So I am building a computer for a buddy that wants to back up his Blu Ray movies with this computer. I have done some research for this and, besides the obvious of needing a blu-ray recorder, is it true that it would be best if I were to get a quad core processor? Is there anything else that I would "need" for this computer? Thanks. Also for my own personal thoughts. If you were to have a blu-ray player on a computer, would you only be able to view it if you had some sort of hd card and an hd monitor? Thanks again. : D
For a CPU: faster is faaaaar better for transcoding BDs. I am doing one right now, & for the two pass encode, it took about 4-5 hours for the first pass & for the 2nd, some 21-22 hours on my C2D4600 machine. This is using ryu77's high quality Bluray x264 settings with MEGui. Straight reencoding/burning to BD25 discs is much quicker. I have only used TSMuxer for *.ts remuxes which takes around 25-40 minutes. this leaves the media file around the 25GB size mark. Never backed up to BD25 with menus, etc., so can't say how long to complete the operation. You will also need some way to rip it to harddrive. I use AnyDVDHD. If you use AnyDVDHD, then it bypasses the HDCP requirements, meaning you don't require a compliant graphics card & monitor/HDTV -which most have been for some two or more years, now. With regards viewing the backed-up??? Blu-ray, I am unsure as to whether the programmes like BDReBuilder backup with full removal of copyright portection. I would assume so, meaning, as long as your machine's CPU/graphics card could handle the media decoding, then you could use any number of software players for playback. Don't expect the bundled version of PowerDVD player, which comes with a number of Bluray drives, to work, though. One final thought, make sure the graphcis card you get for your friend's machine can utilise the full DXVA (minimum 8500GT for nVidia), otherwise the HD decoding will be passed off to the CPU, taxing it more eg. decoding a BD-mkv rip with DXVA will cost 5-15% CPU load, whereas using non-DXVA with ffdshow, could be as high as 60% for a machine similar to mine.
