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Ripping a Blu Ray
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phkc070408
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Jan 26, 2014, 10:44 AM
 
Good Morning All:

I bought a blu ray and I want to rip it to my MacBook Pro, so I can put it on my iPad. My MacBook Pro is a late 2009 model. I bought an external Pioneer BDXL drive to hook up to my computer. The External drive has one port and comes with a cable that splits and has two USB plugs on it, and you plug it into two USB ports on your computer (of course you don't use a USB hub).

I downloaded the MakeMKV software to rip its contents. Unfortunately after I rip it, the video is extremely choppy. The Audio is fine.

I thought it would be a hardware issue, aka USB not being able to import the data of the blu ray fast enough, but when I watch the Blu Ray right off of the disk, it comes through perfect.

One note: The ripping process takes less than 1/4 the time of the length of the movie to rip. Is the software ripping the movie too fast? Is there a way to slow this down?

Thank's in advance all.
     
Ham Sandwich
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Jan 26, 2014, 07:50 PM
 
I've been down this "blu-ray" road before (like I've researched this issue for 30 hours cumulatively over the years). I have yet to get "blu-ray" to work which is a shame, since Apple won't support it. I'm actually amazed that you were even able to rip that much of the movie. Best solution I've found that guaranteed works is to buy (legit.) software for Windows, rip on a PC, then transfer the file to your Mac.
     
mduell
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Jan 26, 2014, 08:55 PM
 
Probably just lousy MKV playback software or a slow Mac.

Blu-ray ripping with MakeMKV should be about 1/2 to 1/5 the length of the movie.

For iPad compatibility you'll have to transcode with with HandBrake or similar from the MKV file, which will take several times the length of the movie typically.
     
angelmb
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Jan 28, 2014, 03:25 AM
 
I used to rely on Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper which worked fine here.

Mac BlurayRipper Pro, no longer in development, is freeā€¦ if you can find it somewhere. Albeit it is not going to work with any recent, less new, Blu-ray releases.

Aurora Mac Blu-ray Copy, (not the player) is free as well. Haven't tried it though. Not sure how legit is the company, its Blu-ray player looks like Macgo's Mac Bluray Player by any other name and skin. :-/
     
Cold Warrior
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Jan 28, 2014, 08:26 AM
 
Is there ever a time when mkv isn't the crappiest container? Use handbrake to go mkv to mp4. It's an extra step, but any step away from mkv is a good one.
     
Gankdawg
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Jan 28, 2014, 09:59 AM
 
I use Aurora Blu-ray Copy and it works good. Ripping a Blu-ray seems slow but I don't know if that's a function of Aurora, the amount of data being copied (end result is an ISO of around 50GB), my external USB drive, or USB (drive uses USB 2.0).

I use Blu-ray Player to watch movies. I think I paid $40 for it and it works good. A few features aren't done but it's never crashed on me.
     
angelmb
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Jan 28, 2014, 03:43 PM
 
Originally Posted by Gankdawg View Post
I use Aurora Blu-ray Copy and it works good. Ripping a Blu-ray seems slow but I don't know if that's a function of Aurora, the amount of data being copied (end result is an ISO of around 50GB), my external USB drive, or USB (drive uses USB 2.0).
That's my experience as well with a different software and an external LG USB2 drive.

I use Blu-ray Player to watch movies. I think I paid $40 for it and it works good. A few features aren't done but it's never crashed on me.
Ditto. And it finally got Blu-ray Menu support and region-free Blu-ray playback.
     
mduell
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Jan 30, 2014, 06:16 AM
 
Originally Posted by Cold Warrior View Post
Is there ever a time when mkv isn't the crappiest container? Use handbrake to go mkv to mp4. It's an extra step, but any step away from mkv is a good one.
Feature support is the big one, particularly audio and subs. MP4 has no real support for any bitmap subs (there are non-standard implementations for VOBSUB, nada for PGS) and limited support for text subs (timed text only). MP4 also doesn't support DTS audio or any of the big HD/lossless formats. And of course no support for any new/emerging video codec.
     
P
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Jan 30, 2014, 07:59 AM
 
Originally Posted by mduell View Post
Feature support is the big one, particularly audio and subs. MP4 has no real support for any bitmap subs (there are non-standard implementations for VOBSUB, nada for PGS) and limited support for text subs (timed text only). MP4 also doesn't support DTS audio or any of the big HD/lossless formats. And of course no support for any new/emerging video codec.
I don't know about subs, but MP4 certainly supports both DTS and DTS-MA. It also supports Enhanced AC3, which is the same as Dolby Digital Plus.

The 'MP4' Registration Authority

I know for a fact that I've used Handbrake to put DTS in an MP4.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
mduell
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Feb 1, 2014, 12:02 PM
 
Sorry, you're right about DTS. Apple's iOS devices don't support DTS in MP4, but the container in general supports it.
     
phkc070408  (op)
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Feb 7, 2014, 02:54 AM
 
OK, I used MakeMKV to rip the disks and used Handbrake to convert them to mp4. The funny thing is that the shorter clips (inder 1GB / about 3-4" long) convert into mp4 and play fine on Quicktime.

The main clip, about 15GB, 1'30", converts to m4v. This isn't a problem, since it plays when I only convert a small portion of the mkv file, but when I convert the whole thing, it won't play on either Quicktime or VLC. Is there a time / file size restriction for an mp4 or m4v? It converts as one large file.

One note, I tried to convert the mkv file to mp4 instead, and it did exactly the same thing.
     
reader50
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Feb 7, 2014, 02:38 PM
 
4 GB is a file restriction of older file systems, requiring file size pointers bigger than 32 bits. Some older player software may have mimicked the max file size of the filesystem, but this shouldn't apply to anything made in the last ~10 years.

Does the .mkv version play in VLC? I disagree with the comments above that MKV files are to be avoided for some reason. MKV is a modern container format, and has nothing to do with the video or audio quality within.
     
mduell
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Feb 7, 2014, 03:02 PM
 
Originally Posted by phkc070408 View Post
OK, I used MakeMKV to rip the disks and used Handbrake to convert them to mp4. The funny thing is that the shorter clips (inder 1GB / about 3-4" long) convert into mp4 and play fine on Quicktime.

The main clip, about 15GB, 1'30", converts to m4v. This isn't a problem, since it plays when I only convert a small portion of the mkv file, but when I convert the whole thing, it won't play on either Quicktime or VLC. Is there a time / file size restriction for an mp4 or m4v? It converts as one large file.

One note, I tried to convert the mkv file to mp4 instead, and it did exactly the same thing.
The MP4 vs M4V difference is a courtesy to you done by HB: if a file contains AC3 audio, chapters, or subtitles it has to have the M4V extension to work with Apple products/software. Arbitrary hassle created by Apple.

The longer clip may be over 4GB output, which are unplayable unless you check the "large file size" box in HB before encoding. Newer builds of HB (the nightly) no longer require this box to be checked, they do the same thing automatically based on output size.
     
phkc070408  (op)
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Feb 8, 2014, 12:07 AM
 
The longer clip may be over 4GB output, which are unplayable unless you check the "large file size" box in HB before encoding. Newer builds of HB (the nightly) no longer require this box to be checked, they do the same thing automatically based on output size.
That was exactly my problem!!!!!! Thank you!!!
     
   
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