SpiceWare's Blog

I've been working on duplicating my DVD/BR collection for a few years now. Looks like you have the technique down! Good luck!

Thanks!

I'm still getting the hang of it. I did the Extended Cut of Sucker Punch last night, but ended up with the wrong thing - a behind the scenes version of the movie Oh well, at least I realized that when I checked out the MKV so I didn't waste any time creating an M4V.

Also had a problem with season 3 of Breaking Bad - disc 1 worked OK, but MakeMKV reported a whole bunch of errors on disc 2 and only converted one of the tracks. Possibly studio escalation along the lines of the 99 track issue with the Daria DVDs.

 

I suspect I'm going to stick with movies for the time being.

Ripping tools are often just GUI wrappers on OSS command line tools. With some research you might be able to avoid the MKV -> M4V transcoding step. Guides / code written for Linux is often easy to use / port to OSX.

Good idea. I'll probably hold off on looking into that until I get my new computer though.

 

I'd been waiting to see what the next mini will be, but I'm leaning more and more towards getting the new Mac Pro as I'd like to mount a couple 4K displays on my treadmill desk. Text on my iPad Air is so much clearer than text on the 24" 1080p monitors I'm currently using.

We just got a few of the new Mac Pros at work.

 

Haven't set them up yet...

 

I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a new Mac Mini. I gave up and went with the i7 / 780M iMac (which was probably a better match for my requirements anyway).

Since I have the space, I think I'm going to leave the MKV files on the Drobo. To make the folder view nicer I updated the icons for the files using images from The Movie Database - see added screenshot in the blog entry.

Also had a problem with season 3 of Breaking Bad - disc 1 worked OK, but MakeMKV reported a whole bunch of errors on disc 2 and only converted one of the tracks. Possibly studio escalation along the lines of the 99 track issue with the Daria DVDs.

 

Turned out to be a bad disc, added photo to blog entry. Had trouble getting a good photo of it, had to align the flaw just right so it would stand out, then fight with the auto-focus as it was focusing on the image reflected by the disc. Finally won that fight by putting a note on the disc and directing the iPhone to focus on the paper.

 

The manufacturing flaw caused it to skip over the first few minutes of one episode and about 10 minutes in the middle of another. I just read the episode summary online to figure out what I missed.

I just started studying this. Unfortunately, my only laptop with a bluray drive is dead, so I'll have to buy an external. Does the ripping program you reference above give a completely lossless copy of the bluray?

I just started studying this. Unfortunately, my only laptop with a bluray drive is dead, so I'll have to buy an external. Does the ripping program you reference above give a completely lossless copy of the bluray?

Yes, the rip is the exact data from the Blu-Ray without the encryption. You can optionally exclude things like extra sound tracks and closed captioning data. I normally deselect everything except the English track.

Alright! I just did my first DVD. I need to pay attention to the settings. I just hit go and it worked. I am streaming a movie from my NAS right now through my Xbox 360. But it is not the best quality so I'll try again later.

Alright! I just did my first DVD. I need to pay attention to the settings. I just hit go and it worked. I am streaming a movie from my NAS right now through my Xbox 360. But it is not the best quality so I'll try again later.

There's definitely a learning curve involved with Handbrake - if you're seeing something like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLSu9Iuevmk

 

you need to learn how to use the deinterlacing and/or decombing options in the filters. After Handbrake has parsed your material, open up the Preview Window. You may have to move the selection point. If you see something like the new Addition 3 I just added to the blog entry then click settings and try changing the deinterlace setting and hope you get Addition 4 as the result.

Watch that video on YouTube itself, the embedded version is scaled down which ends up hiding the problem.

I will watch this and try those things. I redid the DVD by changing the preset from normal to high profile and on just a few minutes of watching, it seems to have fixed the problem.

The high profile preset turns on decomb.

I did the second one with just the decomb. I sampled a small bit this morning and it looks to be as good as the first one but it only took 10 extra minutes instead of the 5 times as long the high profile setting took. Thanks Darrell.

One more question. How do you get closed captioning? It is included in the folder I choose with MKV, but it doesn't seem to show up with Handbrake.

How do you get closed captioning?

I've only done subtitles once or twice. I have this bookmarked, Add Subtitles to DVDs Ripped with Handbrake, so I probably followed those instructions.

Cool. Bookmarked.

Thanks for this. Very handy for a Region B Blu-ray I just bought. (Seriously... if you can buy Region B discs here, why do they bother restricting them to Region B in the first place?)