www.makemkv.com

I am using a Pioneer XD08U drive (it still has the libredrive firmware so it works) to rip my 4k blu ray drives using makemkv (lincensed) to my local disk. I am using Windows 11.
I have used mpv and it works fine. But, maybe it's just me, Windows Media Player seems to have better image quality (the one from the Microsoft Store) and anyway I am just trying to learn here and I'm trying to make use of Media Player as well.
I have the following questions:

1. When I rip my blu rays I get two mkv files. Why? Is it because there is a backup on the blu ray? They seem to be identical. Can I remove one of them or better skip ripping the double file right from the start?
2. My Windows Media Player crashes with the message: the audio channel is in use (or something similar). I have bought the Dolby Access and the DTS Sound Unbound applications from the Microsoft Store. Can Media Player use these codecs by default or do I need to do something to configure it?
3. Some blu rays are ripped as mkv files, but some are ripped with a complex directory structure and the video is located in a STREAM directory and the files are not mkv but m2ts (for example Casino Royale is ripped like this). Why?
4. Can I edit somehow these files and remove the audio channels which I don't want, keeping just two languages is enough for me.

Sorry, I am just trying to learn how to use this. I have restarted this year to collect again physical media but on my PC this is a nightmare, unfortunatelly I don't have a TV, but watching movies on my 4k OLED monitor at my PC is perfect only if I can master this craft, it's not as easy as it used to be, just put the movie in the DVD drive and play.

#3
makemkv has two modes for ripping a movie: full backup, or open disc/files.

Backup will rip the disc files with the decrypted data and directory layout intact, giving you the mpls playlists, m2ts streams, and whatever else is present.

Open will let you pick and choose which playable parts of the disc you want rip, giving you those selections as mkv files only.

So if you're randomly finding one movie in mkv and another not in mkv, you should double-check which mode you're using to rip.


#4
When you're in Open mode, yes, you can pick and choose which audio tracks to save or ignore in your mkv rip.

If you already did a full backup, you can load your backup in this mode by choosing the disc's index.bdmv file and proceed to create mkv files.
And if you already have an existing mkv rip, you should be able to use a different tool called mkvtoolnix to remultiplex the mkv file without the tracks you don't want.


#1
Some movies will have multiple "versions" of the movie with region-specific variations spliced in, such as translated text and titlecards which avoid the need to use subtitles to present those localizations. Or you might find movies with a Theatrical cut, Director's Cut, Extended Cut, etc on the same disc and ended up ripping each given version. Both of these are examples of seamless branching. You might also search up playlist obfuscation on forum; I don't think that's happening here, but at least be aware of the concept.

You can use Open files mode to inspect the properties of each title and pick the correct one to rip to mkv. Look for the number of chapters, duration, and segment map to see if everything makes sense in the context of movie. Too many chapters, or too few chapters? Duration/filesize too short or too long? Is it actually the movie, or an extra behind-the-scenes feature? If you know what to look for, it should be self-explanatory (hopefully).


#2
I don't think Windows Media Player has support for DTS audio codec. You might have an easier time on another media player like mpc-hc.

AltitudeDashboard2 wrote: ↑

Fri May 31, 2024 10:30 pm

~ it's not as easy as it used to be, just put the movie in the DVD drive and play.

Actually... it is!

Firstly, don't waste your time and money on Windows Media Player, just download VLC Media Player.

It's free, and it's basically the goto player for most here. It will play most commonly found files out-of-the-box, but you can also download and install the K-Lite Codec Pack, which is also free. That will install pretty much every codec known to man on your PC so that VLC MP will then play just about anything you throw at it, especially anything from a DVD/Blu-ray/UltraHD.

Now comes the magic...

Open MakeMKV and click the little spanner icon to open preferences. Now go to the "Integration" tab and tick "VLC" (hopefully the application path is already correct because I don't recall how to change it? )!

If setup properly, VLC MP will now use MakeMKV's library to decrypt discs on-the-fly, you don't even need to have MakeMKV running to play an encrypted disc.

Just place a disc in the drive, select VLC Media Player from the Autorun popup, and it will play, menus and all!

Thanks everyone for replying.
I am trying to use Media Player because to my eyes it has the best and most pleasing image. And there are other people who seem to think the same, for example:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comm ... movies_tv/
I understand that Windows 11 nowadays comes without codecs. But I purchased the official apps from the Microsoft Store, The Dobly Access and DTS Unbound apps for sound codes. As regarding the HDR image I supposed Windows is having this built-in but it only works with Media Player bv default and this might explain the better image quality for me.

Edit: After one month of trying various applications I still believe, surprisingly, that Windows Media Player produces the absolute best image quality when playing 4k UHD. Unfortunately it has some bugs related to subtitles, mainly when scrolling forward or backward with subtitles on then it will crash. But if you start from beginning with subtitles on and don't scroll it will work. But whatever other tools I tried, unfortunately, they do not produce the same colors and image quality as WMP. I even purchased Cyberlink PowerDVD 2023 and I asked for a refund because of that.