I never used iPad as a digital movie hub. This has got to change!

[Kendo]

I had a 16GB iPad 1 that I mainly used for web browsing. I ordered the 32GB model because I want to start loading 1080p content onto my iPad and take advantage of the Retina display. I have Blu-ray movies. What else do I need to make my own rips?

After doing some research, I came up with the need for the following:

1) Blu-ray drive - Do I need a burner or is the burner only for burning discs and not needed for ripping content?

2) Handbrake - Apparently this is free and will turn the rips into a format that the iPad can read.

3) Blu-ray ripping program. Can someone please recommend a good one?

Am I missing anything? I would also like to know how I can create chapters in the same way an iTunes movie would have chapters. I want to be able to create my own content the same way it would look from the iTunes store.

 

[maclook]

Do you have a Mac?

Honestly, you should just download 1080p rips. You own the blu rays so it's not morally wrong for you to do.

 

[Kendo]

Do you have a Mac?

Honestly, you should just download 1080p rips. You own the blu rays so it's not morally wrong for you to do.

Yes but I'd like to make them myself from the discs I own because I want to control what size and quality I want.

 

[MarkG21]

Google MakeMKV to rip your blu rays to your computer

All you need is a BD-ROM (a burner is not needed)

edit: here:

http://www.makemkv.com/download/

It's free for the first month for blu ray discs. After that its a one time fee. Its always free for making dvds though.

 

[urkel]

Do you have a Mac?

Honestly, you should just download 1080p rips. You own the blu rays so it's not morally wrong for you to do.

It's a shame those "Digital Copy included" versions are such low quality because I have a bunch that came with my blurays and I'd love to try it in 1080p but I'm not going to rebuy.

As a side note, why the heck are digital versions more expensive than physical media? Sure, comparing retail then it's okay but who pays retail for movies? You can get a season of many TV shows on sale for $15-20 but buying the digital copy is $40-50. This kind of stuff definitely does make Downloading tempting because we WANT to buy stuff but it's just too difficult or expensive to get a digital copy.

 

[Nightprowler]

Do what you will, but in my experience the rip/transcode process takes forever, so unless its something you are gonna watch over and over and demand your own custom quality its much faster and easier to just grab a copy someone else has done.

 

[falcora]

It's a shame those "Digital Copy included" versions are such low quality because I have a bunch that came with my blurays and I'd love to try it in 1080p but I'm not going to rebuy.

As a side note, why the heck are digital versions more expensive than physical media? Sure, comparing retail then it's okay but who pays retail for movies? You can get a season of many TV shows on sale for $15-20 but buying the digital copy is $40-50. This kind of stuff definitely does make Downloading tempting because we WANT to buy stuff but it's just too difficult or expensive to get a digital copy.

I agree, I think if you own some piece of media, whether its a CD, DVD, BluRay, or what have you, you should have the rights to the same content in any format. And it should be easy to obtain them.

I have a bunch of movies I bought on iTunes before they had HD movies, and now I can't upgrade them to 1080p without buying the whole movie again.

 

[maclook]

Yes but I'd like to make them myself from the discs I own because I want to control what size and quality I want.

Handbrake lets you choose the target file size and it'll adjust the bitrate accordingly or you can choose the quality first. You'll have to convert the downloaded movie for it to play on the iPad/AppleTV anyways.

I understand if you don't want to but you should at least try it out with one movie and see if the quality is good enough for you. Somebody else did all the work to get the movie on the computer and all you need to do is convert it to an Apple friendly format.

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As a side note, why the heck are digital versions more expensive than physical media? Sure, comparing retail then it's okay but who pays retail for movies? You can get a season of many TV shows on sale for $15-20 but buying the digital copy is $40-50. This kind of stuff definitely does make Downloading tempting because we WANT to buy stuff but it's just too difficult or expensive to get a digital copy.

I've wanted to buy TV seasons but the price is ridiculous. I could put up with the price if they had sales like retail stores have. The App Store has sales so I don't see why movies and TV shows can't.

 

[urkel]

I've wanted to buy TV seasons but the price is ridiculous. I could put up with the price if they had sales like retail stores have. The App Store has sales so I don't see why movies and TV shows can't.

Exactly. Does Apple have any control over pricing because they can have "sales" and it would really increase people's interest in iTunes Store and also sell a ton of AppleTV's.

But with how things are now, especially with the next generation of kids, then the best way to get a digital copy is to "steal" it.

 

[Kendo]

Handbrake lets you choose the target file size and it'll adjust the bitrate accordingly or you can choose the quality first. You'll have to convert the downloaded movie for it to play on the iPad/AppleTV anyways.

I thought Handbrake is the actual program that converts it to a file that can play on iPad and Apple TV?

 

[maclook]

I thought Handbrake is the actual program that converts it to a file that can play on iPad and Apple TV?

It is. Oftentimes, the movie you download is AVI or MKV format. Handbrake will convert it to m4v format. Before converting, you have options and tweaks such as setting the bitrate/file size/aspect ratio/etc.

 

[pure3d2]

How big are the typical 720p mp4 movies for the iPad/iPad2?

 

[fridgeymonster3]

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Maybe I missed it, but what kind of Mac do you have? I installed an LG bluray drive in my Mac Pro. I use MakeMKV to rip the blu-ray to my hard-drive. The files come out anywhere between 16-40 GB. I then use Handbrake at constant quality 20, 20.25, or 20.5 (depending on what type of film it is) and convert to .m4v. Works great!!

 

[Kendo]

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Maybe I missed it, but what kind of Mac do you have? I installed an LG bluray drive in my Mac Pro. I use MakeMKV to rip the blu-ray to my hard-drive. The files come out anywhere between 16-40 GB. I then use Handbrake at constant quality 20, 20.25, or 20.5 (depending on what type of film it is) and convert to .m4v. Works great!!

The latest MacBook Air with Core i5 processor. I heard Handbrake is CPU intensive so I think my Mac is easily up to snuff. I was thinking of getting an external Blu-ray drive and rip a few at a time due to my small 128GB of storage, and let them convert overnight.

 

[ripkord]

There has to be something that converts straight from blu ray to mp4 / m4a. Converting to mkv is just an unnesessary extra step IMO.

 

[fridgeymonster3]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Maybe I missed it, but what kind of Mac do you have? I installed an LG bluray drive in my Mac Pro. I use MakeMKV to rip the blu-ray to my hard-drive. The files come out anywhere between 16-40 GB. I then use Handbrake at constant quality 20, 20.25, or 20.5 (depending on what type of film it is) and convert to .m4v. Works great!!

The latest MacBook Air with Core i5 processor. I heard Handbrake is CPU intensive so I think my Mac is easily up to snuff. I was thinking of getting an external Blu-ray drive and rip a few at a time due to my small 128GB of storage, and let them convert overnight.

Yeah your MBA will convert them just fine but it's going to take several hours i think. My Octo MP takes about 1.5 hours to convert such files.

 

[fridgeymonster3]

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@ripkord

I think you misunderstand the process. You need to first decrypt and rip the blu-ray and then convert it to a file type of your choice. As far as I know, there isn't a Mac program that can do both at the same time.

FYI, from my understanding, you dont "convert" a blu-ray disc to an MKV file. MKV is a container that stores audio and video, so you are just re-wrapping the uncompressed blu-ray audio/video into the MKV container.