www.makemkv.com

After spending the last 24 hours reading about hacking Libredrives my head is spinning. There is so much piecemeal information floating around (and not just on this site) that it's like a thick cloud of dust. I have also searched for the terms "UHD" and "Libredrive" on https://www.makemkv.com/faq and there are zero hits. I'd be really grateful if someone could help me confirm my understanding of some stuff...

When ripping an encrypted UHD disc using Libredrive it is my understanding that you end up with a copy of the encrypted content in a .mkv container which is essentially the same size as it was on the BR disc, which could be ~100GB. I also assume that if you wanted to compress this content you would have to decrypt it and I believe MakeMKV can do this using the "keys" method. So basically using Libredrive is not a replacement for the keys method, it's just a way of copying UHD content from a plastic surface and onto a magnetic (or solid-state) one. Is this correct? Assuming yes...

What do people typically do with a UHD .mkv file? Do they compress it, or store it as-is? Obviously storing a bunch of 100GB files is going to get expensive.

Thanks in advance.

Leave it as is no point ripping UHD only to compress it and most programs do not keep the HDR or at least not properly.

viewtopic.php?f=19&t=18856 is a good place to start to understand what LibreDrive is. I haven't had any difficulty with keys since MakeMKV manages that in the background and I'm rarely ripping a UHD in its first week of availability.

The resulting MKV file from ripping a UHD will be big. Figure around 75GB +/-.

I make FLAC audio MKVs and I put them on a Plex server. I do not transcode them (other than the audio) to make them smaller. It seems most UHDs have some kind of HDR information. Most transcoding tools (Handbrake, etc.) can't always deal correctly with this HDR data and as such the resulting file usually looks incorrect in some way. (Undoubtedly, the tools will get better over time.) If you have a 4k, HDR capable setup, many players can play the UHD ripped MKV file well enough.

My Plex runs on a Raspberry Pi 4, connected via gigabit ethernet, to an AppleTV 4K connected to my 4K HDR TV. The Plex app on my ATV can play HDR stuff. Dolby Vision content is 'downgraded' to only HDR, but Dolby Vision player support is thin at the moment. (The most recent Nvidia Shield is probably the best bet.) Again this is something I expect to get better over time. As for storage, I have an approximately $110, 5TB portable USB 3.0 drive plugged into the RPi to hold content. The storage isn't very fast, but it is fast enough to play UHD rips over ethernet via Plex DirectPlay. I don't have all that many UHDs, so this works well enough for me.