Hi all! New to backing up blu-rays. I just got my burner. I am wondering whether I would be better off using BD Rebuilder or DVDfab to make my BR backups. I will be using BD25s and making, for the most part, full disc backups. I know that I hear about more people using rebuilder than I do dvdab. I would like to hear others preferences and suggestions? What would make one better than the other? Thanks for your time!
It depends on whether or not you don't mind spending the money and what your equipment is. DVDfab and BDrebuilder both use the X264 codec for encoding so there so the reencoding speed on most systems are going to be about the same. I think DVDfab uses a one pass system (need to be verified) which is an option on BD RB which defaults at two pass. A one pass reencode could reduce the quality of your result so for movies requiring high compression BD RB will render the best results. DVDfab settings also default to "Fast normal quality setting," which will speed things but also reduce quality. Even however with comparable settings across DVDfab BD and BDRB DVDfab will have a small advantage for those who have Nvidia CUDA enabled video cards since DVDfab uses it as a parallel processor along side your CPU. Again however the added speed will depend on which graphics card you have and how many stream processors it has. Which to use is up to you. Purest and those supporting free or donation software will generally choose BD RB, especially if they are into reencoding to BD9 and BD5. There will be others that choose to go with BD9, BD5, and BD25 (which has become as economical if not more so than BD9). There are many users that choose to use both DVDfab for quick and dirty and BDRB for discerning video. For those of us with a fast Dedicated second Quad Core Intel systems (I'm one) there's no reason to pay for DVDfab. Before you decide download a trial of DVDfab and then match the settings of BD RB by dropping it to a single pass ABR. BE certain to use the exact same BD movie rip as either full or movie only. Then you decide.
@ivan0101 Which statement in a post did you find quite the opposite, and which one is all nonsense? Clarify your statement using quotes! Just to clear things up: I have used DVDFab and on three separate computers over 90 days. My last post is simply the facts. A single pass is never going to rise to a two pass reencode but I never stated that DVDfabs single pass was any worse than BD RB's. I did however give the advantage to DVDfab for speed for those with a CUDA enabled cards, but at no point in my statement did I put DVDfab down. So perhaps you should try reading in context before just stating that something is "quite the opposite" and "all nonsense."
What is a good recorder for blu-ray? Been backing up my DVDs for awhile and finally upgraded to blurays. I have DVDFab and still looking around for more information on a good recorder to get. My player is an LG.. Any help is appreciated....
I've gone with the LG burners and I now have two of them but I'm certain that there are other good makes as well. So far I have yet to burn a single BD coaster with either drive. LG has an OEM unit for $77 plus $2.99 for shipping. That same unit however was recently on sale for $59.99 so perhaps someone else has it running for a similar deal. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...36183&cm_sp=DailyDeal-_-27-136-183-_-Homepage
May I suggest Megui to rencode your blurays. Sure its more than a 1 click solution but its a much better result imo. You can set it up for a quick good or a slow great result. It uses the same encoding engines as the other suggested warez. However the controls and settings is almost endless. When you play around and get some profiles you like it doesn't take as long in the futur to change your settings.
You could and for many who prefer to work under the hood MEGUI is an excellent method of backing up blu-rays. Unfortunately you are also right in that MEGUI is not a one click solution. It also uses the same essential applications as BD RB does such as avisynth, TS_MUXER, FFMPEG, and X264. Most users go with applications such as DVDfab and BD RB because they're simply looking for a method to keep a working Blu-Ray structure with at least one of the original soundtracks either in tact or converted to something very close to it. For that both of those applications are good. In the end however the quality of the final result is going to depend not on the graphical user interface but rather the applications that its scripted to use.
I like megui myself. It goes without saying that you can't script flexabilty into a single click application. You got to run in the middle of the road. With this you got to sacrifice some control. DvDfab has gone their way and BD RB has gone theirs. Both do a good job at what they do. Some times you get a better product by doing it yourself cause you can input the needed varibles into the equation. Using megui you can use any audio file you want. It just depends on what your finished product is going to be. Your not going to use DTS on a BD5. The freedom that megui gives me to make just what I want is worth all the effort. I know what your saying though.
Only if you can accurately calculate video bit rate and then subtract audio bit rate to of each BD to determine the actual space needed. Most users don't know how to do that. It's technically true that by doing that you'll be able to maximize available space a little better, but you can also miscalculate and oversize the result for your chosen media. Blu-Ray's are naturally over sized to begin with by assigning far more bitrate to video and audio than is necessary to achieve a high definition backup. After all its designed to calculate the available storage and then use it which is often far more storage than is needed. It only seems reasonable to consider alternative backups to other media such as BD25 which renders visually perfect results for most blu-rays and if one goes for a movie only with a single HD audio track then it's at best academic. For this BD RB is well suited. Also note that BD RB is more than just a single click application. For those wanting more control there is also not so hidden HIDDENOPTS. which goes like this:
Its not hard to calulate how big your files need to be. There's even a guide if you don't know how to do it already. I'm in no way saying megui givrs better results. What I'm saying megui gives better control. The results should be next to the same seeings that they use the same encoder. Here's the thing, let's use your example of a BD25. Idont care that much for audio, but a 15gb video looks just as good as a 20gb video so there's no reason not to go with DTS. Now when you break down to BD9 things change. I'm fine w/ a lower bitrate audio and maxium bitrate for the video. Using DTS uses have of the space in most cases. Nice discussion though I sure have enjoyed it.
You can do that with BD RB as well. In fact a lot of my earlier reencodes with BD RB were to D9. BD RB also reencodes HD audio to 448kbs AC3 but now that's no longer necessary since dual layer disc are generally more expensive than BD25 so there's no reason not to use BD25 anymore. A dual layer disc still cost For movies that run about 2 hours with low action and mostly indoor scenes I convert to 720P and burn to a BD5 which is most economical. As far as calculating bit rate goes, many people play it too close and often overshoot sizing. I have no issue with MEGUI but BD RB allows for most of the same changes including recalculating space if you really want to do it, but it's better if most just let BD RB do it. Below is a link to a 20 pack of dual layer for $28.00 which brings it to $1.40 a disc and a 30 pack of BD25 for $37.00 which brings it to $1.23 per disc so dual layer is now pointless as a BD backup disc. You could shoot for a lower quality disc but most people will tell you to stick with the Verbatim or an equivalent. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817130008 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817130008
I don't debate on disc brand names any more. Pretty much I go with a deal. Ill catch sales around here for DL dvds 50pk for $40 or something close. I hate ordring disc.
Thank you so much for this info...I was looking at the "sticky" in here and was overwhelmed with different programs to use. But after reading this thread I think Im going to give BD Rebuilder a shot...Never done this before with BluRay and it seems its simple enough for a Novice
I've been using AnyDVD to rip the Blu-Ray movie to the hard drive and then DvdFab to burn "movie only" to the disc. It took a Looooong time and worked...sometimes. About half the time. The problem I've been having with Dvdfab is the audio is messed up. The movie looks great, but the audio that was included is the "directors cut" audio!? I don't know what that's all about. I THOUGHT DvdFab was smart enough to choose the correct audio stream? It's happened on 3 different movies now, Inception, Wall Street 2, and The American. I don't know if the same thing will happen if I copy the "whole disc" because I've never tried it. I ONLY want the movie not the extra crap and want to put it on a 25gb disc. Fast forward to now, I've used BD Rebuilder on 2 out of these 3 movies and it's worked perfectly while set on "movie only" Granted, it takes longer than DvdFab, but so far it actually WORKS!! And yes, I know DvdFab can decrypt the BluRay movies, but I'd rather use AnyDvd for that...I've used it for a long time (almost from day 1 when it first came out) I trust it and it's updated constantly. DvdFab doesn't seem to update nearly as fast. The point to my rambling? I think I'm going to stick with AnyDvd and BD Rebuilder. It seems to WORK! On a side note, I WISH 1ClickDVD would offer BluRay support...1Click and Anydvd is an awesome combination...I've been using it for years to cpy standard Dvd's.
