www.makemkv.com

Greetings!

I've used MakeMKV a few times over the last couple of years for some one-off ripping. I recently decided to rip my entire Bluray/DVD collection to my Unraid server so I could use Emby to serve to all my devices. I see that the MakeMKV docker supports parallel ripping, so was thinking about installing an extra DVD burner (Samsung SH-224FB) I had lying around to my Unraid server to share the load with my Bluray burner.

Before installing the DVD burner in my Unraid server, I installed it in my primary workstation to verify that it was still functioning and that it worked with MakeMKV. I was able to successfully rip three DVDs, however, I noticed that the read rate never got anywhere close to the device's advertised read speed (16x). Over the course of ripping those 3 DVDs, it peaked at ~3.5x, but seemed to average between 1.9x and 2.8x.

So, this leads me to the following questions:
- Is MakeMKV's average read rate of 1.9-2.8x for a DVD burner normal?
- If that is not normal, how do I go about increasing the read rate?

Note: The DVD burner is connected to a SATA 3 port on the motherboard, and MakeMKV is writing the output file to a SATA 3 SSD.

TL;DR
When using MakeMKV, should I see a sustained read rate relatively near the DVD burner's (e.g. Samsung SH-224FB) advertised read speed (16x)?

Thanks!
Paul

Read speed depends on how fast the drive can pick up the data from the disk, which also depends on where on the disk it resides. The further you get from the hub (beginning of the disk), the more bits per rotation, and the higher the potential read speed. Disks with lots of short titles will rarely get to the advertised speed.

Thanks for the quick response and explanation Woodstock!

I had seen some other posts in the forums pointing out something similar re: where the data resides on the disk. The three movies I ripped had varying file sizes for the primary movie; 2.8GB, 3.7GB, and 4.4GB. So, I would have expected some variation on the read rate between each disc, but they all would up being very similar (1.9-2.8x).

I'm going to try ripping those same DVDs with my Bluray burner (WH16NS40) to see if I get any better results.