Backup vs MKV files

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jtenenbaum
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Nov 15, 2021 2:48 pm

Backup vs MKV files

Post by jtenenbaum »

Hello, I just started ripping my blu-ray collection using MakeMKV with an external drive and encountered the common challenges ripping uhd blu-rays with 3 or more layers. All the tips from you guys (clean disk, decrease ripping speed etc.) have helped me rip every disk succesfully, although I‘m just through the first 50 disks so far. Thanks to everyone for the helpful advice! What I noticed though was that often when the rip to mkv files would fail repeatedly, doing an encrypted backup of the disk first and then ripping from the backup folder to mkv files always worked. I wondered why the same disk would fail in a direct rip to mkv file but work flawlessly if backed up first and then extracted to mkv files? I understand that there is a difference between playing a blu-ray on a standalone blu-ray player and ripping it to a hard drive. But from a technical point of view what is the difference between backing up and ripping to mkv files within makemkv itself?
MovieLuver
Posts: 23
Joined: Sun Nov 14, 2021 7:13 pm

Re: Backup vs MKV files

Post by MovieLuver »

What Blu Ray reader are you using ?

What ripping speed are you using ?
dcoke22
Posts: 2560
Joined: Wed Jul 22, 2020 11:25 pm

Re: Backup vs MKV files

Post by dcoke22 »

I bet a decrypted backup would work just as well.

It has been my experience that trying to rip the same problematic disc in the same drive sometimes produces different results. Reading from an optical disc seems like an inherently error prone process and sometimes you get more lucky than other times. By that I mean the laser light is reflected off the pattern burned/pressed into the disc substrate. A detector reads the reflected light and determines if a reflection was a zero or a one. All sorts of things can alter the outcome… dust in the air, slight differences in alignment of the read head or the focus of the laser, and of course, actual dirt or oil on the disc itself.

From the perspective of MakeMKV, I don't think there's a difference between making a backup of a disc or making a .mkv of an individual title on a disc. In both cases, MakeMKV is trying to produce an exact, correct copy of what's on the disc. In the case of a backup, it is doing that for everything on the disc. For an individual title, it is doing that for just the segments that make up that title.

Personally, my workflow with MakeMKV is to always make a decrypted backup of a disc and then make .mkv files from the backup.
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