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What is the best blu-ray/dvd movie backup software
- Thread starter Wreckus
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Thanks. Will give that a shot. However, still need a solution for blu-ray movies I bought.
You will not find anything faster than MakeMKV. It doesn't re-encode the video, but merely re-muxes the streams into an MKV container, which requires very little work by the CPU. The speed you get is determined almost entirely by the read-performance of your drive.
That said, if you want to make DVD and some Blu-ray movies compatible with the Apple TV, you will need to re-encode the video to H.264, e.g. using Handbrake (since DVD uses MPEG-2 and a few Blu-rays use VC-1). Most commercial converters are based on the same open-source code as Handbrake and are unlikely to be significantly faster unless they sacrifice image quality.
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phrehdd
Contributor
I am not trying to stir the pot here but this is how I see things-
It is a shame to force fit media files to comply with a player. In this case, having to convert or re-wrap a file so that it will play with an ATV seems almost backwards. ATV has its advantages with iTunes rental/buy of media while plenty of other media players allow for all sorts of media files without conversion (typical file formats).
If one was to stay with ATV, I would recommend they investigate Plex so that no file conversion is necessary directly for the ATV. I admit I use another player and though I don't like the main menu, could have a bit of a better remote, it plays pretty much all standard file formats with the use of Kodi application(where Plex original came from when Kodi was still XBMC). I can play MKV various resolutions, m2ts files (akin to those in blue ray movies), vob files (found on DVDs) and much more. In fact, I demonstrated the unit to a friend who has a smaller 720p TV and no sound system. I brought up an m2ts file (1080p) that had only HD audio and Kodi and the player output 720p, stripped the HD file down and output stereo for the TV speakers. My friend was more than amazed at the image quality and the fact the audio played well.
Again, my only point is that the ATV is very limited. If you remain with the limitations, it is a nice "iTunes Front End" but certainly not worth the time to convert entire libraries to force fit it into ATV limitations. My collection are m2ts files, MKV, Vobs, mp4, avi, etc. I don't bother with iTunes other than music.
It is a shame to force fit media files to comply with a player. In this case, having to convert or re-wrap a file so that it will play with an ATV seems almost backwards. ATV has its advantages with iTunes rental/buy of media while plenty of other media players allow for all sorts of media files without conversion (typical file formats).
If one was to stay with ATV, I would recommend they investigate Plex so that no file conversion is necessary directly for the ATV. I admit I use another player and though I don't like the main menu, could have a bit of a better remote, it plays pretty much all standard file formats with the use of Kodi application(where Plex original came from when Kodi was still XBMC). I can play MKV various resolutions, m2ts files (akin to those in blue ray movies), vob files (found on DVDs) and much more. In fact, I demonstrated the unit to a friend who has a smaller 720p TV and no sound system. I brought up an m2ts file (1080p) that had only HD audio and Kodi and the player output 720p, stripped the HD file down and output stereo for the TV speakers. My friend was more than amazed at the image quality and the fact the audio played well.
Again, my only point is that the ATV is very limited. If you remain with the limitations, it is a nice "iTunes Front End" but certainly not worth the time to convert entire libraries to force fit it into ATV limitations. My collection are m2ts files, MKV, Vobs, mp4, avi, etc. I don't bother with iTunes other than music.
I was thinking about using Plex. However, I rather have all my movies available for my iPad & iPhone if I go on trips or on long bus rides. Thanks for the info though.
phrehdd
Contributor
Just curious, have you converted files for your iPhone and tried playing those on a TV screen? Do you find the quality suffers greatly? - I do. I would rather have a non-compressed file (such as that from MKVmaker) for TV purposes than a handbrake file meant for iPad or iPhone as the quality is vastly different. I must say however, in defense of those that see no difference, they are lucky as many of us do see quite a difference.
Did you know that with Plex you can download (they call it sync) the videos to iPhone or iPad when at home for offline playback when away ? I think you need a Plex pass for this feature though.
You can also stream over any other network like a wifi somewhere else and even including cellular (if you have decent data plan).
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Agent2015
macrumors 6502
Do yourself a favor and setup a Plex server on decent spare computer you may have available (in my case I use a late 2012 Mac mini with 8 GB memory and a 4 TB USB3 external hard drive). Using MakeMKV (best solution I have come across, worth the money in my opinion) create MKV wrappers of the DVD or Blu ray movies you have. No need to do anything to the MKV files if you are using Plex across all your devices. Install the Plex client on your ATV4 and off you go! And the best part is you can access your Plex library from anywhere using your iPhone or iPad (with the Plex client of course) so long as you have a decent cellular connection (in my experience LTE is optimal but 4G actually works nicely). Depending on your data plan you'll stream to your heart's content. Finally, in case it's not obvious, your Plex server needs to be up and running anytime you want to access your content locally or remotely.
I have been using dvdfab for years. It's an annual subscription but it takes about 30 mins to convert to iTunes format and very convenient, just stick the disk in and convert
I do all my conversion stuff on Windows due to using AnyDVD HD to decrypt the discs. Then use Handbrake to get it just the right format.
For maximum compatibility you need to have an MP4 (with m4v extension). And it needs to have 2 audio tracks. #1 is 2 channel AAC and #2 (which is optional) can be 5.1 Dolby Digital, up to 640KB/s bitrate. But you need to have AAC stereo as #1.
The fastest encoding I have seen so far is using a program that can use Intel's QuickSync. Handbrake has this feature (on Windows at least). This uses a special feature built-in to many recent Intel chips that is specifically designed to encode movies. It can easily encode 2-3x faster then even a upper end Intel CPU. Be sure to set the quality slider to about 18, and you will get very good picture quality.
For maximum compatibility you need to have an MP4 (with m4v extension). And it needs to have 2 audio tracks. #1 is 2 channel AAC and #2 (which is optional) can be 5.1 Dolby Digital, up to 640KB/s bitrate. But you need to have AAC stereo as #1.
The fastest encoding I have seen so far is using a program that can use Intel's QuickSync. Handbrake has this feature (on Windows at least). This uses a special feature built-in to many recent Intel chips that is specifically designed to encode movies. It can easily encode 2-3x faster then even a upper end Intel CPU. Be sure to set the quality slider to about 18, and you will get very good picture quality.
This is very helpful. Will a file encoded that way play with 5.1 DD on the new 4th gen. Apple TV (on the auto setting)?
I only have Apple TV 3, but with Dolby Digital set to Auto in the settings it always goes with track 2, Dolby Digital.