to open the m2ts of Rush Hour 3 (DTS-HD audio) and HB crashed while opening the file. Every Blu-ray with AC3 audio has transcoded without problems.

So is the problem with just DTS-HD tracks or DTS as well? There's no point in using a DTS-HD track if you're just going to encode it with Handbrake, right?
 

Cave Man

macrumors 604
Original poster
So is the problem with just DTS-HD tracks or DTS as well? There's no point in using a DTS-HD track if you're just going to encode it with Handbrake, right?

There's no point in having DTS-HD (or True-HD) since Mac and Apple TV optical ports don't have the bandwidth to support it.

Only AC3 or DTS (up to 7.1 compressed audio) can go through the optical port (and only a Mac can do DTS in conjunction with Plex). I always extract AC3 from True-HD and DTS from DTS-HD cores with tsmuxer. HB can then handle those with AC3 (and some, but not all, with DTS). You can thus get AC3 Dolby Digital for the Apple TV by passthrough, but if HB reads the DTS track it will only generate Dolby Pro Logic II 5-channel analog for the Apple TV. There is no passthrough of DTS with Handbrake (yet).

However, for those DTS movies where audio is important (i.e., 5.1 digital), I just leave it as an m2ts file with the DTS digital because Plex on my Mini can passthrough DTS. Unfortunately, iTunes and the Apple TV do not accept files with DTS.
 

mmccaskill

macrumors 6502
Jan 3, 2007
349
0
Well I can't figure out how to get the ps3 to mount anything from the Mac Pro. I found a netatalk compile guide but I don't think netatalk is a afp client/server, just a server.

So I might have to buy that LG Blu-Ray drive. I guess I could get an enclosure for the 500GB drive I have but I can only assume that ext2fsx still works for OS X.
 

mmccaskill

macrumors 6502
Jan 3, 2007
349
0
I'm getting ready to get the LG GGC-H20L which is supposed to be 6X so hopefully it won't be 60-90 mins.
 

bucksaddle

macrumors 6502
Dec 4, 2008
295
44
Caveman (and everyone else), just thought i would throw in a few of my experiences of Blu-Ray to Apple TV.
I am currently encoding at 59% CQ with Handbrake and have been through many various settings to hit (what i can tell with my eyes) is the sweet spot.
I did use 6000 ABR but i found that on some movies this can exceed the ATV's max bitrate spikes, even with the movie synced. For example, in the opening song credits of Casino Royale, just as the second chorus of the song kicks in there are a load of fancy graphics on the screen which just stutter my ATV to its knees.
Using VBV Bufsize & Maxrate settings did help control that, but i then found unacceptable image artifacts on my movies. An example of this is Spider-Man 1 when Peter gets on the school bus at the beginning. As he moves down the bus his head is against a white background (bus roof) and you get this nasty orange glow around his head (just like the old oats advert for those of you in the UK and are old enough to remember!).
So, i just find ABR to difficult to control. Using CQ you get better control of bitrate spikes (should be lower by nature) and at 59% i think i get a great image with a controllable file size (on the majority of films) between 4Gb - 6Gb. There are some which are just way to big for my liking so i then drop down to 56 - 57% (Godfather 2, 15Gb - ouch)
These are just my findings and my thoughts and may not work for everyone. But hey, thats the nature of the beast
Cheers
 

rWally

macrumors regular
Sep 17, 2006
165
0
Denver, CO
Screen Caps

Would anyone be kind enough to post some screen caps of their movies in action? I'm just curious to see how the encodes look.
 
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