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[tony359]

Hi there,
My first post here. I am evaluating JRiver, installed it yesterday.
I have a few questions.

- All my movies are ISO on my NAS. I could play them, however JRiver mounts the ISO under Windows and - as I've set the autoplay to ON - it plays it. When I stop the playback the ISO stays mounted, which means that if I want to play it again by pressing "play" on the thumbnail I have to unmount it first. Also Windows shows me the content of the mounted drive.

Is there a way to handle this process a little better?

- Is there a way to slow down a Blu Ray drive so it does not make noise when playing back?
- Is there a way to add a 'physical location' note such as which HDD it is recorded on - or maybe some personal notes - on the title?

I'm sure other questions will come - thank you for your help in the meantime!
Tony

[Spike1000]

ISO files are quite 'clunky' to deal with as they aren't very flexible. Have you experimented/looked into MakeMKV?

Spike

[tony359]

Thank you.

Those are 1:1 ISO, I don't want to compromise on quality. I've experimented on H265, very good but not perfect.
Too bad, I like JRiver but the ISOs are really badly handled.

[blgentry]

MakeMKV makes perfect copies that do NOT affect the quality of the video or audio in any way.  All MakeMKV does is remove the encryption from the selected Titles and saves them as individual MKVs.

ISOs have a certain appeal because they are "perfect copies" of the optical disks in digital form.  But ISOs also have ALL of the problems of optical discs:

* You have to sit through the forced trailers, forced warnings, intro sequences, etc.
*  You have to use the menus of the DVD to get to playing back the movie.
*  ISOs are STILL ENCRYPTED!  So you must use some form of DVD decryption in order to watch your videos.  With MC this is kind of hidden for DVDs. But for BluRays, you definitely need a third party on the fly decryption program like Red Fox (Any DVD).
* As you've noted ISOs must be mounted and unmounted, which is clunky.

With MKVs, you eliminated ALL of the above problems.  No menus.  No forced anything.  No encryption.  MC plays back MKVs natively without any "helper" applications.  You just get to play your movie directly every time.  MKV also handles multiple audio tracks and multiple subtitle tracks, which you can select directly, as opposed to using DVD menus to do so.

The only down side to MKVs is that your DVD/BD is no longer a single file with everything in it:  Main feature, extras, etc.  This can be a GOOD thing actually.  If you aren't interested in all of the extras, you just don't rip them.  If you don't want 5 different audio tracks with languages you will never listen to you don't rip them.

ISOs are an anachronism as far as I'm concerned.  You can, of course, form your own opinion.  Just know that MKVs, ripped with MakeMVK have 100% of the quality of the audio and video.  There is no extra compression involved.  It's the original format.

Brian.

[tony359]

uhm... very good point. Indeed I remembered after posting that I could make a lossless MKV as well.
My ISO are unencripted and with just the movie on it - they're copies of my physical BD's so I can access them all from my NAS. Converting them to an MKV container should be a simple task.

I guess MKV is the way to go. Thank you for your input then.

[tony359]

Hi,

I tried converting into a lossless MKV but all my players - including JRiver - take MINUTES to seek in the content while the ISO is instantaneous. The file is 20-30GB, could it depend on the software I used to convert or what?

Can anybody help on the remaining two questions please?

- Is there a way to slow down a Blu Ray drive so it does not make noise when playing back?
- Is there a way to add a 'physical location' note such as which HDD it is recorded on - or maybe some personal notes - on the title?

[tij]

What you use to convert ISO to MKV? MakeMKV? Handbrake?

Where are your MKV files are located? Where your ISO files located?

[tony359]

Hi. I used DVDFab. Both are located on my NAS (Gigabit Ethernet). However on my main PC I had the same issue with MPC-HC and VLC and the MKV was located on my internal HDD.

Edit: No worries. Using MakeMKV made a perfectly playable file, no delays at all. Thanks.

[scottm_dj]

These days, there's only one reason ISO is needed---it's the only way to play back DVD-Audio discs other than the original disc.  You can't extract the tracks like can with an SACD as it uses a bizarre modification of the VTS folder (I think ATS) that nothing recognizes.   Unfortunately JRiver aces SACD-ISO, but will never play DVD-Audio ISO.  If it ever does, please let me know!

I'm kicking myself from updating my Cambridge Audio 752BD, as originally it could play ISO.