OT: Blu Ray Encoding

[N49ATV]

Hey guys and gals,

Merry Xmas,

Well Im a little tired of sending DVDs back to Disney to get replaced, so Im going to be ripping Noahs Movies to a USB HDD, to plug into his TV. We have a few movies done now, but Id like to rip off the blu rays. Its much easier then trying to use his DVD player, and getting discs wrecked etc. So ill be encoding in H264, (TV accepts H264, Mpeg4, or DivX).

I have AnyDVD, and also Handbrake. I also have MakeMKV. Though to be honest I have no idea what im doing. Id like to rip just the movie, from say Dreamworks logo etc, to credits. Id like to maintain the quality. Right now he has a 1TB USB HDD, but I also have a 3TB network drive, and will add more, but even if each movie is 8GB-10GB for 1080p blu ray, and say 1GB for DVDs, there is a lot of room. He might have 20 Movies.

Anyone know what settings to use in any of these programs, or any tips, or other programs I should get? I tried to rip Rio last night off his blu-ray, I used AnyDVD to rip the movie to the drive, then converted it from MT2S (or whatever) to H264, but the % quality wasnt showing in handbrake etc. The movie spit out at just under 4GB, so i know its not going to be right. Id expect a movie @1080 to be much larger. I was going to rip them at 720, but for the little bit of storage space, it doesnt matter, id rather have them at full size, so when I get the new TV, it looks just as good on there. I can always buy more 3TB live drives with the company, and use the network to stream them to the TV.

[Vortex]

I find DVDfab to be the easiest to use, however I do use Handbrake if I'm going to do some encoding. I typically use .iso format as there is no compression and therefore full quality. However, a Blue Ray disc is going to be 18 - 50 GB each. For example, you mentioned Rio on Blue Ray, which is a BD50 disc. Looking at the size of the full disc, it is actually 44GB. Reducing to just the main movie shows it is going to require about 36GB of space to maintain full quality. I usually only do blue ray if I REALLY need the HD quality. Most movies, especially disney movies play fine in SD provided you don't use compression.

ISO files are not as easy to play. VideoLan Player (VLC) will play iso movies directly on a computer. When I want to watch them on TV, I use Western Digital WDTV player (it will play iso directly) and I get full quality.

When using handbrake and other programs there are MULTIPLE settings that have to be considered. Was the movie formatted in 24fps or 30fps? Widescreen, Fullsize, or Cinematic? Do you want subtitles? etc. I can walk you thru some of those settings if you wish, but trust me, it is much easier to deal with ISO files and just buy the WDTV (around $99).

[Troop]

I must be too old 'cause you two are talking a language that I just don't understand.