Please help with DVD ripping question

[thekb]

Handbrake / VLC work perfectly on my MBP to rip DVDs to m4v files, but my brother's MBP is not working right. DVD appears to rip correctly, although slowly and a very large file size A typical DVD ripped at AppleTV 2 setting on my computer is about 1 - 2 MB, on his it came out to almost 6 MB. However, when you try to play it back, it is horribly blocky and garbled and the sound is very choppy. You can't see the picture at all.

At first, I thought there was a problem with Handbrake, but upon further review, I tried to play the DVD in VLC and it looked the same way, so I am assuming that the problem is with VLC's decrypting.

So what gives? Anyone encountered this before? THANKS!

 

[Astroboy907]

Handbrake / VLC work perfectly on my MBP to rip DVDs to m4v files, but my brother's MBP is not working right. DVD appears to rip correctly, although slowly and a very large file size A typical DVD ripped at AppleTV 2 setting on my computer is about 1 - 2 MB, on his it came out to almost 6 MB. However, when you try to play it back, it is horribly blocky and garbled and the sound is very choppy. You can't see the picture at all.

At first, I thought there was a problem with Handbrake, but upon further review, I tried to play the DVD in VLC and it looked the same way, so I am assuming that the problem is with VLC's decrypting.

So what gives? Anyone encountered this before? THANKS!

What DVD is it and what were handbrakes settings?

 

[thekb]

Nothing cutting edge -- Polar Express. The only settings changes were use to standard ipad preset and to add closed captioning. Those settings have never interfered with a good rip before. VLC and Handbrake are both newly downloaded and installed.

I got to wondering if the problem was VLC being 64 bit version (MBP is about 2 or 3 years old) so I installed 32 bit VLC and it played the DVD OK so I thought that was the solution, but when I tried to re-rip it looked the same.

FYI, the MBP is a couple of years old, but is running 10.9.1 just fine.

Very confused why the setup isn't working! Thanks

 

[Astroboy907]

Nothing cutting edge -- Polar Express. The only settings changes were use to standard ipad preset and to add closed captioning. Those settings have never interfered with a good rip before. VLC and Handbrake are both newly downloaded and installed.

I got to wondering if the problem was VLC being 64 bit version (MBP is about 2 or 3 years old) so I installed 32 bit VLC and it played the DVD OK so I thought that was the solution, but when I tried to re-rip it looked the same.

FYI, the MBP is a couple of years old, but is running 10.9.1 just fine.

Very confused why the setup isn't working! Thanks

It could just be the way the DVD is encoded, low quality.... And a really simple question- is the disc badly scratched? If it is you could be losing lots of quality if Handbrake cannot determine the correct content so it just skips over it...
It would not be a 64/32 bit programming problem, AFAIK. The bit just determines what kind of computer structure it runs on, and not the functionality of the program.

 

[thekb]

Thanks very much for your reply ...

The disk does not appear to be badly scratched at all. Just some superficial marks. But to test it, I tried it on my computer and the disk ripped fine. I am sure it must be a software problem with the MBP.

EDIT: Experimented again with 64 vs 32 bit versions of VLC. The 32 bit version will play disks and the 64 bit will not. Isn't that weird? But for whatever reason, when I use handbrake, the result is a pixelated, garbled mess.

the MBP is from 2011 I think, so it's not like its a relic.

 

[slothrob]

DVD appears to rip correctly, although slowly and a very large file size A typical DVD ripped at AppleTV 2 setting on my computer is about 1 - 2 MB, on his it came out to almost 6 MB.

A rip would probably be 4-7 GB, so I expect you mean a transcode.

However, perhaps there is something wrong with the extraction process. I'd try extracting the disk to the HD with something like the free version of DVDFab, than run Handbrake on the file extracted to the hard disk. This would test whether it is the ripping or transcoding process that is the source of the problem.

 

[westrock2000]

Make sure that "large file size" is enabled in Handbrake. If the file is exceeding 4GB, that will cause problems if not enabled. Also make sure that video codec is set to H.264(X.264) and not MPEG 2 or 4. I have gotten weird artifacts with that selected.

 

[thekb]

Thanks for the continued effort guys ... I no longer have access to the computer so I can't try any further suggestions.

I can tell you that I used the straight, off-the-shelf Apple TV 2 settings, same as I have always used for my computer. I've never had to adjust those other settings before to get it to work on mine, so I am a little skeptical that those changes were the problem.

Thanks anyway.