Ripping DVD/Blu-Ray

[OscarTheGrouch]

I'm going to start ripping my DVD/BluRay collection to hard drive to watch on my PS3. What would the best format be respectively for each DVD and BluRay, and what software application would be best/most efficient at it? Anything else I am missing?

 

[CylonGlitch]

Handbrake

That's really all you'll need. Although I recommend ripping to one drive, then transcoding to another. I use DVDFab to rip to an external drive; and then transcode to another external drive.

 

[firedept]

Handbrake and then iFlicks for metadata. This is what I use. It works well for me.

 

[mic j]

MakeMKV (decryption to mkv) > Handbrake (transcoding to mp4) > Subler (metadata tagging)

Note: HB probably ok for dvd decryption but not BR. That's why I use MakeMKV. It's great at decryption of both dvd and BR.

 

[Xe89]

MakeMKV for ripping Blu-ray and sometimes DVD to uncompressed mkv

Ripit for ripping DVD to .dvdmedia "file" (actually a folder)

Handbrake for transcoding ripped DVD files to smaller MKVs or MP4s

 

[OscarTheGrouch]

MakeMKV for ripping Blu-ray and sometimes DVD to uncompressed mkv

Ripit for ripping DVD to .dvdmedia "file" (actually a folder)

Handbrake for transcoding ripped DVD files to smaller MKVs or MP4s

Pardon the ignorant question, but quality wise, What's the best encoding? MP4? I know for DVD its not as important, but I want the few blurays I managed to salvage from my divorce to look as good as possible on a nice television. HDD Space isn't a horrible concern.

 

[CylonGlitch]

Pardon the ignorant question, but quality wise, What's the best encoding? MP4? I know for DVD its not as important, but I want the few blurays I managed to salvage from my divorce to look as good as possible on a nice television. HDD Space isn't a horrible concern.

That is very subjective. Everyone plays the space / quality game. If do a full encoding without much compression you're looking at 40GB per movie; and if you have 100 BluRays you're going to be close to filling a 4TB drive. For me, I set it to Handbrake's high quality and then slide the quality slide down to 18 (from 20, lower is better). That yields a 3 to 5GB file and decent quality, for me.

Also, what are you going to play the movie back on is a big factor. Laptop, Tablet, Phone, ATV? Using Plex or iTunes?

 

[Xe89]

Pardon the ignorant question, but quality wise, What's the best encoding? MP4? I know for DVD its not as important, but I want the few blurays I managed to salvage from my divorce to look as good as possible on a nice television. HDD Space isn't a horrible concern.

I usually don't transcode Blu-rays, I only use MakeMKV to put the audio and video in a different container (mkv). The whole point of Blu-ray is to get the best picture quality, that's why I don't transcode them.

EDIT: that said, mkvs created by MakeMKV will probably not work on your tv, unless you connect your PC to it of course.

MP4, like mkv, is a container format. So the quality depends on the video encoding. I use Handbrakes "High quality" setting for transcoding DVDs. With this I get 99 % of the original picture quality but at maybe 20 % of the size.

If you put the same video and audio in an mkv file and an MP4 file, I believe they will look the same. I mostly use mkv because it is better at handling several audio and subtitle tracks. If you don't need that you probably should use MP4.

 

[OscarTheGrouch]

That is very subjective. Everyone plays the space / quality game. If do a full encoding without much compression you're looking at 40GB per movie; and if you have 100 BluRays you're going to be close to filling a 4TB drive. For me, I set it to Handbrake's high quality and then slide the quality slide down to 18 (from 20, lower is better). That yields a 3 to 5GB file and decent quality, for me.

Also, what are you going to play the movie back on is a big factor. Laptop, Tablet, Phone, ATV? Using Plex or iTunes?

I usually don't transcode Blu-rays, I only use MakeMKV to put the audio and video in a different container (mkv). The whole point of Blu-ray is to get the best picture quality, that's why I don't transcode them.

EDIT: that said, mkvs created by MakeMKV will probably not work on your tv, unless you connect your PC to it of course.

MP4, like mkv, is a container format. So the quality depends on the video encoding. I use Handbrakes "High quality" setting for transcoding DVDs. With this I get 99 % of the original picture quality but at maybe 20 % of the size.

If you put the same video and audio in an mkv file and an MP4 file, I believe they will look the same. I mostly use mkv because it is better at handling several audio and subtitle tracks. If you don't need that you probably should use MP4.

Points taken. I plan on playback through my PS3 on an HDTV.. currently it's an old 32" but will be upgrading soon to larger...