A few questions as I am new to the BD forum. I've ripped/burned/backed up plenty of DVD's but this BD thing is very new to me. It seems to me that ripping the BD's to HDD for back up is logical considering the price of disks. I already have a PC that will allow me to connect via HDMI to watch anything I want in 1080p. I'm looking for a few recommendations for this process. I've already used AnyDVD to backup Star Trek and now I'm wondering if I should shrink this down or keep the current size of the movie (36gb). I think I'd rather knock the movie size down to 25GB. I've also downloaded PowerDVD in hopes of playing the ripped movie file, but the trial version is not allowing me to do this. Do I have to buy the full edition in order to playback movies from HDD? I've seen some info about demuxing and rebuilding, so what's best to preserve audio and picture? Let me add that menus/commentary and things of that nature are of no interest to me, I'm all about keeping the quality of the picture and sound. Detailed info is much appreciated, I'm very concerned about backing up my disks. Happy holidays.
Depending on the movie, you can get it down to 11GB and still have the quality transparent to the source. Extract the video using tsmuxer. Encode it using meGUI (compress it maintaining the same resolution). Remux the video with the original audio stream. Since you are playing the movies from your PC, make sure that you are up to date with your codecs. This is important if your audio stream is TrueHD or DTS HD. The programs I listed are free and you can get links to them in the Blu Ray backup sticky, along with a lot of detailed info.
Emugamer I went a different route but that doesn't mean it's the right way. I used AnyDVD to rip and then BDrebuilder to shrink. I'm still waiting for BDrebuilder to finish as I picked the best quality(longest time), unfortunately it's been running for about 15hrs and still has a while to go. If I continued to use rebuilder, is it worth it to use this setting or should I go for quicker? What is the advantage of doing it your way? It sounds a lot more complicated since I'm not that familiar with a lot of terms used. Will the quality be better? Is it faster? Would I still have the option to put it onto a disc in the future when prices go down? These are just a few of the question I have. Thanks for your response, I think I'll give your way a shot next.
There are other ways to do it. I never tried BDrebuilder. I have no intention of burning my movies. I already own the original hard copy. I rip and encode so that I can play a single file from my networked media tank and never have to play the disc again. I also have an HDMI and optical out from my PC to my 46" plasma, so I often view movies straight from my PC. I can only tell you what steps I take. Maybe someone else will give their methods, or you can read the sticky about BD backups. It's over 36 pages of comments, but if you're stuck, questions get answered. My method takes me about 2.5 hours for a Very High Quality transparent encode, and the compression is superb. I'm running a core i7. I've used Ripbot in the past, but it always took 7 or more hours for my encode, and it was never quite right. I like meGUI better. It works faster and produces a better quality final outcome in my opinion. In tsmuxer, I open the m2ts movie. Tsmuxer shows you each video and audio stream. I de-select everything except for the main movie. I check off m2ts muxing and hit the "Start Muxing" button. Now I have my video stream alone in a m2ts container. I then deselect everything in the original source file except for the main audio stream. I choose the demux check nox and hit the "Start Demuxing" button. Now I have 2 files - 1 video and 1 audio. I open the video file in meGUI and choose a profile. The BD backup sticky has some profiles to use. I've obtained some that I am quite happy with. The profiles tell meGUI how to encode the movie. Don't ask me the details. I don't go that far into trying to understand how to create them. I encode the 30GB movie using a High Quality profile and end up with a great picture at 1/3 the size. I choose an mkv container when encoding. Once the video is encoded in an mkv container, I merge it with the audio file using mkvmerge. If the audio is TrueHD or LPCM, I usually downconvert it to DTS using ea3cto, which saves on the overall size of the final movie. I'm far from being an expert on this. I just don't have the time. I found a method that works for me and saves me a lot of time, therefore don't see a need to research anything else. If this is not something you would want to do, I hope it helped understand some of the process. Like I mentioned earlier, the BD backup sticky is a wealth of information. Just takes some time filtering through it all. *Edited for clarification
Thanks Emugamer, I think its going to be a process of trial and error- no pun intended. I too already have the BD, but my kids like to watch movies on long rides. I'd like to have a BD backed up on disk so I don't have to bring the original in the car. I have time to figure this out since I don't think they have a car BD player yet. I'm going to look back at the sticky and see if I can get a grip on this stuff. I'm also opened to other ways as well. Feel free to post your process if you feel that it is worthy. Emugamer provided a pretty good post on how to go about encoding blu-rays for back up. If you think you have a better way, lets hear it. The more detailed info, the better.
I've begun trying to use the other way which involves using TsMuxer. Do I still need to use AnyDVD to rip or will TsMuxer take care of this for me? I'm using the file from the BD itself to mux, thinking that TsMuxer will rip the movie for me. It seems that the output of TsMuxer is going right back to the file that I am muxing? Does this make since? I thought that after muxing you would have a brand new folder.
Once you rip the BD to your HD there is no more need for you to use anydvd anymore.Use Tsmuxer for muxing & demuxing.Also us the file that's ripped to your HD & not st8 off the disc.
Yes, ripping with AnyDVD to your HDD is always the first step. I personally use "copy DVD to HDD." After that, locate the m2ts movie file in the BDMV/STREAM/ folder. It will be the largest file (typically anywhere from 18GB and up). I like to separate the audio and video. I encode the video and then remux the compressed video with the original audio. But you could do both in the same process. Ripbot allows for this. There are just more settings to tinker with when you do both at the same time, and I was getting tired of getting errors. I just did a movie last night. It was 18GB and had 3 AC3 640k audio streams. I ran tsmuxer twice. 1. The first time was to get the video stream alone in an m2ts container. The second time, I selected the audio stream and selected demux to extract it. 2. I used meGUI to encode the video into an mkv container, reducing the size to 8.5GB. 3. I then used mkvmerge to combine the newly encoded video with the AC3 audio stream. Played flawlessly and looked amazing (I only used a "very good" profile, as I didn't feel the movie needed to be "excellent quality" - yet it still looked amazing on my HDTV). This process only took my PC between 2-2.5 hours for everything (but once again, I'm running a fairly new core i7). Of course, if the audio stream were TrueHD, I would have taken the extra step of down-converting to DTS using a program called eac3to. But that is my personal preference.
I've ripped this movie but TSmuxer isn't allowing me to put it in a folder. I created a folder with the name of the movie (ex. THE_HANGOVER) but when I hit save it just blinks and nothing happens. However I can rewrite the original file in the BMD file but when I did this there was just an empty MT2S file. And to top it off, it told me that the file wan't an AVS file. I am lost. I feel like a mental midget. I'm also wondering if I have to run AviSynth in order to make the file an AVS file for MeGUI?
Not clear on how you are ripping the movie. You should be right-clicking on the little AnyDvd fox head and choosing "Rip Video DVD to Harddisk.." Once AnyDVD does it's job, you will have access to all of the m2ts files on your HDD. So in your case it should be THE_HANGOVER\BDMV\STREAM. That's where you find the movie m2ts file to open in tsmuxer.
i have tried dvdfab to shrink my bluray from 37gig to 25gig movie only and cant tell the difference,,dvdfab does it in 4hours,,i rip the bluray to iso using imgburn to read with anydvd running to,,and if i want to watch from the computer i mount the image to the virtual drive and powerdvd,,
To emugamer What is your system spec? 2.5 hrs that is very good To coorva and what is your system spec to get 4hr to back up a BD Just curious! I'm doing about 75~80fps @ 1080p on my Duo Core 2.2GB 1GB RAM and $200 video card, so 1hrs movie with 24fps will encode about 20min, 3.25 faster than real time
Emugamer: Let me start out step by step. 1. Rip movie to hard drive via AnyDVD, rip completed. 2. Take 0001.m2ts file(largest file) and place in tsMuxer, I demux which leaves me with two files, one .vc1 file and a ac3 file. 3. next I take vc1 file and open tsMuxer again only instead of demuxing I make sure that M2TS muxing is marked. I go ahead and hit start muxing once again. I now have a file that reads .m2ts along with the vc1 and Ac3. 4. Now I want to encode the file so I open up MeGUI. This is where I'm having my problem now. I click on file and open up the folder where my m2ts file is located, only nothing shows. I then click where it says AVS scripts and roll down to all readable media, now I'm able to see my .m2ts, I click on it and MeGUI locks up. It then unlocks and another window opens named MeGUI AVIsynth, this too locks up when I try to load the .m2ts. What am I missing here? Do I need an avs file to plug into MeGUI? Do I need to load settings or some other info into MeGUI for it to work?
Easy method. Use DVDfab to rip main movie and audio to hdd folder - bd 50 that way there is no compression required. You get the movie only, in perfect quality with all the audio and subtitles, you just bin the trailers and extras. Then run the copied folder through imgburn and make the film only into iso image. Store this on pc, mount with virtual clone drive when you want to watch it, and play with poweredvd. All easy, takes hardly any time and cuts film down to a reasonable size without quality loss. Ripping film with dvdfab which was on the hdd already (full disc) takes about 15 mins, then another 2-3 mins to make into iso image with imgburn.
I cant seem to find the m2ts movie file. I have ripped the disc to the hard drive using anydvd hd. I cant seem to find this file to load it in tsmuxer. Can someone help me. All I want to do is rip the main movie only to the hard drive and maybe get the audio size down a little bit.
im having troubles. Im not sure what to rip the video as in tsmuxer. do i choose TS muxing, M2TS muxing, or Demux? No matter what i choose meGUI cant seem to open the file so I can get it shrinked down. Can someone give me a detailed way of how they do this. Thanks
I am still having problems with MeGUI and looking for some help. I'm not sure, but maybe I haven't installed it correctly or maybe I don't have it configured the right way? I'm currently using the new Harry Potter BD, I've ripped it using anyDVD, followed by demuxing with tsmuxer, followed by m2ts muxing of the video. My next move would be entering this m2tsfile as my input in the avs creator of MeGUI, when I use this file as imput MeGUI doesn't respond and the program has to be shut down. I've already reinstalled avisynth followed by MeGUI, is there something else I am required to download? Does the mircrosoft framework file still have to be downloaded when you're using Vista? Please help and many thanks for all of your patience.
1. Yes 2. No - you select your video file only and remux to an m2ts container. Then you will have a new m2ts file that has nothing but the movie video. Then you run tsmuxer again and select the audio stream. Instead of remuxing, you select demux to extract it from the container in its raw format. For example, if it is a DTS stream, it will be a file with a ".dts" extension. 3. No - You already have your VC1 in a m2ts container and your audio stream is already extracted, both saved as 2 separate files. 4. Open the m2ts video stream in meGUI by clicking Tools->AVS Script Creator. Click on the Resize and Suggested Resolution boxes, and then on the Auto Crop box. You can also resize to 720p if you wanted to. Then save. In the Encoder Settings pulldown, select your profile, then below that, the container (choose mkv) and then hit Enqueue. Click on the Queue tab and you'll see the job listed. Hit Start and let it run. 5. Once it's completed, open mkvmerge and add the newly encoded mkv video file. Next add the audio stream and merge them together. I already had all of my codecs updated and the latest framework running, so I can't tell you whether or not it's needed for this. It all just works for me. If you are still having trouble, try one of the other methods that people have posted so far. I've never used DVDfab, but people swear by it. It just doesn't suit my needs. Sometime between tonight and tomorrow, I'll post a couple of links for you with tutorials that I've taken bits and pieces from. Those will probably help you form your own method also.
as soon as I load the video in mgGUI it says I don't have the correct filter installed. What do I do to get these?
