Newbie "basic questions" DVD/BlueRay Ripping

[BenJo]

Hi guys,

I am an absolute newbie and have a couple of basic questions. There are so many very detailed discussions going on in this forum that it is hard for me to find some “basics” for me to pick up:

I have set up a plex media server on my Synology NAS 220+ - so far that is working fine. As many of you I have a ton of DVDs/BueRays that I would like to rip and include in my collection. I have been using MakeMKV which works good but creates some questions/problems:

A BlueRay rip takes forever (literally hours) - is that normal? The result is a large number of files/tracks that load individually on Plex - very nasty. Is the goal to make 1 file out of it and is that even possible (I read it is possible to merge multiple mkv files into 1) and does it make sense? Also is mkv really the format to go with? I have read that for larger files/higher quality Plex tends to have a problem with it. Is that true?
I also learned that in Plex you can “group” different files into one and give that group a “poster” (which I then used in order to create a clean picture in the library). I would think the “one file” approach would make much more sense. How do you guys do it?
I also would like to set up as many information about the film/actors/director etc. as possible and read that it is possible to include that automatically. How do I do that?
Last but not least: Last point on my wishlist is languages: If available I would like to rip both German as well as English language with the movie in order to then choose in the menu. Is this the standard or how do I pick these languages (again combined with above question regarding “one file”).

If MakeMKV is not the right tool, do you have any recommendations for an alternative (ideally Mac, but not a must)?

You might say: You will find answers to all these questions here in the forum. For me however it is hard to find these. Can you shed some light to a newbie?

Kind regards
Ben

[Woodstock]

Are you doing raw rips to the Synology? It is rare for a BD to take more than 30 minutes to rip for me, using a Synology as the target, unless we're also talking an encoding using handbrake.I regularly rip multiple BDs at the same time to my Synology.

If there is a network issue, that could slow the process down; I have had two cables fail and slow things to 100mb/s, and that was noticeable in the rip times.

Your description of "lots of files" would indicate you're using "backup", and not "open/save as MKV".

[dcoke22]

Also is mkv really the format to go with? I have read that for larger files/higher quality Plex tends to have a problem with it. Is that true?

I use Plex for uncompressed 4K movies, which are often in the 50gb to 75gb range. Those work fine for me when watching using direct play.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200250 ... ct-stream/
If you want Plex to transcode on the fly, then you will probably need a lot more computer resources to allow that to happen, especially for multiple streams at a time.

I also learned that in Plex you can “group” different files into one and give that group a “poster” (which I then used in order to create a clean picture in the library). I would think the “one file” approach would make much more sense. How do you guys do it?

Plex relies on some conventions for how files and folders are organized on the filesystem. In summary, you create a folder named the movie title (including the year it was released). Inside that folder, you put the movie file, named according to convention. Also, for the movie poster, include the poster as poster.jpg.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200220 ... ts-movies/

I also would like to set up as many information about the film/actors/director etc. as possible and read that it is possible to include that automatically. How do I do that?

Plex has this notion of agents. If you name things according to convention, then a metadata agent can correctly parse the title and find data about the title in places like themoviedb.org. Plex will then show all that information you're looking for after it pulls it from the internet.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200241558-agents/