Advice For Newbie to UHD Ripping

[AlexHaden]

Morning,

Have been a user of another well known software product for a long time, have never had a problem with it, it’s always been FABulous for me, but I have only really done 1080.

I recently changed PC cases with no external
Drive Bay, and am looking for a USB replacement.

Feels like a lot of the best options do not support that product.

I know I would need to upgrade Fab anyway (at a cost) so am I just better off switching to MakeMkv at this point, and buying the pioneer drive from ASMCOM?

Asssuming I’ll be able to rip my UHD movies using Make MKV, then use whatever other software I want to convert that into something that will sit nicely on my NAS? I’ll be honest, it’s only a few I’ll want to go UHD on, as watching my films on the go on my IPad is my primary use case, but thought if I’m buying something anyway, why not go for something that can do both.

Anyway, thanks for any advice/pointers!

[AlexHaden]

Sorry, and one last question, if I purchase a drive that is not compatible with Fab(UHD), will it still work with normal HD blu rays?

that’s it for now

[kaelef]

I've been using the "Archgon Premium Aluminum External USB 3.0 UHD 4K Blu-Ray Writer Super Drive" very successfully for a few weeks now. I'd recommend that if you need an external drive that's easy to get and immediately supported in MakeMKV. Of course, the ASMCOM drives would be fine, too.

Don't know anything about Fab(UHD), but that drive has been working well with normal and UHD discs in MakeMKV and in AnyDVD.

(And yes, one way to deal with things is to rip the video using MakeMKV then use something like HandBrake to convert it into a format you like.)

[dcoke22]

I have 3 drives. All are 'internal' 5.25 inch drives. All are in external, powered cases and connected to my computer via USB. All 3 work just fine that way.

Two of my drives are in OWC Mercury Pro enclosures. My Pioneer won't fit in that enclosure, so it is in a Vantec.

The Ultimate UHD Drives Flashing Guide has a list of a bunch of enclosures that are known to work.

[AlexHaden]

Thanks both

I think I’ve settled on wanting a pioneer drive, as they appear to be the best.

The first one I’ve been looking at is OOS at ASMCOM so thinking of not worrying about the 4k side for now, as I would probably need to update and increase space on my NAS, which is a rabbit hole to be honest

Found a BDR-XS07TUHD from the pioneer store market place on Amazon, anyone know if that’s legit pioneer stuff? Vaguely remember some issues on past posts with dodgy drives?

Thinking that’s a good balance, decent drive, good quality does 90% of what I need with a slight possibility of working with MKV in the distant future, and upgrade my NAS to a 5 bay ASAP

[MartyMcNuts]

Thanks both

I think I’ve settled on wanting a pioneer drive, as they appear to be the best.

The first one I’ve been looking at is OOS at ASMCOM so thinking of not worrying about the 4k side for now, as I would probably need to update and increase space on my NAS, which is a rabbit hole to be honest

Found a BDR-XS07TUHD from the pioneer store market place on Amazon, anyone know if that’s legit pioneer stuff? Vaguely remember some issues on past posts with dodgy drives?

Thinking that’s a good balance, decent drive, good quality does 90% of what I need with a slight possibility of working with MKV in the distant future, and upgrade my NAS to a 5 bay ASAP

That Pio will most likely have the newer firmware making it not compatible with UHD ripping.

[AlexHaden]

Totally understand

I think I’m going to stick with HD ripping for my iPad for now and not be lazy and just stick the UHD disc in my player, rather than filling up my smallish NAS with UHD rips that won’t really be of much use on said iPad

If the future holds a firmware update that enables it, then that’s a bonus.

Or I could switch off my gas for a few months and buy a new 5bay NAS with 5x12TB drives, but wifey may have an issue with that plan, I’m just about allowed to buy a new USB drive

[Radiocomms237]

If it were me, I'd be spending the money once and be done with it (who knows when/if you'll get approval from the Minister of Finance for another purchase).

Buying a drive from ASMCOM that's pre-patched, pre-assembled (in an appropriate enclosure), pre-tested, plug 'n' play and will do EVERYTHING is worth the extra investment IMHO.

At some stage you may find a title that's only available on UltraHD and you'll be wishing you opted for the UHD drive!

LOL... I started-out with a 8TB WD all-in-one NAS and I thought "I'll never fill that up!"

Then, once that was full, I bought a 4-bay Synology NAS (that doubles as my Plex server) full of 16TB HDDs (the maximum size allowed) and I thought "I'll never fill that up!"

Then, once that was full, I added the 5-bay expansion unit, again, full of 16TB HDDs.

Then, once that was full, I started buying spare Synology drive trays with the new HDDs and I've been playing musical hard drives ever since!

But I'm getting tired of doing that so I'm now saving for a 36-bay Synology rack-mount NAS, which, when fully populated, will see me well on my way toward a PB (Petabyte) of storage!

P.S. I've also learned to stop thinking "I'll never fill that up!"

[dcoke22]

I started with four 6TB drives in a RAID 5, nominally 18TB of space. I figured that was twice as much space as I needed. I'm way past that now.

I do have a few UHDs that did not come with a regular blu-ray. Flash Gordon (1980) and the Indiana Jones boxed set (released before the latest movie) for example. Handbrake can do a reasonable job getting a 4K HDR movie into a 1080p, regular color space format that can be quite portable.

[AlexHaden]

It can become an expensive hobby!

I’m trying to convince myself that getting up from the sofa, and putting a disc in my player is cheaper than a new NAS and hard drives.

My inner nerd is looking at synology NAS comparing against Qnap (my current) and descending into questions on if a raspberry pi or zima blade would be fun to try with TrueNas….

I really need to make a decision and stick to it, but everything looks so good these days, I remember my first tentative steps with Novell, and on my first day on the job clearing space did a deltree *.* in the root directory, people still remind me of that day when I broke the entire network

[AlexHaden]

Just found a Verbatim 43888, which I understand from reading this forum far too much over the past few days, contains a BDR-US04, which is allegedly a good drive and works out of the box?

Considering it’s on sale, it could be a bargain and the easiest thing for me to use??

…..may give it a go anyway……

[dcoke22]

If you can find one, it should work.

I used to run Plex on a Raspberry Pi 4 with hard drives connected to it via USB. Everything in my Plex works as direct play or direct stream with my clients. That worked well enough. My 3 libraries (movies, 4k movies, TV shows) were each on their own single external hard drives.

It wouldn't hold up if it had to transcode; the Pi 4 wasn't powerful enough. I could get away without any redundancy because I had a backup of all that stuff on other storage.

I don't know if I'd want to run a real file server on a Pi either. I've read the Pi 5 has better ethernet & USB throughput than the 4. Even with an 8GB of RAM model, that wouldn't leave a lot of RAM for cache. It would be a fun toy, but I think you'd crash up against the limits fairly easily.

I now run a TrueNAS server with 12 spinning drives, six 12th gen Intel cores, 32 GB of RAM & 10 GB ethernet. My Plex server runs there. That machine is overpowered for what it does, but it is fast and runs at the limits of my networking (my 'main' client connects at 2.5GB ethernet). The most expensive part of that setup is the hard drives; the rest of the hardware was relatively inexpensive.

[AlexHaden]

I think I’m about to go down the build a server route, I have a few tower cases lying around, so it’s a start for a self built server.

I bought the Verbatim, worked flawlessly out of the box, did my first 4k

One happy MKV user now

[AlexHaden]

I’m now looking at an internal drive for a server build, someone stop me!

[dcoke22]

Is your server going to sit somewhere you'd want to be shoving discs into it?

I know mine certainly doesn't.

Also, if you're going to shove the maximum amount of hard drives in a regular PC case, there probably isn't room for an optical drive.