[fishbisquit]

I know there was a long mac blu-ray topic but I can not find it with the search feature. However I am hoping to get a simple answer.
I am a mac user. I want to buy a blu-ray disc and have a 1080p rip from that disc in plex. What is the simplest and cheapest way for me to do this?
I apologize but I do not know anything about blu-ray drives. It was sounding like there were going to be new imacs with blu-ray support but now it sounds like that is not a reality.
So is there currently an easy cheap solution?

Thanks guys!

Dave

[Billy Joe]

well, there is no easy solution, the only way to do it on a mac is to have a bluray drive and to use anydvdHD in bootcamp or in a virtual machine to rip it.

well, that's not quite true.... the easy and cheap way to do it is to forget about the optical media and just download a bluray rip from torrents...

[Cave Man]

Check my sig for the thread.

Basically, if the disc is not BD+ you can download MakeMKV beta and hope that it works. You will also need an external Blu-ray drive in a USB2 or FW enclosure. The drive can be a BD-ROM, but it must be able to write to something, even if it's just a CD. This is because of something weird about OS X that I've never been able to find details about. At any rate, once you have it mounted and MakeMKV sees it, all you do is rip and MakeMKV removes encryption, HDCP and rewraps the Blu-ray m2ts into an MKV container with either DTS or AC3 5.1 audio. I've not used MakeMKV in some time, but my recollection is that you have to navigate to the correct file, which is usually the largest in the BMDV/STREAM folder. The only exception are those videos that are split into multiple files (Disney does this a lot), in which case you have to get them assembled from the playlist file, which is located in BMDV/PLAYLIST. AnyDVD HD reads these, but I'm not sure if MakeMKV does. Once ripped, Plex will open them.

[Billy Joe]

also be aware that any bluray with interlaced vc1 wont show video in plex.

[fishbisquit]

Billy Joe, on 11 October 2009 - 06:26 PM, said:

also be aware that any bluray with interlaced vc1 wont show video in plex.

Is there a way to determine this before I buy the disc?

[Billy Joe]

google the title maybe? blurays are all either mpeg2, h264, or vc1. not that many are vc1, a lot of vc1 plays ok in plex, look on the back of the case, if its interlaced it will say its 1080i instead of 1080p, im not sure if it lists the codec used though. interlaced vc1 blurarys are fairly rare, but you do see them once in a while.

[ericmatthys]

Easiest solution:

Blu-ray drive that can write to dvd's or cd's (not necessarily blu-rays). It is just important that the drive can read blu-rays and write to something. Something like this one.

MakeMKV - It's only limitation is BD+ support but that should be coming in the next release. Edit: MakeMKV supports BD+ in version 1.4.8

Handbrake - This is if you want to encode your source material to lower the size of the video (reduce a 25GB to 8GB or whatever). Use the latest SVN snapshot for the best blu-ray support.

Specifically, the process goes:

Put your blu-ray disc into your drive and open up MakeMKV. Read the disc with MakeMKV and select the tracks you want to rip (leaving out unnecessary audio and subtitle tracks). You can pretty much tell which video tracks to rip based on their size. MakeMKV will output a single mkv file for each video track you ripped.

Now comes the encoding process, if you so choose to do so. As talked about above, VC1 will be encoded into x264 here so you don't need to worry about that if you encode your videos. This will be the longest part of the process, especially if your machine is not very beefy. Open up Handbrake and select the ripped mkv file as your source. My recommendation for your Handbrake settings are the following:

Format: MKV
Video Codec: x264
FPS: Same as source
Constant Quality: 22 (56.86%) - You can adjust this (higher percentage leads to larger file sizes)
Advanced Options: ref=3:mixed-refs=1:bframes=3:weightb=1:b-pyramid=1:b-adapt=2:me=umh:subq=9:analyse=all:8x8dct=1:no-fast-pskip=1

Make sure your picture size has a width of 1920 pixels and keeps its aspect ratio (if the picture is wider, handbrake won't encode black bars into the picture so the size will be like 1920 x 780 or something). Many blu-rays are 1920 x 1080 though.

As far as audio goes, you could choose to extract the audio from the original mkv that MakeMKV creates and mux it back into the mkv after it has been encoded. That way Handbrake never touches the audio. I trust the original audio file more than I trust the passthru settings in Handbrake. Use tsMuxer to demux the audio track from the original mkv and use MkvMerge to mux it back in at the end.

I hope that helps.

[fishbisquit]

Thanks everyone for the comments so far. Eric thanks for taking the time to post a nice break down.
So the only hardware I need is a combo blu-ray drive?

I am currently using makeMKV for my regular rips. I'm assuming this is the only mac native software choice?
If I don't want to encode the mkv rip are you saying the file will be roughly 25 gigs?
Will I lose any quality encoding it down to a smaller file?
So makeMKV can not rip dvd+ blu-ray discs?

Thanks again,

Dave

[ericmatthys]

fishbisquit, on 12 October 2009 - 02:54 PM, said:

Thanks everyone for the comments so far. Eric thanks for taking the time to post a nice break down.
So the only hardware I need is a combo blu-ray drive?

I am currently using makeMKV for my regular rips. I'm assuming this is the only mac native software choice?
If I don't want to encode the mkv rip are you saying the file will be roughly 25 gigs?
Will I lose any quality encoding it down to a smaller file?
So makeMKV can not rip dvd+ blu-ray discs?

Thanks again,

Dave

Yeah the only hardware you need is the drive, which can cost anywhere from $99+ depending on if you only get a BD-ROM drive or not.

MakeMKV is the only Mac option so far (but it is a very nice option imo). You would need to go through boot camp to rip using the Windows options.

File sizes for blu-rays greatly vary but the average is probably 20-30 gigs.

It all depends on your settings, but with the right settings, your encoded video will be transparent (as in there is no difference in quality, between it and the original). Anything above 55% constant quality is considered sufficient for a transparent encode for blu-rays (it's more like 62% for dvds). Also, I have found that the no fast p-skip flag in the advanced settings helps to reduce artifacts in gradual gradients and dark scenes (dark scenes are the biggest problems for x264).

Using the above settings, I really don't think you can tell any difference, even upon close examination. But you can try it out for yourself.

MakeMKV currently cannot decode BD+ blu-rays. The MakeMKV developer is tight lipped on a date for BD+ support, but I would say to expect it by 2010.

[fishbisquit]

ericmatthys, on 12 October 2009 - 03:25 PM, said:

Yeah the only hardware you need is the drive, which can cost anywhere from $99+ depending on if you only get a BD-ROM drive or not.

MakeMKV is the only Mac option so far (but it is a very nice option imo). You would need to go through boot camp to rip using the Windows options.

File sizes for blu-rays greatly vary but the average is probably 20-30 gigs.

It all depends on your settings, but with the right settings, your encoded video will be transparent (as in there is no difference in quality, between it and the original). Anything above 55% constant quality is considered sufficient for a transparent encode for blu-rays (it's more like 62% for dvds). Also, I have found that the no fast p-skip flag in the advanced settings helps to reduce artifacts in gradual gradients and dark scenes (dark scenes are the biggest problems for x264).

Using the above settings, I really don't think you can tell any difference, even upon close examination. But you can try it out for yourself.

MakeMKV currently cannot decode BD+ blu-rays. The MakeMKV developer is tight lipped on a date for BD+ support, but I would say to expect it by 2010.

Is there a way to tell which discs are BD+ blu-ray discs?

[ericmatthys]

fishbisquit, on 12 October 2009 - 08:04 PM, said:

Is there a way to tell which discs are BD+ blu-ray discs?

It looks like there has been update to MakeMKV that I didn't read about.

Check it out here: http://www.makemkv.c...c.php?f=1&t=612

If your BD+ disc fails, it creates a dump that you send to the MakeMKV developer, and he will include it into the SVQ file used to decode the BD+ disc. He has said that he updates the SVQ file daily so it shouldn't be a long wait once you send in the dump. Before long, hopefully, many of the BD+ discs will be included in this SVQ file, however this solution appears to be only temporary based on a forum post in the doom9 forums: "...the current absence of a generic SVQ is a temporary thing. Generic SVQ will be released sooner or later and this nuisance will go away."

[fishbisquit]

I'm thinking of pulling the trigger on this drive. Do you see any reason this one won't work?

http://store.fastmac...products_id=406

Thanks,

[ericmatthys]

fishbisquit, on 14 October 2009 - 09:52 PM, said:

I'm thinking of pulling the trigger on this drive. Do you see any reason this one won't work?

http://store.fastmac...products_id=406

Thanks,

It should be fine.

[Romey-Rome]

Pavtube Blu-Ray Ripper seems to work as far as the trial lets you. Doesn't do any kind of muxing, so you'd probably still have to pass it through tsmuxer (which is broken for 10.6) to get rid of unwanted streams. Don't have too many BDs to try it out on.

But something about the site & app designs tells me it's flaky...

[fishbisquit]

I probably should have started with this question in the first place.......

Is blu-ray resolution worth all this trouble?

I know it's not too much trouble but I'm still wondering if I'll notice enough of a difference to make the investment worth it?
I've read in a few other forums people claiming that most blu-rays are not that much better then unconverted dvds.
I use the up converting feature within PLEX. So do you think I will notice much of a difference with PLEX out putting to a 53" plasma?

Thanks,

Dave

[Billy Joe]

yes, on a 53inch the difference between dvd and bluray can be a huge one if it's a good bluray (some can be pretty bad, especially the mpeg2 ones, but then some dvds are terrible too). though the difference between a downloaded 1080p encode @11GB and raw bluray is not always as apparent. also, for better upscaling in plex, turn on lanczos scaling in the advanced settings.

[ericmatthys]

Billy Joe, on 22 October 2009 - 10:37 PM, said:

yes, on a 53inch the difference between dvd and bluray can be a huge one if it's a good bluray (some can be pretty bad, especially the mpeg2 ones, but then some dvds are terrible too). though the difference between a downloaded 1080p encode @11GB and raw bluray is not always as apparent. also, for better upscaling in plex, turn on lanczos scaling in the advanced settings.

Blu-ray is pretty jaw-dropping compared to even an upscaled dvd. The lines are crisp and the detail is amazing. Definitely worth the trouble in my opinion.

[Romey-Rome]

fishbisquit, on 22 October 2009 - 10:03 PM, said:

I know it's not too much trouble but I'm still wondering if I'll notice enough of a difference to make the investment worth it?
I've read in a few other forums people claiming that most blu-rays are not that much better then unconverted dvds.
I use the up converting feature within PLEX. So do you think I will notice much of a difference with PLEX out putting to a 53" plasma?

Thanks,

Dave

The difference is huge.

Whether or not you notice it is another issue. The biggest factor is viewing distance. If that 53" is 20 feet away, probably won't notice the difference. I believe the ideal viewing distance for a 53" is 6-8 feet for 1080 content.

[John Lockwood]

Now that BDs can be ripped not only on Windows but also Mac and Linux (like DVDs), I am more interested in investing in BD versions. (Being able to rip them protects them from scratches etc.)

However so far it seems that while open-source DVD playback fully supports menus, subtitles, extras, etc., there are no equivalent full feature BD players for Linux and Mac and the only ones for Windows are commercial. I would have thought the biggest difficulty was the ripping rather than working out how to play them as I believe much of the information on the structure is 'out there' and of course the actual video/audio already plays. So what's the hold up preventing a 'proper' player? (Lets ignore the Dolby HD issue for the moment.)