Can't get my external DVD/Blueray to work with Handbrake.

[tmedia1]

Can't get my external DVD/Blueray to work with Handbrake with my brand new Retina MBP. I always get an error message that says, "no valid source found". Any ideas on how I can get it to work with Handbrake? It works fine for loading software from DVD's. Please help. Thank you.

 

[tmedia1]

BTW, this is with a new Retina MBP.

 

[KevinC867]

My external Samsung BD/DVD drive works fine with my rMBP when converting a DVD. (Although, it did prompt me to load a version of "libdvdcss" since it can no longer just get it from an installed version of VLC.) With a Blu-Ray disc, I get the same error you did: "no valid source found".

My solution is to first rip the disc with MakeMKV. You need a lot of temporary disc space to dump the raw BluRay movie, but I prefer this method. It's great when you have multiple discs to convert. You can queue up the multiple conversions in HandBrake as soon as the MakeMKV rips complete. It also keeps the drive streaming at full speed while ripping, rather than doing a lot of stopping and starting in order to feed HandBrake at the pace it can handle.

 

[tmedia1]

Thanks Kevin. I can't even get handbrake and my external to work with DVDs. How and where do you get "libdvdcss"?

 

[KevinC867]

Thanks Kevin. I can't even get handbrake and my external to work with DVDs. How and where do you get "libdvdcss"?

HandBrake prompted me to install it and sent me to this location:
http://download.videolan.org/libdvdcss/last/macosx/

I installed libdvdcss.pkg

 

[tmedia1]

Thanks! That did the trick, handbrake is now working with DVD's! I forgot about needing that dvdcsslib. When I transferred all my data from my old MBP to the new rMBP, I didn't realize that dvdcsslib doesn't copy over. Thanks for the help!

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One more thing. Regarding ripping BluRays. What do you play the final BluRay ripped handbrake file with? iTunes? Quicktime? AppleTV?

 

[KevinC867]

...One more thing. Regarding ripping BluRays. What do you play the final BluRay ripped handbrake file with? iTunes? Quicktime? AppleTV?

First I rip the full Blu-Ray movie to a .mkv file, then I use HandBrake with the AppleTV2 preset to convert it to a 720p .m4v file. I can play the 1080p .mkv file on my computer with VLC, or watch it on my TV using a WDTV box. The 720p .m4v file can be played with pretty much anything. I usually put them in my iTunes library, then play them on my Apple TV 2.

 

[tmedia1]

Ok thanks for the tips. I've been using a MacMini attached to Flat screen as a home media server holding ripped movies, then stream that media to an ATV in my home theater. It works pretty well, but it's standard def rips. Just wondering whats the best way to move this server set up to HD. Sounds like the method you describe would allow me to move up to 720. Maybe I'll look into the WDTV to get everything 1080...