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backinblack875

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 23, 2010
614
46
USA
i have a blu-ray DVD of a tv show season and was wondering if it is possible to rip this with handbrake or w.e to my mac mini, even though it is not a blu ray drive. Thanks.
 
No, you need a Blu-ray drive to read the DVD and no Mac model comes equipped with a Blu-ray drive.
 
No, you need a Blu-ray drive to read the DVD and no Mac model comes equipped with a Blu-ray drive.

There are plenty of external blu Ray drives you can use for data and yes that even means you can copy a blu ray to an MKV File (Assuming it's legal and unprotected ;) ) You just can't play blu ray movies on the mac natively
 
There are plenty of external blu Ray drives you can use ...
That's not what the OP asked:
i have a blu-ray DVD of a tv show season and was wondering if it is possible to rip this with handbrake or w.e to my mac mini, even though it is not a blu ray drive. Thanks.
You just can't play blu ray movies on the mac natively
That's what I said.
No, you need a Blu-ray drive to read the DVD and no Mac model comes equipped with a Blu-ray drive.
 
Basically you need a blu-ray drive (an external one will do) to read the disk. However, you can not play that disk on your mac like you can a regular DVD.

You can use MKV to "backup" the blu-ray disk to your hard drive (this process generally takes about an hour or more), then you can use Handbrake to rip the MKV file (movie and/or other tracks) to an m4v movie file - as you would do from a regular DVD- but you can create a 1920 x 1080 resolution or smaller. Only then can you view that blu-ray content on your mac.

FYI the MKV backup will take about 45GB of HD space and a 1080 rip is about 15GB vs a 720 rip (ATV2 setting) is about 2-3GB.

It is a time consuming process and it is very frustrating that there is no way to just pop in a blu-ray and watch the movie like a regular DVD on the mac without having to go through this whole process.
 
It is a time consuming process and it is very frustrating that there is no way to just pop in a blu-ray and watch the movie like a regular DVD on the mac without having to go through this whole process.
Actually, with about 60 seconds of clicking and typing, you can run a commercially bought Blu-ray disc via MakeMKV as a stream, which VLC will play on a Mac in OS X. That's how I play my Blu-rays on my 30" ACD when the main TV is busy. (I installed a Blu-ray burner in my Mac, which you'll also need)
 
would you care to explain?

Actually, with about 60 seconds of clicking and typing, you can run a commercially bought Blu-ray disc via MakeMKV as a stream, which VLC will play on a Mac in OS X. That's how I play my Blu-rays on my 30" ACD when the main TV is busy. (I installed a Blu-ray burner in my Mac, which you'll also need)

I can't seem to find instructions on how to do this. I only see how to use MKV to create a backup which is then used as the source for Handbrake to convert.
 
I can't seem to find instructions on how to do this. I only see how to use MKV to create a backup which is then used as the source for Handbrake to convert.

• Attach Blu-Ray Drive to Mac mini - http://goo.gl/BHgvg

• RIP Movie to MKV file on Mac mini - use MakeMKV - http://makemkv.com/

• Watch movie with VLC player - http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Optional - Convert movie to preferred size and format - Handbreak - http://handbrake.fr/

Optional - Attach Apple TV to your big screen and stream movies from the Mac Mini - http://goo.gl/am2I

Works great and I have over 500 movies done this way.
 
• Attach Blu-Ray Drive to Mac mini - http://goo.gl/BHgvg

• RIP Movie to MKV file on Mac mini - use MakeMKV - http://makemkv.com/

• Watch movie with VLC player - http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

• Optional - Convert movie to preferred size and format - Handbreak - http://handbrake.fr/

• Optional - Attach Apple TV to your big screen and stream movies from the Mac Mini - http://goo.gl/am2I

Works great and I have over 500 movies done this way.
Actually, if you just want to watch the movie, use MakeMKV to open a blu-ray stream, then use VLC to play the stream. Thus it'll play in real time without having to rip to hard drive first. Not exactly a single point and click, but it works.
 
Actually, if you just want to watch the movie, use MakeMKV to open a blu-ray stream, then use VLC to play the stream. Thus it'll play in real time without having to rip to hard drive first. Not exactly a single point and click, but it works.

Good point. Thanks.
 
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