Watching ripped Blu-Rays via USB on WDTV Live

[pelegram34]

I've noticed several threads in this forum with issues watching ripped Hi-Def movies on a WDTV Live. I figured I'd post my experience as well to try to get this sorted out.

I recently purchased a Plextor PX-B320SA Blu-Ray combo drive and a 1 TB Seagate external hard drive to rip movies to. The first one I ripped was The Princess and the Frog - worked absolutely flawlessly the very first time.

I next ripped Toy Story 1 and 2, and had to rip each more than once to get video with no artifacts. Still, mission accomplished.

The last 2 movies I ripped, A Bug's Life and The Wrestler, both have problems as well. I have ripped A Bug's Life at least 3 times, and there are still a few artifacts in the video. The Wrestler, which I've ripped only once, just looks extremely grainy and has the occasional artifact as well.

I'm not streaming any of these movies wirelessly from my pc, this is all via USB. I really want to get a better handle on this so I don't have to buy a Blu-Ray player and start collecting more little plastic discs. Unfortunately, the resolution of my pc monitor is not 1920x1080, so I have no idea how they play from a pc. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[skittle]

Hi, bitrate of video probably exceeds USB speeds, try playing over LAN

[pelegram34]

Update:

The Wrestler looks grainy because the Blu-Ray movie itself is grainy! This was not an issue with the rip, this is just the way the movie looks. It's like they meant to do it....make it look like some low budget documentary of this washed up wrestler. Anyway, FYI in case anyone else runs across this Blu-Ray. I ripped it again, and so far video looks "perfect".

Ripping A Bug's Life One more time to see what I get. This program and these forums are a blessing. Thanks guys!

[MilesAhead]

I have WD HDTV player for USB drives gen1. Not so much for artifacts but for playing large video without the audio or subtitles dropping out, I use tsMuxer to remux the .mkv as .m2ts. Also you may want to periodically delete files and do a quick defrag on the USB drive. I use a USB 2.0 docking station with Sata drives. On the PC I have USB 3.0 which enables me to copy off, and defrag at full speed.

From what I've seen WD plays a lot nicer with .m2ts files than .mkv esp. for large files like over 20 GB.
The gen1 player doesn't downmix DTS so I have to mess around with converting to AC3 and muxing anyway.
Muxing to .m2ts doesn't take long.

[skittle]

If its like the NMT/popcorn hour m2ts container is handled in hardware while mkv is in software, so it can handle higher bitrate in m2ts than mkv

[pelegram34]

Update:

I believe the video artifacts I'm getting are due to the rip. If I compress the mkv with handbrake, I just end up "compressing" the artifacts.

I don't see an option for it in makemkv, so my question is where to go in Windows to manually set the read speed of my Blu-Ray drive to, say 1x. I'm thinking if I slow the rip, I'll lessen the chances of an error. Any takers?

[MilesAhead]

Update:

I believe the video artifacts I'm getting are due to the rip. If I compress the mkv with handbrake, I just end up "compressing" the artifacts.

I don't see an option for it in makemkv, so my question is where to go in Windows to manually set the read speed of my Blu-Ray drive to, say 1x. I'm thinking if I slow the rip, I'll lessen the chances of an error. Any takers?

Don't know about limiting to 1x unless you can find some capture software. But esp. if skittle is right about the .m2ts being handled in hardware, it may be worth a try to remux to .m2ts. I can play 30+ GB .m2ts files without artifacts. As long as I don't FF or jump 10 minutes ahead it plays HD fine. I'm using USB 2.0 docking station with WD Sata drive. When hooked to my computer sequential read was about 24 MB/sec... so I doubt the WD player is reading any faster than that. .mkv I noticed sync issues more than any artifacts though.

[pelegram34]

I was able to control the read speed of the drive via PlexUtilities, but it didn't matter. Still getting 1 or 2 noticeable video artifacts when ripping Legion. I was hoping to be able to do this without converting the file type, that takes forever. At this point though, that looks like the next step. I'll let you know how it goes.

[pelegram34]

Update:

Remuxing to .mt2s didn't do the trick. Artifact was still present at the same spot in the movie. This is a problem with the rip. It's either the Blu-Ray drive, the external hard drive, or the software. Any suggestions? I don't think it's the WD TV since, with the exception of Legion, I've been able to rip every Blu-Ray I've tried eventually. It's just taken 2 or 3 attempts to get a flawless rip.

[MilesAhead]

That sounds pretty strange. Have you tried playing the disc right in the computer drive? DVD Fab Passkey is still in beta so you could try it out for free. The necessity to get to low speed makes me think either DMA is not enabled for the optical drive or you have some problem with it. I haven't noticed any artifacts in MakeMKV rips. Either it craps out with an error, it obviously totally confused because it's ripping an episodic disc, or the stuff plays. I haven't noticed any kind of flawed playback like you are mentioning.

[pelegram34]

I have forgotten to mention this entire time an error that I get each and every time I open MakeMKV. I never really thought much about it b/c I was still able to use the program, but just in case it makes a difference:

MakeMKV v1.5.6 beta win(x86-release) started
Debug logging enabled, log will be saved as C:\Documents and Settings\Kelly/MakeMKV_log.txt
Error 'Scsi error - ILLEGAL REQUEST:INVALID COMMAND OPERATION CODE' occured while issuing SCSI command 46020..00140 to device 'SPTI:\Device\CdRom1'
DEBUG: Code 0 at JcTY?F-,)PT|(Hin:29399450