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I just finished ripping my Watchmen Blu-ray disk to my hard drive and the file size is about 26GB. Is that normal?

Anyway the problem I am having when try to open it with VLC is that I only get audio, and no video. When I open it with Quicktime and zoom it out, I get both video and audio, however, the video stutters all the time, only the audio s smooth. Does anyone know why or know how I can fix it? Thank you!

I am using a 2.6 Ghz MacBook Pro. Is this the only mac blu-ray disk ripping software available for us so far? mactheripper and handbrake didnt seem to recognize the disk.

Try Plex for your playback. VLC and Quicktime are pretty weak playback apps.

Dude, you are a genius, you don't know how much I appreciate it. Both Plex and XBMC work! How come Qucktime, VLC and FrontRow don't tho? Also, is it normal for the file to be 27.6GB? I mean 4 of those and I'm out more then 100GB :S

Thanks again!

I don't know why Plex is better, but I had the same problem and it fixed it for me too.

In terms of file size, my Transformers rip was 32GB. I'm pretty sure that BD has a capacity of 50GB, so this is probably typical.

Plex and XBMC use ffmpeg for playback, which is about the most efficient app out there (besides the special version of Quicktime that came with the Apple TV Take 2 software). You can knock those Blu-rays down with Handbrake. Be sure to use the current snapshot of HB, put it in an MKV container so that you can have both AC3 and DTS passthrough, and bump the Constant Quality up to about 65%.

I just did a rip of The Dark Knight (26GB+ file) and I've noticed that in certain high action scenes, the video stutters slightly (enough to annoy). I'm running Plex on a Mac Mini 2Ghz with 4GB of RAM outputting to a Panasonic 1080p 42" TV. One thing I did notice was that my previous bluray rips (The Last Samurai and House of Flying Daggers) both had the letterbox black rows but the Dark Knight rip did not. Any thoughts on both these items?

You might want to look at these:
http://blog.adamnash.com/2008/01/24/yes ... -mac-mini/
http://forums.plexapp.com/lofiversion/i ... t3369.html
http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php?showtopic=4108

Thanks for the links. I'll take a look and let you know if any of this helps. I'm currently using a DVI-HDMI adapter so that's not the issue. I'll try fiddling around with the resolution settings and see what the issue is. The weird thing is that both of the previous rips I did playback with zero problems and both have the letterbox rows. Just can't seem to figure out why Dark Knight is different (maybe newer movie?). I've got some newer blurays I'll rip later (Watchmen, Taken, 300, etc). If similar issues come up, I'll let everyone know.

I *think* with Watchmen, you'll see you have the same issue and if so then I think know what the issue is. But I'll hold off until we hear back with the results.

Thanks NomadCF. So just did 300 with no problems. Nice easy rip with no issues. Also did Iron Man (a pretty recent movie) with no problems at all. Will try Watchmen this weekend and will report. What were you thinking preliminarily?

Well from playing around with a newer mac mini at my work, I'm finding that Blurays with profiles of 4.1. That are really using the 4.1 for it's +50 Mbit/s seem to be the only thing that causes it to shutter. And that your 1st movie (batman) was using the +50 Mbit/s, But your others weren't.

A very good theory. I'll let you know whether it happens on Watchmen, as well. How do you tell which movies are encoded with the 4.1 profile? I'll try my theory out on some others in my collection.

So I just did the rip for Watchmen and didn't have any issues. The movie ripped just fine with no stuttering and even had the black letter box rows. I did notice that in the MakeMKV menu where you choose which files to rip, when you uncollapse the main movie file, it says "Video Vc-1" (See attachment). Not sure if that means anything. I thought Vc-1 was a Windows codec but the MKV file doesn't have any issues.

On another note, I did a rip of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist and the issue of no black letter box rows came up for this Bluray rip, as well. It might be that certain movies will have this issue and others won't. Not quite sure how to differentiate which ones do and don't. Also, not sure what to do with the MKV files I create for these specific Bluray movies (Dark Knight, Nick & Norah, etc) so that they will play smoothly without any stuttering.

The two main codecs used in HD disks are the VC-1 codec, and the newer H.264 (AKA MPEG-4) codec. VC-1 is the simpler of the two and is therefore easier for the PC to decode. Newer titles use the H.264 codec, which requires much more work to decode, and will bring many modern CPUs to their knees.

I am also having a stuttering problem with my rip of Doubt. Will try to play with Plex and see if the stuttering is cured. If anyone has any suggestions please reply.