Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[haggis999]

I made my first attempt this evening to use MC 18 for ripping and playing both DVD and Blu-ray discs, but a couple of issues have arisen.

• If I place a DVD disc in the drive of my Windows 7 PC I can play it via MC. I can also rip DVDs and play the resulting files, using default MC settings. However, the 'Options/CD, DVD & BD' menu only provides options for ripping CDs. Where are the options for ripping DVDs and BDs?
• Blu-ray discs put in the disc drive of my PC are recognised correctly by MC and when I try to play them, the elapsed time display at the top of the screen shows the disc being read in a normal manner but I get nothing but a black display. I have got this same result from 3 Blu-ray disks. What do I need to do to make a Blu-ray picture appear?

Some guidance would be appreciated.

David

[6233638]

You will need to run decryption software such as AnyDVD HD to play Blu-rays inside Media Center: http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Blu-ray#Requirements

As for DVD/Blu-ray ripping, I think they just copy the entire directory structure to the location specified in Tools > Options > File Location
Personally I use MakeMKV to rip DVD/Blu-ray to MKV files rather than store a copy of the whole disk.

[haggis999]

Thanks. I will check out AnyDVD.

I had assumed some form of conversion was required, analogous to ripping an audio CD to a FLAC file. If all MC did was to copy the files from the DVD, that would explain the lack of options and the speed of the rip. What advantage is provided by creating an MKV file?

David

[Andyd]

I own AnyDVDHD and it works great.
Another option you may like is MakeMKV
http://www.makemkv.com/
This will rip the movie with any selected audio format or subtitles with zero loss in quality to an mkv file.

If you are not concerned about menus and extras then this is the way to go... although you can also rip the extras as individual files.

[6233638]

There are a number of advantages (and what some people consider disadvantages) with MKV files.

With DVDs or Blu-rays, you can rip only the main feature, and avoid storing all the extra content on your PC. (you can rip that too, if you wanted though)
Similarly, if there are multiple audio tracks for the film, you can rip only the most relevant one - for example the English DTS-HD track, and not the dubbed versions or the lower quality Dolby Digital tracks etc.
And if the film has a PCM audio track, you can convert that to multichannel FLAC, which is losslessly compressed, rather than being uncompressed.

This can add up to savings of anything from 5-25GB for each Blu-ray disc. (I find it's about 10GB on average)

Because you are only ripping the main feature to an MKV file, it also means that you don't have to deal with menus for DVDs and the film starts right away. (Blu-ray menus don't work in MC right now anyway)
Similarly, you can rip a TV show so that each individual episode is its own file, and you can access them directly without the menus.


One of the disadvantages with MKVs though, is that you actually have to do a little work when ripping them. You can rip to ISO with AnyDVD, or just rip the file structure off the disc with Media Center without having to make a decision. When ripping to MKV it will often give you a list of titles and audio tracks to choose from when creating the MKV file. There are things you can do to help automate this, but it's still a bit more work than simply ripping the disc as-is.

[haggis999]

... if there are multiple audio tracks for the film, you can rip only the most relevant one - for example the English DTS-HD track, and not the dubbed versions or the lower quality Dolby Digital tracks etc.
And if the film has a PCM audio track, you can convert that to multichannel FLAC, which is losslessly compressed, rather than being uncompressed.

Because you are only ripping the main feature to an MKV file, it also means that you don't have to deal with menus for DVDs and the film starts right away. (Blu-ray menus don't work in MC right now anyway)

Thanks for the useful information. I had already looked at the Wikipedia entry for MKV files and it was not as helpful as I would have hoped.

I have reasons for wanting to rip both the multichannel and stereo audio tracks. If you no longer have access to a normal DVD/BD menu, how do you switch between these tracks?

I have experimented with using MC 18 as a video DLNA server and my Oppo BDP-95 as the player, with mixed results. The Oppo plays DVDs, but not Blu-rays, which just generate the message "The player does not support playback of this file" (which seems odd, as the Oppo can play Blu-ray discs). The subtitles on DVDs are almost unreadable as the text characters have been made so bold as to overlap one another. Another issue is that I no longer seem to have access to individual chapters, which is an important requirement for classical music DVDs that might contain more than one work.

David

[6233638]

I have reasons for wanting to rip both the multichannel and stereo audio tracks. If you no longer have access to a normal DVD/BD menu, how do you switch between these tracks?

You can keep as much or as little of the original as you want, if you want to have the Stereo & Multichannel English tracks, but not the non-English tracks for example. Or the original language + English dub.

Personally I am happy with just using the highest quality English track (or the original Language if the film is not English) and letting Media Center handle downmixing if I want to listen to it in Stereo.

You can switch between tracks by right-clicking the video. I don't know about changing them via a remote if you are using one though. (perhaps someone else could comment on that)

I have experimented with using MC 18 as a video DLNA server and my Oppo BDP-95 as the player, with mixed results. The Oppo plays DVDs, but not Blu-rays, which just generate the message "The player does not support playback of this file".

MKV may also solve this problem for you. I'm not sure though, as I don't really use DLNA for video.


On a related note, I just got around to ripping two seasons of a show to MKV, which was 8 Blu-ray discs in total. Doing this and stripping out the extras/language tracks I didn't want reduced the size by 50GB. (185GB rather than 235GB)

[haggis999]

You can switch between tracks by right-clicking the video. I don't know about changing them via a remote if you are using one though. (perhaps someone else could comment on that)
MKV may also solve this problem for you. I'm not sure though, as I don't really use DLNA for video.

On a related note, I just got around to ripping two seasons of a show to MKV, which was 8 Blu-ray discs in total. Doing this and stripping out the extras/language tracks I didn't want reduced the size by 50GB. (185GB rather than 235GB)

Those disc space savings are significant, so I will certainly give MakeMKV a try.

The Oppo BDP-95 is not a DLNA renderer and so I can't 'push' anything to it from MC. I have to use the Oppo menus to 'pull' media files from MC. Right-clicking anything in MC is therefore not possible in this scenario. However, I have since found that my Oppo remote permits the selection of alternate audio tracks.

Do you only play video on the same PC where you are running MC?

David

[6233638]

Do you only play video on the same PC where you are running MC?

Yes, I find PC-based playback much more convenient and flexible than stand-alone devices, so I have HDMI and USB wired through the walls and my PC tower located elsewhere.

Any time I have tried to use a stand-alone device for video/audio playback, I've always run into issues with them not supporting a specific format or similar problems.

[haggis999]

Yes, I find PC-based playback much more convenient and flexible than stand-alone devices, so I have HDMI and USB wired through the walls and my PC tower located elsewhere.

Any time I have tried to use a stand-alone device for video/audio playback, I've always run into issues with them not supporting a specific format or similar problems.

I'm not sure I quite understand. Are you using the PC monitor to view ripped DVD/BD discs or have you connected your PC to a television screen via HDMI?

David

EDIT:  I have now ripped a Blu-ray using MakeMKV. The resulting MKV file plays successfully on my Oppo player via DLNA or when the MKV file is played from an external hard disk connected directly to my Oppo via USB. However, in both cases, the subtitles (which are selectable via the Oppo remote) do not appear on screen.

[6233638]

I'm not sure I quite understand. Are you using the PC monitor to view ripped DVD/BD discs or have you connected your PC to a television screen via HDMI?

PC to TV via HDMI, with a USB extender run through the walls as well, so I can connect up devices to the PC.

EDIT:  I have now ripped a Blu-ray using MakeMKV. The resulting MKV file plays successfully on my Oppo player via DLNA or when the MKV file is played from an external hard disk connected directly to my Oppo via USB. However, in both cases, the subtitles (which are selectable via the Oppo remote) do not appear on screen.

I'm glad to hear that it is at least partially working. Unfortunately I'm not too familiar with the Oppo, and the manual doesn't seem to go into detail about the file types/formats supported, so I'm not sure what the problem is.

EDIT: Actually, with MakeMKV, try only selecting the main subtitle and not the "English (forced)" subtitle for example.
And sometimes it helps to check that you are selecting the right subtitles for a film. (though subtitle files are small, so there's no harm in saving them all)

Sometimes you will have:

• Subtitles for non-English parts of a film.
• Regular subtitles for all dialog.
• Descriptive subtitles/closed captioning. (dialog + descriptions for sounds)
• Subtitles for the commentary track.

But generally my experience has been that the "(forced)" tracks are useless.

[rec head]

I use MakeMKV and it is a great program. The only thing that I can't stand and it really isn't MakeMKV's fault is when it comes to ripping TV shows. You have to rename all of the files so that they get tagged properly and even then they don't always get tagged right. The problem is that the files on the BD aren't always in episode order. So the first track that you rip might be the 3rd episode. I find this to be a huge pain.

To name the episodes I first put the disc into the standalone player and go to the first scene. Then I take a picture of that scene with my hand held up and fingers indicating the episode. Now you need to look at the first scene of your .mkv's and re-name the episodes. Much has been written about how to name episodes so that they get tagged properly and you can google it. Last time I did it I had a hard time with MC not saving the data I just entered when I was renaming and that added to the frustration. I was probably doing something wrong but that was several versions ago anyway. I'm open to hearing other's methods for checking and naming episodes.

I have actually just started ripping DVD TV shows using MC and I'm fine with having the menus instead of the episodes individually listed just so I don't need to re-name them. I'm thinking about buying AnyDVDHD and doing the same with BD's.

[haggis999]

I don't mind having to rename MKV files but I still have issues with the lack of subtitles on my existing kit.

I know that the subtitles were successfully copied to my MKV file, as they work when I play this file on my PC using MC. However, the following unofficial FAQ for the Oppo BDP-93 (which has the same video components as the BDP-95) tells me that the Oppo doesn't support PGS/SUP subtitles when playing an MKV file.

http://watershade.net/wmcclain/BDP-93-faq.html

Apparently, there is another container format called M2TS that does support such subtitles and also works with DLNA, but there is a possibility that it doesn't support chapters. Grrrr.

I don't currently have any HDMI cable long enough to stretch from my TV to my PC to try driving it directly via MC. Also, my PC doesn't have an HDMI output. It's a Dell Precision Workstation with a Nvidia FX 1800 graphics card. This card has a Displayport output. I believe you can get cables to convert Displayport to HDMI but I have no idea if such an output carries audio as well as video.

David