Feature Request: Backup directly to ISO

[VA1DER]

It would be a handy feature if MakeMKV could, when it creates a backup, create it right to an ISO.

[MartyMcNuts]

It would be a handy feature if MakeMKV could, when it creates a backup, create it right to an ISO.

You can for DVD. For BD you can output to a decrypted folder then use ImgBurn to make an ISO from the derypted folder.

[VA1DER]

I'm very aware of how to burn this. Just in likely 99.9% of cases, the backup feature will be used to go to an ISO. Either for someone wanting BDISO or to burn to physical disc. It would be nice if it happened in one step in MakeMKV. Or at least have the option.

[dcoke22]

Personally I don't want an .iso and I'm annoyed that DVD backups automatically create them.

I don't want the disc structure… I want the content in .mkv files.

I think it is unlikely that 99.9% of people making backups want an .iso, although I'm not opposed to it as an option.

Why do you want an .iso?

[flojo]

Personally I don't want an .iso and I'm annoyed that DVD backups automatically create them.

I'm hesitant to rip DVDs because of this :-/. I have a little 3 or 4 line script that can rip and extract them, but I still don't like it because you still need that intermediate .iso file :-/.

FYI, 7z can extract them (UDF 1.5), plain old '7z x dvd.iso' works fine.

I have a convoluted script on my NAS that mounts 'movie.zip' files and shares them via NFS but I stopped using it about a year ago and simply use the file tree.

FWIW, if you're desperate to have a *.iso at some future point you can create a .iso, create a 2% par2 archive, then later on use that .par2 archive to reconstruct the .iso from the tree structure. I've tried it with Blu-Ray and it works expectedly, but I've only seriously used it with backup up CDs (to return to single.wav/cue from mka/flac). Using par2 seems kind of pointless but on Linux you can't simply create a UDF 2.5 .iso so if you do load up Windows to repeatedly create the same .iso, using par2 lets you load the VM only once. Although you'd still have to do it once :-/, but maybe the approach might be worth remembering.

[msquared]

It would be a handy feature if MakeMKV could, when it creates a backup, create it right to an ISO.

I second this wholeheartedly! Lots of reasons to prefer an ISO including "it just works better" out of the box. It works better with DLNA servers, Smart TV built-in Media Players, VLC for Android (which doesn't actually support opening BDMV folders), and lots of other baseline, no frills media setups that normal people have.

[VA1DER]

Personally I don't want an .iso and I'm annoyed that DVD backups automatically create them.

I'm hesitant to rip DVDs because of this :-/. I have a little 3 or 4 line script that can rip and extract them, but I still don't like it because you still need that intermediate .iso file :-/.

If you want individual extracted videos, why back up the disc and then extract them from the ISO? You realize you can just click on the big drive icon in the middle and it will let you select individual videos to extract, right?

I can see little value in doing a backup and not going directly to ISO. I'm happy to hear a use case where one would want to back up an entire disc and NOT go to ISO.

[dcoke22]

For every kind of disc my first step is to put the disc in my drive and let MakeMKV create a decrypted backup of the disc. Reading from an optical disc is slow and by creating the backup I can do all the optical disc reading at once without having to pay attention to it. If the backup succeeds I know the disc is good and I can process it at my leisure. If the backup fails and I can't get a clean backup I can replace the disc in the return window. Sometimes I can't get around to processing a disc in a timely manner but making a backup is easy and takes almost none of my time. This is especially true for TV shows that are multiple discs.

Once I move on to processing a disc I take advantage of the ability to play a blu-ray's .m2ts files to help figure out what all the 'extras' are on the disc. I get most things labeled correctly in MakeMKV which minimizes how much metadata I have to fix after-the-fact using mkvpropedit. The goal is to end up with a set of .mkv files with good metadata that represents the content of a disc; both the movie and any extras. Creating .mkv files from a backup goes much faster than creating them directly from the optical disc. This makes it much easier to process multiple discs, especially handy when working on a TV show.

I don't work with DVDs all that often, but when I do I sometimes end up having to create .mkv files multiple times. Since it is hard to figure what things are on a disc in advance, it is often easier to create .mkv files for everything, sort through the resulting mess, and redo anything that can't properly be fixed with mkvpropedit.

In the case of discs with playlist obfuscation, I note which title I ripped and I keep the backup until I've watched the movie to verify I got the right playlist. If I didn't, it is easy and fast to try again from the backup. You can also manually brute force your way through playlist obfuscation by playing the various .m2ts files from the backup (this is annoying but occasionally handy if the right answer isn't on the forum already).

Once the .mkv files are in a good shape, they're pushed to my NAS and added to my Plex. The backup is deleted and the disc is put on a shelf.