I have searched but have come up empty. If there is a guide, I would appreciate someone kindly point me in the right direction. I am backing up my BDs now and will eventually back up my HD-DVDs then DVD. I know how to do it but my question is pertaining to file size. I noticed that some rips are as low as 6-8 gigs and in HD. I would like to try and keep all my files at 20gigs or lower. I don't want to compress the heck out of them but I would like to compress to the point where I don't get a MAJOR quality hit. I have found all types of programs but I am not 100% sure what is the best. My method currently is: Use MAKEMKV to rip the movie only and the core audio. With the new version of MAKEMKV, I hope to be able to rip the core audio and the lossless audio. I have to be able to have the core audio for certain titles because I have a D-Box motion control system and seating in my HT room. If I want to convert my existing MKV to a specific file size, retaining the original audio, what is the best method. I don't even mind converting SOME of the titles to 720p from 1080p. I have tried Handbrake (still waiting on a title to convert) and I think I have downloaded everything on the planet. Like I said, I am not asking for someone to hold my hand, but a link, suggestion or opinion would be awesome. I am using a WDTV Live right now, just while I get used to the whole media player thing, but I plan to pick up a Dune BD or similar. My screen is a DPI 1280x720 3 chip DLP projector and a 2.35:1 aspect ratio screen that is just over 15' wide. I AM going to be upgrading to a 1080p projector and reducing my screen size to about 13-14' wide at 2.35:1. Thanks and so sorry for the long winded post.
Many people encode (compress) the original movie to 8GB in order for it to fit on a DVD-9. A lot of 720p encodes are small enought to fit on a DVD-5 even. You can encode a 30GB movie to under 20GB and end up with a 1080p movie transparent to the source. Using the x264 software library to achieve H264 video compression results in high quality video at lower bitrates. You can even encode to a high bitrate 720p and depending on the movie, it would look great upscaled on a 1080p television. I've never used MAKEMKV. I did some reading on it at the avs forums, and it sounds interesting. I may give it a try. There are numerous methods to encode. The best way is the one that you find easiest to follow and is purely subjective. You'll find that the first step most people take is ripping the blu ray to their HDD using AnyDVD. Once that is done, you can look at the full movie file (usually in an m2ts container) using TSmuxer. You can then see all of the video and audio streams. From there, you have many different options. You can open the m2ts file in another program that will handle all of the encoding and maintain the audio. You can remux the m2ts file, removing all streams that you don't want. You can demux either video or audio stream. You can downconvert the audio stream. You can remux the file adding audio streams, etc...You can use programs that allow you to change many different settings for your encoded video to achieve the exact results you want. Check out the BD Backup sticky on this forum for a list of all programs and other resources. Also visit the DOOM9 forums. Here is one method you could use that I found helpful: http://www.recipester.org/Recipe:Rip_Blu-ray_to_MKV_files_19862345
