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Blu-Rays don't have DRM that works, you can't make DRM for movies that in unbreakable. You said no DRM. Also some people don't like how low quality the video is on DVDs and only buy Blu-Rays.

I misspoke - I said 'no DRM', when I meant 'no effective DRM'. I don't know anyone who buys BluRays, but I guess there must be some.
 
I had another problem with another HD DVD where the main movie file isn't readable even with VLC after converting. (no the file isn't corrupted, it just won't play) I tried it multiple times. Am I using the wrong HandBreak settings? The original file works fine btw.
 
I had another problem with another HD DVD where the main movie file isn't readable even with VLC after converting. (no the file isn't corrupted, it just won't play) I tried it multiple times. Am I using the wrong HandBreak settings? The original file works fine btw.

Could be... Try reseting the settings in Handbrake. You could do just one chapter to save time. You're using the base high quality preset and only changing the RF right?
 
Could be... Try reseting the settings in Handbrake. You could do just one chapter to save time. You're using the base high quality preset and only changing the RF right?

I didn't change anything, just using the default settings. I also tried the MPEG-4 codec, it worked, but the quality was extremely bad. Now I'm trying the MPEG-4 codec with the slider put up to QP1 to see if that one is better.
 
I didn't change anything, just using the default settings. I also tried the MPEG-4 codec, it worked, but the quality was extremely bad. Now I'm trying the MPEG-4 codec with the slider put up to QP1 to see if that one is better.

No, you want H.264. Use "Regular" > "High Profile" and don't change anything and see what happens.
 
No, you want H.264. Use "Regular" > "High Profile" and don't change anything and see what happens.

Thanks, should I have used High Profile for all the others too?

Edit: I just noticed that it takes 10 x longer now, is that normal?
 
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Thanks, should I have used High Profile for all the others too?

Edit: I just noticed that it takes 10 x longer now, is that normal?

Yes. My bad, I was saying high quality it's High Profile.

Use High Profile and change the RF if you want (I use High Profile with RF 21 for Blu-Rays).

It can take a long time with these settings (but they're really good), it would take ~8 hours for a movie on my old 2010 MBP. I would say on a rMBP a full movie should take 2-6 hours to encode. What year is your rMBP and what's your CPU?

P.S. You can save your own preset and set it to be the default so you don't have to remember to set the settings every time.
 
So delete everything and restart everything? Guess the high def feeling from the other converted movies was just a placebo? How about the standard def extra titles, do they also have to be converted with High Profile?

Estimated time is 4 1/2 hours btw. (Using the 13-inch rMBP i5 2.5GHz, RF is 20)
 
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So delete everything and restart everything? Guess the high def feeling from the other converted movies was just a placebo? How about the standard def extra titles, do they also have to be converted with High Profile?

Estimated time is 4 1/2 hours btw. (Using the 13-inch rMBP i5 2.5GHz)

Your call, if you like it now, go with it. I'd do the same chapter in a bunch of settings to see what you like. Use two players, pause both at the same frame all over the place and switch back and forth. It took me hours and hours of (bind) testing find what I like and use.

4.5 hours in really good.
 
High Profile even for the standard def 480p extra titles?

No, it's not needed. The "Regular" > "Normal" preset at RF 19 is a good starting point for topnotch DVD quality. Like I've said experiment and find what size, quality and encode time you like. You won't find one preset works for everything, for example, I have a just preset for movies from around the 1960s to remove noise.
 
No, you want H.264. Use "Regular" > "High Profile" and don't change anything and see what happens.

Oh great, just found out that it crops the video files. At first I thought it will remove black borders but then when running 2 players side by side in full screen I found out that it crops the video from 16:9 to 16:8 or so.

Oh and why does it lag on certain places? Edit: Ah, that was because I was converting at the same time.
 
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Oh great, just found out that it crops the video files. At first I thought it will remove black borders but then when running 2 players side by side in full screen I found out that it crops the video from 16:9 to 16:8 or so.

Oh and why does it lag on certain places? Edit: Ah, that was because I was converting at the same time.

If you don't like how it's cropping a video you can manually crop it. It's usually really good at just cropping just the letterboxing. It will usually crop a little bit (0-10 pixels extra) of the video to make the size a power of two which helps the file size. You can find a lot more info about this at the Handbrake site, there's a guide somewhere.

And like you said it will lag your computer when running, Handbrake uses 100% of your CPU.
 
If you don't like how it's cropping a video you can manually crop it. It's usually really good at just cropping just the letterboxing. It will usually crop a little bit (0-10 pixels extra) of the video to make the size a power of two which helps the file size.

I don't really care about the file size if something in the video is missing. But since I only saw missing parts in one video I guess that was because it used different aspect ratios?
 
No, it was an extra title which switched from 16:9 to 21:9 all the time back and forward.

Isn't it possible for HandBreak to simply do a 1:1 copy from .mkv to .mp4?

I'd just trying encoding it again, maybe you accidentally bumped a setting. If it still doesn't work then just manually set where will crop.


The whole point of doing this encoding is it's not a 1:1 copy, your encoding it to a better and more efficient format.

The thing you also need to realize is MKVs and MP4s are just containers, in Finder you can rename them back and forth and it will still work. The actual codec is inside the container and you're using H.264 with Handbrake.
 
I'd just trying encoding it again, maybe you accidentally bumped a setting. If it still doesn't work then just manually set where will crop.


The whole point of doing this encoding is it's not a 1:1 copy, your encoding it to a better and more efficient format.

The thing you also need to realize is MKVs and MP4s are just containers, in Finder you can rename them back and forth and it will still work. The actual codec is inside the container and you're using H.264 with Handbrake.

Yeah, I mean a 1:1 copy of the aspect ratio, pixel count, audio tracks, subtitle tracks, but in that more efficient format.
 
Yeah, I mean a 1:1 copy of the aspect ratio, pixel count, audio tracks, subtitle tracks, but in that more efficient format.

99% of time it automatically gets the aspect ratio and resolution correct (by default it crops away the letterboxing and stops at a multiple of 16 pixels which improves the compression so sometimes you lose a few pixels, but other than that it gets it right on). It usually keeps one or two of the audio tracks and the subtitles are usually stripped away as no one really uses them.

Again if you don't like how any of this is working, make your own preset. If you really care about those ~5 pixels sometimes getting removed from top of the screen you can set it where it won't remove them, but the file size will be larger.
 
Finally found perfect settings, only wish they were less annoying to configure. :rolleyes:

The main movie file is still half the size of the original .mkv but still...
 
Finally found perfect settings, only wish they were less annoying to configure. :rolleyes:

The main movie file is still half the size of the original .mkv but still...

Awesome! You can't make a preset to save all your settings? What settings are you using? I would think you could get the file size down al lot.
 
Awesome! You can't make a preset to save all your settings? What settings are you using? I would think you could get the file size down al lot.

I don't see an option that says "don't crop the video default" and "add all tracks default". My settings are RF20, High Profile, disabled cropping and add all tracks.
 
I'm back with another problem. MakeMKV fails to read some titles on some of my HD DVDs. As I said before I thought the problem was because of a few little scratches, but then the same problem happened with another disc which looked perfectly new. I went to the MakeMKV website and found:

HD-DVD support is limited - some discs may fail to open and not all audio and subtitle tracks will be preserved.

Does anyone know a solution?
 
I'm back with another problem. MakeMKV fails to read some titles on some of my HD DVDs. As I said before I thought the problem was because of a few little scratches, but then the same problem happened with another disc which looked perfectly new. I went to the MakeMKV website and found:



Does anyone know a solution?

Try again and cross your fingers. Look around for a another ripper, maybe DVDFab (not sure if it can do HD DVDs)?
 
Try again and cross your fingers. Look around for a another ripper, maybe DVDFab (not sure if it can do HD DVDs)?

I configured it to try it again 10 times every time it fails to read something. I'm sure it's because of this message:

HD-DVD support is limited - some discs may fail to open and not all audio and subtitle tracks will be preserved.
 
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