Archiving Bluray's: Save as ISOs, *.mkv or original Bluray folder structure?


unraided

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Hi guys. I'm in the process to archive my Bluray collection. I began to archive some using DVDFab, with keeping the original 1:1 Bluray folder structure that a Bluray disc is formed. I know this has no compression (which isn't too much of a worry), but I'm more concerned on playback after wards. I know that you can playback the video by going into the root folder, followed by the BDxx > STREAM folder, and their would be a series of files which can be played back.

For simplicity sake (and for it to be wife/friends worthy), I would just like to have a single file in which they can open and the entire movie plays (I suppose you can queue the entire movie files, which would solve this, but it's kind of hard to explain this to some).

I've heard of people creating Bluray archives in a single *.iso file (again, no compression), but their are some media play applications or add-ons which can support playback of an ISO file and it's contents, just like if it was the original disc that was inserted. Then their is the option to convert the original into a *.mkv file (which seems to be the best video container file that is used at present). By using the *.mkv file conversion, some space is saved I guess, without loosing much to very little quality from the original Bluray.

My Bluray collection is only a dozen or so at present, but it's bound to grow as time moves on. I would like to get some feedback and advice on what is the best way to preserve my Bluray's, obviously remaining as much quality as possible and reducing the space the archive that is consumed would be a plus, but not essential. Originally when I archived my DVD collection, I simply did a 1:1 copy using DVD Decrypter, and seeing the the maximum size of a DVD was only 8.5GB, it wasn't a concern, and the playback of the DVD meant that you only had to open a single file, and the entire DVD plays. Any suggestions on what I should do with regards to Bluray archiving?

 

Thanks.     

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Look for something called Clown_BD. It is a free workflow manager that organizes the ripping of a BR disk. The individuall packages it manages as is itself are all free and easily available.  You will probably need AnyDVD_HD but this not free but IMHO Reasonable in cost.  Just search the web and you will find Clown_BD.

 

With Clown_BD you can tell it to duplicate the BR folder structure (What I do) but to only save the main video data, and the main audio data at the highest bit rate and codec. Most of the folder data is empty except for the BDMV folder containing the stream folder which will contain a single file 0000.m2ts. I also keep forced titles, but do not keep menu information as I do not use it. If you selected the correct options (via easy simple checkboxes) that file will be the full movie, audio and video,  with no pre movie trailers or warning notice. I use a Dune player (highly recommended) and from the time I selct the movie to watch (I have my own proprietary Librarian modeled after Kalaidescape) the movie starts in about 7 seconds, full 1080p, no compression, 24fps and the correct audio including DTS HD or Master Audio and all the other high end codecs. 

 

You can then throw away everything except the 0000.m2ts file.

 

Hope that helps

 

Contact me off line if you need more help.

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I do what Brit does. Takes more time, but with the right settings it's 90%+ of the video quality and 100% of the audio in about 1/4 the space. When you start looking at 1000+ HD movies, it makes a difference.

 

If you don't want to lose any quality and dont care about all the extras (deleted scenes, making of...) go mkv for the container. More players will play it over m2ts files, and I'll be smaller then the full iso without losing any quality (because you are just changing the file type, not the size).

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How would I go about converting a decrypted Bluray folder structure set into a single *.mkv movie file?

 

I'm worried that if the Bluray collection exceeds +100, I'll need at lease 4 to 5TB to store the lot (which seems to be a lot of space for just 100 movies). Maybe in the long run, and but the time I even reach this number, disk capacity sizes would have increased a lot, and I would of replaced all my existing disks with probably 5 fold capacity disks (pending if it is possible with conventional mechanical platter disks of course).

Again, archiving my dozen Blurays is only going to chew about +150GB of 3.4TB that I have spare now, but for the long term... I don't know what to do. It seems archiving them to ISO is ok for archival sake, it makes sense to do so, keeping all files in a single container, though can you have a simple double-click method to open ISO files which contain a Bluray structure?

I probably won't be able to differentiate between from 100% to 90% video quality in having the Bluray's archived into a single *.mkv file, so this might be the way to go, in terms of costs of space and simplicity. Using Media Player Classic to play the folder Bluray structure helps with some of the Bluray's that I've archived, but is also simpler to double-click on a file and it plays (for the n00b's in my house).

 

Thanks.

 

I do what Brit does. Takes more time, but with the right settings it's 90%+ of the video quality and 100% of the audio in about 1/4 the space. When you start looking at 1000+ HD movies, it makes a difference.

 

If you don't want to lose any quality and dont care about all the extras (deleted scenes, making of...) go mkv for the container. More players will play it over m2ts files, and I'll be smaller then the full iso without losing any quality (because you are just changing the file type, not the size).

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makemkv is what I use. It's takes about 30 min from disk to mkv and it deals with encryption as well. if you already have the decrypted Bluray folder's it does it in about 5-10 min a file. Works on both Window's and Mac, and is currently free in beta (which it has been for at least a year).

 

Just turning your folder's into MKV's does not result in loss of quality, but it allows you to save space by eliminating all the extra stuff you don't want (bonus features, foreign audio tracks, subtitles...). They tend to average between 15-30 GB each.

 

Myself (and it sounds like Brit does as well), I add a step after that and encode the movie using Handbrake. It allows me to trim the black bars off as well as tweak some other settings like interlace. It takes a considerable amount of time (my i7 takes about 4 hours for 2 passes) but allows me to shrink the files down to around 8 GB with very little loss in video quality.

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What are you playing the rips with? If it's a PCH C-200, rip to BDMV folders, not ISO.

If you are playing back on an HTPC, use whatever works with your app.

 

Recoding to a lower quality file is fine if you have a small display (under 50"). If you want real home theater, don't recode anything.

I have 600 1:1 Blu-ray rips on my servers. With today's hard drive prices, each rip costs less than $1 in storage space.

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He was directing the "Recoding to a lower quality..." to me unraided, just changing the container to a MKV doesn't encode anything.

 

@neilt0:

To encode or not is a different question altogether.

 

You have to choose from Speed/Quality/Size. You can only have 2.

 

When I encode them they cost less, around 26 cents. While 1:1 rips are limited to around 1600 (assuming they have their own 40 TB server) encoding them leaves you with a ~5000 limit.

 

With all the processors between your HTPC / Receiver / Projector, it is very difficult to even tell the difference between a 1:1 rip and a well encoded 1080P H.264 MKV. Even on a 120" screen (assuming the rest of your gear is decent). The main difference is the amount of time it takes up.

 

Sound seems to make the larger difference anyways, you don't want to touch the audio files. Let your $5000 audio system earn it's keep.  ;)

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OK, I'm leaning towards encoding the entire Bluray contents of a single movie into a single, high quality video file, using the best codec's to encode the entire video, then place it into a single *.mkv container file.

I use a HTPC, based on Windows x64 and my default media player is Media Player Classic - Homecinema. The HTPC is connected via HDMI to a 50" Panasonic Plasma. In having said this, what is the best way to get a decrypted, full Bluray folder structure, will all it's contents (all video/audio components which make the original Bluray), and using the best tools (possibly free) to encode it, maintain the quality as much as possible, and placing it into a single *.mkv file. File size averages (from the encodes that I've seen, nearly as good as the original), a 1080p Bluray movie has been converted into a 8GB to even a 20GB *.mkv video file (depending on the length of the movie/quality I guess), so I would be happy to lose, no more then half of the original size of the original Bluray, but aiming towards the 8 ~ 10GB mark, if possible. Thoughts/ideas on achieving this?

 

BTW: Thanks to all thus far for your thoughts and suggestions, it's a very interesting topic, and one subject where no one agrees to the same solution :).

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If you're keeping the original disks and just using the server as a file dump, then re-encoding should be fine, as you can re-visit the disks if you upgrade the display and audio setup later.

 

I consider a full remux of just the main movie to .TS (with HD-audio) as at least future proof and saving average probably 30%-40% on keeping the full disk.

 

Cheers,

 

-jj-

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I use makemkv to convert the disk / folders into an mkv. It's free (for now at least) and will let you take all the tracks you want (dts, hd audio, etc...) and put them into a single mkv.

 

Do a few that way and see what you think of the file size. The quality will be the same as the original since all you did was wrap it into a single file.

 

After that, use handbrake. It's free and will encode the movies in any way you'd like. There are literally hundreds of different options to configure. If you want the settings I use, I'll forward them to you but they take a while to encode (I use 2 passes to clean up any artifacts).

 

After that's done I remux the new encoded video file with the original audio files...

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I rip to blu ray folder structure using AnyDVD HD and ClownBD.  Just rip out the main movie and HD audio track.  Clean and simple and can play back on almost anything.  I used to convert to mkv but got tired of running into problems with either the picture or audio.  The convenience of the ease of using blu ray folder vs saving space converting to mkv was a no brainer to me. 

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I tried DVDFab's option to archive a Bluray into single *.mkv, but it ended up creating a *.mkv for every *.m2ts files that the original Bluray had, which isn't my goal, also, reading that DVDFab's 'might' produce audio issues worries me, as I won't watch the movie straight away, and don't really want to go through the hassle of decoding bad archives.

 

Does AutoGK do Bluray decrypted structures? It was good for DVD's.

 

I use DVDFab BlueRay Ripper to rip to a single M2TS file with no compression it just joins the segments together into a single M2TS file.  MakeMKV might work better but when I used DVDFab BlueRay ripper to rip to MKV I would sometimes get audio sync problems.

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I tried DVDFab's option to archive a Bluray into single *.mkv, but it ended up creating a *.mkv for every *.m2ts files that the original Bluray had, which isn't my goal, also, reading that DVDFab's 'might' produce audio issues worries me, as I won't watch the movie straight away, and don't really want to go through the hassle of decoding bad archives.
I've never seen that are you sure you are using the Ripper not the Copier?  I haven't tried it since version 7.5.  I use version 8 now but since my SageTV extenders have NO problem reading M2TS files I haven't tried with MKV's since.  My rips of Stargate Universe in MKV are fine.  Just had problems with the Original StarTrek Series BlueRays so switched to M2TS.  It is faster going to M2TS as well although not by a large amount.  DVDFab doesn't have to adjust the streams to a new container just copy to the M2TS file minus the headers for each segment.

 

Does AutoGK do Bluray decrypted structures? It was good for DVD's.

I barely used it so I do not know.
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I too like to keep things simple and high quality.  I use AnyDVD HD to rip the whole thing copy-protecion- and region-free, then I simply copy the appropriate .m2ts stream right to my server.  Rename it appropriately once it's there.  No fuss.

 

Some movies are divided into more than one stream and stitched on playback.  That can be handled by any number of tools.  If I remember rightly, last time I used tsMuxer to stitch two .m2ts files together with great results.  No recompression, so no quality loss over what has already been lost in the BD mastering anyway.

 

As for the space it takes - well, yeah... each disc can be from 15GB to 50GB.  So my method isn't really great for saving space. 

 

But, some quick math: 19 drives X 2TB = 38TB of space for, oh about $2000.  That's perhaps 760 to over 1000 BD movies archived (assuming you've already got and paid for the hardware to hold those 20 hard drives). If you still need to buy the hardware and UnRAID licence, maybe tack on another $1500 to $2000 depending on your needs.

 

At $20 to $30 per BD to buy you're spending $15 200 to $30 000 on the movies anyway.

 

Taking it in perspective, hard drive space is CHEAP.  No sense worrying about it too much, methinks!

;)

 

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Hello ,  i use a mix of AnyDVD HD Lifetime license ( you can still buy this license but will be removed from sale soon ,life time License)

Blurip is not bad and i found no real issues with this free and works well once setup. will give you files about 18 to 30 gig depends on the disk.  now makemkv is not bad  few clicks and off you go, can read iso's and disks dvd part will be free but when out of beta the bluray part will require you to pay for a key.

 

i use network media players they can play them no issue in iso, mkv or file structures.

 

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A Nice simple way is to use tsmuxer to remux the bluray so you basically strip everything and end up with just a video and audio track which you can put in MKV this is good if you dont mind loosing all the menus and extras. This saves a little space.

 

Most of my blurays iv done this with have ended up between 15-20gig

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  • 5 years later...

For the record Cyberlink Powerdvd Ultra Edition plays bluray and the iso images using Virtual Drive (Formerly freeware by Slysoft / Elaborate Bytes....unfortunately they no longer exist, but if anyone needs a copy I still got it ;-).

 

I use DVDFAB to rip full ISO images of my Blurays for archival purposes.  Good stuff.

 

That is all

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