Older Noob Seeking Basic Advice

[RobertMoo]

I'm over 50 and am interested in what 4k has to offer, but I will not be an enthusiast. I have a decent home projector (Benq x500i), a laptop with a decent graphics card, and a PS4 game console. I throw the projector at a 120" diagonal pull down screen in a room with a high ceiling and lots of windows so it's mostly night viewing for good picture. This projector supports HDR10, HLG, 3D and allows atmos passthrough, eARC.

I really don't know what I'm missing for 4k. I don't have a club or group of friends I can compare to and probably never will. I've downloaded some sample 4k videos just to see what 4k really looks like. When I play a standard def DVD and compare it to standard HD, I can certainly tell the difference on the 120" diagonal. Standard HD is good and it's what I believe I get when I stream from Netflix or Amazon. Can't seem to know for sure with these services if I'm getting HD or 4k (uhd). I know my old ps4 only does HD, but I'm not how great of a image I'm really getting with it.

I have a Polk Audio Signa S4, which supports True 3D Surround Sound (Dolby Atmos 3.1.2 certified). I got this mostly because of the atmos, although I'm not really sure how well it works. Seems to help, or could just be in my head. This soundbar also comes with a little sub woofer. I'm older and find on most setups, I'm always adjusting volume to hear voices and then adjusting down when the action scenes kick in.

Anyway, just trying to give you an idea of my hardware and my minimal commitment to a home theater experience. All that said, I've looked into stand alone 4k players. I could afford a few hundred dollars for a midrange 4k player, but it just doesn't seem worth it just to step up to UHD from HD to watch a handful of 4k titles which of course are more expensive than bluray. I've been buying HD blurays off ebay, mostly. So, a few questions after which I'm very open to any general advice.

When playing 4k dvds, what's an affordable player I can use that hopefully also supports atmos? I don't see making an investment a whole collection of 4k because it's too expensive to buy 4k videos so I'd mostly be using HD bluray dvds. From what I've seen I'm looking at at least 200 for a low end and 400 or a little over for a midrange. I could do 200-250. Might be worth it if is a big step above the PS4 for standard bluray along with the handful of 4k vids I'd like to try, but maybe audio is so so?

The other route is of course ripping 4k to a flash drive. I don't know much about this, but it's my understanding I'd need a 4k drive for my pc (likely external), software to allow the copy (for 4k disks i own), and software to rip. Using your guide and the right flash burn, I could get a drive for $100 or so. It's my understanding I could NOT watch 4k dvds directly from the drive, but I could rip them and then watch from my flash drive or hard drive. File size for a movie might run around 65 GB. I have 2TB flash I could use to hold them. So I think I'm just out the money for the 4k player, the money for (used) 4k dvds, and whatever costs there might be for software, right?

So, I can handle the software and ripping process, flashing firmware, etc. If I rip a 4k dvd, can I do it in a way that will also allow me to have decent sound and hopefully support atmos? That's all I want. I'd be surprised if I ever own more than ten 4k dvd titles, so you can see why the stand alone players don't see worth it for the 4k stuff, although it might be worth it if I can improve a lot over the PS4 I'm now using. At the end of the day I'd have a bluray player for HD bluray and a few 4k titles on my flash.

I don't have the auiovisual pals I used to when I was young, so I'm just trying to get an idea what my options are without much real world experience. If you're read this long post you should have an idea what my hardware is and what I'm looking for. Please advise what you think I should do and correct any wrong notions I have.

Thank you very much for your help and feedback.

[dcoke22]

In my setup, I run a Plex server and have a streaming box plugged into my TV that runs a Plex client app. In my view, the real benefit of this whole process is a nice couch friendly interface to all my movies and TV shows without forced previews, FBI warnings, or any of those distractions. All the files live on a computer in an out of the way place in my home and come to the TV via the app on the streaming box across my local network.

The convenience of this arrangement justifies the effort in my view. Most of my stuff is standard HD from regular blu-rays. I do have some 4K UHDs (when buying a movie, they're often only a couple of bucks more than the regular blu-ray price) and this setup allows me to rip & watch these as well.

The visual gains from the 4K resolution compared to regular HD resolution are relatively minor; less than the improvement of going to a HD blu-ray from a standard definition DVD. The real improvements from 4K UHDs are the expanded color palette and potentially higher brightness levels. The other big improvement of 4K is the excuse it provides the studios to do a nice remaster of a movie. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is a great example of this with the remaster being a big visual upgrade.

Minimally, to get started, you'll need an optical drive for ripping. It'll have to support LibreDrive to be able to rip 4K UHDs. Pioneer drives are considered the best, but the current Pioneer firmware is not supported. You have to get a drive with old firmware and the easiest way to do that is from a seller on this forum in your region. LG drives will also work and cost less but are not regarded as highly as the Pioneers. The Ultimate UHD Drives Flashing Guide has a list and instructions on how to flash the drive.
MakeMKV has a very generous try-it-before-you-buy-it policy. The program author generally posts a key to make the program work for a couple of months at a time. It eventually expires and usually after a week or two another key is posted again. We would encourage you to buy it of course, but it is reasonable to try it out before you commit money to it.
Your projector appears to run Android TV so it seems like you could rip a movie into a .mkv file, put it on a USB stick, plug it into the media reader port on the projector and play the file directly.

[RobertMoo]

dcoke22,

Thanks for the reply. You're so right about the convenience of just being able to click and open a movie off a hard/flash drive. I kinda hate the ps4 controller for this.

In factg, I've seen on places like ebay that you can download digital copies and of course sometimes digital copies are sold with bluray physical disks. Can I buy digital copies that, when downloaded, are permanent? I don't want to buy a digital copy and have it expire. That would defeat the purpose of building a collection.

The visual gains from the 4K resolution compared to regular HD resolution are relatively minor; less than the improvement of going to a HD blu-ray from a standard definition DVD.

That's good to know. As mentioned, I haven't had much experience with 4k, although the "2020 LG OLED l The Black 4K HDR" demo video was pretty impressive. Then again, that might have partly been the deep blacks the projector put out. I've been watching TV on LED most of the last couple decades.

So if I do rip to my flash drive, all the HDR10 goodies and audio goodies (like atmos) can be ripped to work just as well as off the DVD? I've read a little about different kinds of ripping, but haven't done it myself. I'm expecting about 60 gigs for a full movie on average or would I need a larger file to get HDR10 and stuff like Atmos?

I'm open to checking out this forum for 4k players, but I also understand the forum offers suggestions about new 4k players I can buy that, with the proper flash bios, might also work. Is there good reason to buy older 4k players from the form instead of new?

EDIT: Okay, I've had a chance to look at the links and I see why this is more complicated than it looks....

Great links. I'm somewhat familiar, but will take a deeper dive. Is it fair to say that any 4k player I get will also rip standard bluray HD? And can you confirm that most of these 4k players that allow me to rip don't necessarily allow me to play 4k?

Any tips on where to find good prices on bluray? I've been to thrift shops and ebay. It's surprising how many times I see used blurays on ebay that are more expensive than the same bluray titles on Amazon.

Thanks for the feedback and those links!

[RobertMoo]

Regarding the "Ultimate UHD Drives Flashing Guide Updated 2024" thread
(easy found by searching the forum)

Just to be overly clear, when it says "PSA now most Pioneers come with new fw that prevents them from be crossflashed or downgraded do not buy one for UHD at this time", the pioneer list below are exceptions that DO work, right? And any one of these just need to be flashed to the proper firmware, but also may additionally need to be flashed to address the Sleep Bug? Likewise, these must all be LibreDrives. Is that about right?

Thanks again.

Pioneer UHD drives are now supported more info about that will be coming from the developer and once the info is out i will update stuff here
this is a work in progress
PSA now most Pioneers come with new fw that prevents them from be crossflashed or downgraded do not buy one for UHD at this time
Pioneer Drives need Firmware from before December 2022 firmware after this does not work do not update if you have a working one more on this in the coming weeks if they can be flashed. if your pioneer UHD drive does not work post your makemkv drive info here: viewtopic.php?f=19&t=27378

drives that Currently work are:

BDR-XD08UMB-S Slim top load USB Rip speed 4x BD 66 ~1 Hour BD 100 ~1 hour 35mins
BDR-XD07UHD Slim top load USB Rip speed 4x BD 66 ~1 Hour BD 100 ~1 hour 35mins
BDR-XD06JUHD Slim top load USB Rip speed 4x BD 66 ~1 Hour BD 100 ~1 hour 35mins
BDR-S12UHT Internal 5.25 sata Rip speed 4x BD 66 ~1 Hour BD 100 ~1 hour 35mins
BDR-XS07UHD Slim Slot load USB Rip speed 4x BD 66 ~1 Hour BD 100 ~1 hour 35mins
BDR-212UBK Internal 5.25 sata Rip speed 4x BD 66 ~1 Hour BD 100 ~1 hour 35mins
BDR-211UBK Internal 5.25 sata Rip speed 4x BD 66 ~1 Hour BD 100 ~1 hour 35mins
BDR-UD04 Slim 9.5mm tray load slim sata Rip speed 4x BD 66 ~1 Hour BD 100 ~1 hour 35mins
BDR-S13U-X Internal 5.25 sata Rip speed 4x BD 66 ~1 Hour BD 100 ~1 hour 35mins
BDR-S13UBK Internal 5.25 sata Rip speed 4x BD 66 ~1 Hour BD 100 ~1 hour 35mins
please tell me more if you have a pioneer UHD drive and it works i will add it to the list

about drive rip speed
some drives like the BU400N and WP/BP50NB40/BP60NB10 achieve near the same rip speed as desktop drives because they pick up speed faster and hold the 6x top speed longer then the other desktop drives.

[dcoke22]

In factg, I've seen on places like ebay that you can download digital copies and of course sometimes digital copies are sold with bluray physical disks. Can I buy digital copies that, when downloaded, are permanent? I don't want to buy a digital copy and have it expire. That would defeat the purpose of building a collection.

Probably every digital copy you can legally buy online is merely licensed, not owned.

So if I do rip to my flash drive, all the HDR10 goodies and audio goodies (like atmos) can be ripped to work just as well as off the DVD? I've read a little about different kinds of ripping, but haven't done it myself. I'm expecting about 60 gigs for a full movie on average or would I need a larger file to get HDR10 and stuff like Atmos?

60GB is a good rough estimate for the size of a 4K rip with all the fancy video and audio bells and whistles. All that stuff will be in the .mkv file. Different playback software, however, will have different capabilities.

I'm open to checking out this forum for 4k players, but I also understand the forum offers suggestions about new 4k players I can buy that, with the proper flash bios, might also work. Is there good reason to buy older 4k players from the form instead of new?

EDIT: Okay, I've had a chance to look at the links and I see why this is more complicated than it looks....

Great links. I'm somewhat familiar, but will take a deeper dive. Is it fair to say that any 4k player I get will also rip standard bluray HD? And can you confirm that most of these 4k players that allow me to rip don't necessarily allow me to play 4k?

Any tips on where to find good prices on bluray? I've been to thrift shops and ebay. It's surprising how many times I see used blurays on ebay that are more expensive than the same bluray titles on Amazon.

Thanks for the feedback and those links!

Any optical drive that you get that can rip 4K UHDs can also rip regular blu-rays and DVDs.

If you're in the USA, blu-ray.com has a decent deals page, where they're tracking disc prices on a daily basis. https://www.blu-ray.com/deals/?category=bluray

[Billycar11]

Regarding the "Ultimate UHD Drives Flashing Guide Updated 2024" thread
(easy found by searching the forum)

Just to be overly clear, when it says "PSA now most Pioneers come with new fw that prevents them from be crossflashed or downgraded do not buy one for UHD at this time", the pioneer list below are exceptions that DO work, right? And any one of these just need to be flashed to the proper firmware, but also may additionally need to be flashed to address the Sleep Bug? Likewise, these must all be LibreDrives. Is that about right?

Thanks again.

only 1 pioneer works out of the box and thats the UD04/ verbatim 43888
all other need old fw or to be professionally flashed.

if you in the USA i have the newest pioneers with old fw if you want one see below

[RobertMoo]

Regarding the "Ultimate UHD Drives Flashing Guide Updated 2024" thread
(easy found by searching the forum)

Just to be overly clear, when it says "PSA now most Pioneers come with new fw that prevents them from be crossflashed or downgraded do not buy one for UHD at this time", the pioneer list below are exceptions that DO work, right? And any one of these just need to be flashed to the proper firmware, but also may additionally need to be flashed to address the Sleep Bug? Likewise, these must all be LibreDrives. Is that about right?

Thanks again.

only 1 pioneer works out of the box and thats the UD04/ verbatim 43888
all other need old fw or to be professionally flashed.

if you in the USA i have the newest pioneers with old fw if you want one see below

Thanks, I appreciate the reply. Please help me finally clear up the last of my questions.

Okay, thanks for your patience. So to make sure I get it, are all of the following true?
1. ANY Pioneer from your list of Pioneers WILL work so long as it's flashed to the older firmware
2. Once flashed, any of these will RIP 4k or bluray
3. Once flashed, any of these will PLAY 4k or bluray DVDS directly.
4. The flashing process is just software (like flashing your Main Board bios) and does not require additional hardware
5. Some pioneer drives not on your list may also work, but you haven't confirmed it
6. The only extra software I would need to RIP 4k or bluray is MakeMKV.

Q. If 4k and bluray can be played from DVD, is any additional software required?
Q. I see you mention the Sleep Bug. Is this an issue with the pioneer drives you list and does it require a separate flashing to fix?
Q. Of all the Pioneer drives you list, do they all use the same hardware drive, or are certain models better?
Q. Are the drives where you set down the DVD better than ones you insert via a slot?
Q. Are the internal drives better (built) than the external drives (I know I'd need an extra casing for the internal drives)?

After I backup blurays I own, can you recommend software for listing/playing them? My plan was to just do a simple local HTML document with local links and have them open with VLC player.

[Billycar11]

Thanks, I appreciate the reply. Please help me finally clear up the last of my questions.

Okay, thanks for your patience. So to make sure I get it, are all of the following true?
1. ANY Pioneer from your list of Pioneers WILL work so long as it's flashed to the older firmware
2. Once flashed, any of these will RIP 4k or bluray
3. Once flashed, any of these will PLAY 4k or bluray DVDS directly.
4. The flashing process is just software (like flashing your Main Board bios) and does not require additional hardware
5. Some pioneer drives not on your list may also work, but you haven't confirmed it
6. The only extra software I would need to RIP 4k or bluray is MakeMKV.

Q. If 4k and bluray can be played from DVD, is any additional software required?
Q. I see you mention the Sleep Bug. Is this an issue with the pioneer drives you list and does it require a separate flashing to fix?
Q. Of all the Pioneer drives you list, do they all use the same hardware drive, or are certain models better?
Q. Are the drives where you set down the DVD better than ones you insert via a slot?
Q. Are the internal drives better (built) than the external drives (I know I'd need an extra casing for the internal drives)?

After I backup blurays I own, can you recommend software for listing/playing them? My plan was to just do a simple local HTML document with local links and have them open with VLC player.

1. Yes any pioneer I sell will work with UHD and has the correct firmware

2/3Yes all my drives rip or play UHD depending on the model it can be official or unofficial official models can do official playback.

5 all the drives I sell work if you get it elsewhere I have no idea there are hundreds or rebrands

6 yes all that's needed is makemkv

The pioneers I sell come with a powerdvd code if you want to use that for playback software.

pioneers do not have the sleep bug that's a LG/Asus thing.

Difference between them is drive build quality quietness and looks in price order.

The tray or slot load are the least likely to damage your discs the snap in type wear out the center of discs eventually

All pioneer drives are pretty reliable but we only desktop drives with old fw left. I ran out of USB pioneers with old fw last September.

You can make them USB with a vantec dx2

[RobertMoo]

Thanks, I appreciate the reply. Please help me finally clear up the last of my questions.

Okay, thanks for your patience. So to make sure I get it, are all of the following true?
1. ANY Pioneer from your list of Pioneers WILL work so long as it's flashed to the older firmware
2. Once flashed, any of these will RIP 4k or bluray
3. Once flashed, any of these will PLAY 4k or bluray DVDS directly.
4. The flashing process is just software (like flashing your Main Board bios) and does not require additional hardware
5. Some pioneer drives not on your list may also work, but you haven't confirmed it
6. The only extra software I would need to RIP 4k or bluray is MakeMKV.

Q. If 4k and bluray can be played from DVD, is any additional software required?
Q. I see you mention the Sleep Bug. Is this an issue with the pioneer drives you list and does it require a separate flashing to fix?
Q. Of all the Pioneer drives you list, do they all use the same hardware drive, or are certain models better?
Q. Are the drives where you set down the DVD better than ones you insert via a slot?
Q. Are the internal drives better (built) than the external drives (I know I'd need an extra casing for the internal drives)?

After I backup blurays I own, can you recommend software for listing/playing them? My plan was to just do a simple local HTML document with local links and have them open with VLC player.

1. Yes any pioneer I sell will work with UHD and has the correct firmware

2/3Yes all my drives rip or play UHD depending on the model it can be official or unofficial official models can do official playback.

5 all the drives I sell work if you get it elsewhere I have no idea there are hundreds or rebrands

6 yes all that's needed is makemkv

The pioneers I sell come with a powerdvd code if you want to use that for playback software.

pioneers do not have the sleep bug that's a LG/Asus thing.

Difference between them is drive build quality quietness and looks in price order.

The tray or slot load are the least likely to damage your discs the snap in type wear out the center of discs eventually

All pioneer drives are pretty reliable but we only desktop drives with old fw left. I ran out of USB pioneers with old fw last September.

You can make them USB with a vantec dx2

Thanks for taking the time to help me understand Billy.

[RobertMoo]

dcoke22,
Thanks for taking the time to explain this stuff to a noob like me. If you can clear up any of the following questions, that would be much appreciated.

Q. Audio Choices

When ripping bluray, what's good practice on the audio? I just have a soundbar that came with a small subwoofer. The sound bar, I think, contains and left and right speaker as well as a center. Also, I might want to just watch using a two speaker stereo setup. I don't have a 7.1 system nor do I plan to get one.

When ripping my bluray of course I noticed there are several audio options. If I check the box for something like "DTS-HD MA Surround 7.1" will that cover lesser speaker count setups like mine? Is it generally good for all purposes? (soundbar + woofer, two speaker stereo, etc). Or should I get audio more designed for my speaker count?

To give specific examples, sometimes I'll see "DTS-HD MA Surround 7.1" with "DTS Surround 7.1 English" indented below as an additional option, followed by another option for "DD Stereo English." Am I okay with just checking the first option "DTS-HD MA Surround 7.1"? Will this cover my soundbar (L,R,C) + Sub woofer? Will it cover me if I just want to watch with two speakers in stereo? Or do I need to make sure I select all three audio versions?

I know my setup, including the sounbar, supports Atmos, but I know not all blurays do. Is "TrueHD" what to look for to know that Atmos is supported?

In another example, I have the option for "TrueHD Surround 7.1 English", and below an indented option is "DD Surround 5.1 English". Should I check both options? Does "TrueHD Surround 7.1 English" mean "DTS-HD MA Surround 7.1" is also covered with "TrueHD Surround 7.1 English" usually the better more inclusive option?

If only choosing one audio option, is it fair to say that the first option under the video title is usually the best one to go with?

Finally, if it is necessary to go with multiple audio options, can I assume MakeMKV will make the best option available by default? I don't want to have to choose in VLC options every time I want to run a video title.

Q. I got a message from MakeMKV "This disc requires Java runtime (JRE), but none was found. Certain functions will fail, please install Java." It finished the rip successfully, but I haven't watched the whole movie yet. My guess is this has more to do with interactive menus, which I don't care about. I just want the entire movie without extras or trailer reviews, etc. I briefly looked into installing JRE, but I'm not sure if it's a free download for non-commercial users. Should I download it just in case or don't worry about it? I read somewhere not having JRE installed in some cases can cause the video chapters to be out of order.


Q. When selecting the video to rip from the bluray, sometimes I see what appear to be two versions of the largest file. They look identical, including the audio. Is there a trick to knowing which one is the better choice rather than ripping each one separately and then comparing the two?


Q. I'm playing around setting up HTML pages to navigate my titles with local links. This works okay, but is there a better method? Perhaps software that helps sort and display the titles with an easier way to organize them?


Q. So far as I can tell, using makeMKV, I'm able to rip bluray, but not play bluray
I know I touched on this before, but can MakeMKV PLAY bluray and 4k titles directly from the Disc Player or does that require additional software? I use VLC as my player of discs or vid files and I can't seem to make them play from DVD.

[dcoke22]

Regarding Audio, since I speak English, I generally rip all of the English language tracks. Fortunately, I'm not low vision or blind (nor is anyone in my family), so I do not rip the audio description tracks. Unfortunately, audio description tracks aren't generally labeled as such, you just have to listen to it for a while and notice if you hear a pleasant person describing what's going on. Commentary tracks aren't labeled as such either. Again, you just have to listen to hear the director or whoever talking about the film. I name commentary tracks "Commentary" or something similar so I know which track is which later. If there's more than one commentary track, I name them more specifically so later I can tell them apart. My goal with my rip is to get all the useful data off the disc so I don't have to rip it again in the future and have it be well labeled so I can make sense of it fairly easily.

On my Plex server, I generally transcode blu-ray rips to a smaller file size via Handbrake. I often streamline the various audio tracks in my rip into something more specific for my setup at this stage. If my setup changes in the future, I could always transcode again from the full rip. In my case, I have a 5.1 setup that does not support either the lossless formats nor the positional audio options. So, my transcoded files end up with a relatively high bitrate eAC-3 5.1 audio track plus any commentary tracks. If I put one of these files on my phone, iPad, laptop, or just about anything, the audio works out fine. Pretty much all players can down convert multi-channel audio into something that fits whatever you're listening on. Years ago, it might've been handy to include a stereo track as well as the multichannel track but I don't think that's necessary today.

Both Dolby and DTS have lossless formats that are common today on blu-rays. Dolby's lossless format is called Dolby TrueHD. DTS's version is called DTS-HD Master Audio. Both of these formats have this notion of a 'lossy core' inside the lossless track. If an older receiver (or other audio decoder) encounters a lossless track that it doesn't know how to decode, it should find the 'lossy' part of the track (regular Dolby Digital in the case of TrueHD or regular DTS in the case of DTS-HD MA) and use that instead. Since those older, lossy formats date back to the DVD era from the late 1990s, they're well supported.
When you see, for instance, a regular Dolby Digital track indented underneath a Dolby TrueHD track in MakeMKV, that is MakeMKV's way of showing you the 'lossy core' and offering to put it into its own track in the resulting .mkv file. It is my understanding that software players on computers, etc. have lagged behind in their ability to discover the 'lossy core' of one of the lossless tracks on a modern blu-ray. Since the lossy cores are so small compared to the lossless tracks and the video, I generally include them in my .mkv rips.

The positional audio stuff, Dolby Atmos or DTS:X (I think), is additional data that might be in the lossless audio streams. Dolby Atmos data can be part of an eAC-3 stream or a Dolby TrueHD stream. But an eAC-3 stream or a Dolby TrueHD stream does not require there to be Dolby Atmos. Practically speaking, on a blu-ray, you're most likely to find TrueHD streams (with or without Atmos). The various streaming services are most likely to use a smaller eAC-3 stream with or without Atmos.

If Atmos data is important to you, you'll have to have the TrueHD + Atmos track in your .mkv file. I am not aware of any free tool that can transcode TrueHD to eAC-3 and retain the Atmos data.

Most of the time, the 'best' audio on a disc is the first choice, but not always. I have run across the occasional discs where the first audio track is regular Dolby Digital track and the second track is a lossless TrueHD track. I think MakeMKV just displays them the order they're authored on the disc. Some discs have an original mono or stereo track + a Dolby Digital track from a remaster in the DVD era + a modern 7.1 lossless track from the most recent remaster. I've even come across some discs that have an 'Isolated Score' track on the disc. Rip enough discs and you'll probably discover all those variations and more.

If you want the audio tracks in a specific order in the resulting .mkv file, you can highlight an audio track in MakeMKV and adjust its 'Order Weight' property to move it higher or lower in the priority of output. Generally speaking, audio tracks appear in the .mkv file in the same order they show up in MakeMKV because by default all of their 'order weights' are the same. But if the track you want as the first track isn't naturally the first track, you can make it be so by adjusting the order weight before you rip.

[dcoke22]

Q. I got a message from MakeMKV "This disc requires Java runtime (JRE), but none was found. Certain functions will fail, please install Java." It finished the rip successfully, but I haven't watched the whole movie yet. My guess is this has more to do with interactive menus, which I don't care about. I just want the entire movie without extras or trailer reviews, etc. I briefly looked into installing JRE, but I'm not sure if it's a free download for non-commercial users. Should I download it just in case or don't worry about it? I read somewhere not having JRE installed in some cases can cause the video chapters to be out of order.

Blu-rays can have Java code on them that operates the menus on the disc. If you have Java installed on your computer and point MakeMKV to it, it will try to use that Java to interpret the disc and help you find the main movie. It isn't strictly necessary, but some discs have hundreds of fake playlists. For most discs with fake playlists, there's probably a thread on this forum where folks have figured out what the correct title is already, so if you don't want to mess with Java, you don't have to.

Q. When selecting the video to rip from the bluray, sometimes I see what appear to be two versions of the largest file. They look identical, including the audio. Is there a trick to knowing which one is the better choice rather than ripping each one separately and then comparing the two?

One of them probably has chapters and the source file is a .mpls file. One of them probably doesn't have chapters and the source file is a .m2ts file. You probably want the one with chapters. Othertimes there will be (usually) 3 titles that look nearly identical, with slightly different segment maps. One of them (usually the one with a source file of 00800.mpls) will have English titles/graphics, and the others will be in another language. There are lots of other variations, but those are probably the most common scenarios.

Q. I'm playing around setting up HTML pages to navigate my titles with local links. This works okay, but is there a better method? Perhaps software that helps sort and display the titles with an easier way to organize them?

Plex, Kodi, Jellyfin, Infuse (if you're in the Apple ecosystem), etc. are a pretty good way to organize and display movies. I wouldn't want to try to maintain the HTML pages for the hundreds of movies in my collection. If I put it all in a database and generated the pages on the fly, I would've recreated the products I just mentioned.

Q. So far as I can tell, using makeMKV, I'm able to rip bluray, but not play bluray
I know I touched on this before, but can MakeMKV PLAY bluray and 4k titles directly from the Disc Player or does that require additional software? I use VLC as my player of discs or vid files and I can't seem to make them play from DVD.

MakeMKV is just for ripping. VLC can use MakeMKV to decrypt a disc so that VLC can play the disc.





MakeMKV FAQ

[RobertMoo]

dcoke22,

Wow, thanks again for a generous outpouring of your time and good information. I've gotten a bunch of blurays from ebay, thrift stores and flee markets and have ripped several now. Your audio explanations helped clear things up and in some cases adding an extra track, as you say, doesn't add much size to the file.

So far I've just been ripping according to MakeMKV's default which generally produces about a 30GB file. (I'm old enough to remember in the 1990s when an entire PC hard drive was typically under 300 MB.) When I was ripping my own (Standard Def) DVDs, I thought my 2TB flash drive was plenty. Now, lol, I'm not so sure. A few questions about storage...

1. What kind of storage is reliable? Seems people lean to flash drive over HDD. (I'm not interested in storing on the cloud as I like to keep all my data under my control.) And yet, I can't get a straight answer on flash drive longevity. Even though I've always used quality brands like SanDisk, I've had a few flash drives hang and crash. DVD are so small they are out of the question and there doesn't seem to be much of an alternative. I have personal home video which I care most about so how I decide to store home video might be different than how I store backups of blurays I own. Still, what kind of reliability can I expect and should I backup my backups?

2. I spent over a $100 on my 2TB SanDisk. What's an economical way to store and access? I say access because I plan to play FROM the flash drive, not just store them there. What do you do? Do you also keep a second flash/hard drive to have as a backup? Ideally, I'd like to have a few TBs beyond 2. I can see this getting more expensive than I planned, and I've heard warnings to stay away from cheap off-brand flash drives. I know Amazon has as "Western Digital 8TB Elements Desktop External Hard Drive," but even that's $164.

3. You said you "generally transcode blu-ray rips to a smaller file size via Handbrake." I'm getting about 30 GB/ video using MakeMKV. About how big would it be after you run it through handbrake? In situations like these where I really don't understand the tech very well, I tend to just go big rather than risk being in a future situation where I'd have to re-rip just to get better quality. Also 99% of the time I'll be viewing on 120" projector screen in 1920 or better, so I might well notice the difference. I can research handbrake more, but could you give me a brief idea what your settings where when you use handbrake to transcode? I might want to try it just to see for myself the audio/video quality.

FYI, MakeMKV seems to have a way to work with VLC to play from disc using the "integration" setting in VLC, which may involve additional library files, but so far I haven't been able to get it work. (too busy ripping). Other than my PS4, I might be nice to have an easy way to just play a disc from time to time.

Well that's what you get. Generously helping someone and they bombard you with more questions. Stop anytime, but your help is much appreciated.

[dcoke22]

Spinning hard drives are still a thing, work well and are as reliable as ever. I tend to think about storage in terms of cost per terabyte. This helps me compare different drives in an apples-to-apples way regardless of size.

The most recent drive I purchased was a 20TB Seagate Exos drive. That's about $19/TB.

The Exos drives are Seagate's enterprise level drives with a longer warranty, higher Mean Time Between Failure (MBTF) ratings, and higher expected duty cycles. I have some Western Digital and Toshiba enterprise level drives in my fleet too. These drives can be louder in operation compared to normal, consumer grade drives, but since mine live in a NAS in my utility room, I really don't care how loud they are.

The best kind of workload for a spinning hard drive is reading or writing large files, like movies. Hard drives can sustain read speeds of large files that are way faster than is necessary to play a movie. SSDs are great for general storage in your laptop or whatever because they're really good at reading or writing a bunch of small files really fast, as is typical in your day-to-day computing. But reading and writing movie files to an SSD is overkill.

If you really want to use an SSD because they're silent, then consider a 2.5" form factor SSD. Something like this is available in 4TB and even 8TB capacities. Those kind of SSDs aren't as fast as the more modern kind, but they're more than fast enough for movies and they cost less than the faster variety. You could easily have a backup of the SSD on an even cheaper spinning hard drive. Relatively inexpensive enclosures (this for example) can be used to hold the drives and connect them via USB.

I don't have a backup of my rips. I do, however, store my rips on a battery backed up NAS running RAID 5. That means my array of disks can suffer a single drive failure and not lose any data. I use TrueNAS for this purpose. I have friends that use Unraid for a similar purpose. I also have plenty of friends with a Synology. If I was starting small and didn't want to mess with a NAS, I'd probably buy two big hard drives and set a reminder on my calendar to occasionally back the one up to the other. That way if one of the drives failed, I'd only have to re-rip the last couple of months worth of movies added to my collection.

As for Handbrake, I'm generally watching on a 4K, 65" LG OLED TV, so not as big as your projector, but big enough to expose a lot of sins of compression. And I'm picky (my friends might describe it as annoying ). Generally speaking, for a regular blu-ray, I compress it to a 10-bit, h.265, 4000 kbps average bit rate file using a two-pass encode using the x265 encoder. I do the audio conversions I spoke about earlier and in general I end up with about a 5GB file from a 30GB rip. It looks reasonably good, I'd say as good as decent high definition streaming does these days. The upside to doing the transcoding is the storage needs for my Plex server are relatively low compared to not compressing at all. And the compressed files are relatively easy to put on an iPad or laptop to take with me during travel. The downside to doing the transcoding is all the time it takes to do the transcoding. The computer time required can be considerable. The old computer I used to use to transcode used to take about 6 hours to transcode a 2 hour movie. That 10-year-old machine was recently replaced with something much newer and more powerful so encodes are about 3x faster while consuming only a third of the power of the old machine. Behold the unending march of progress.
I generally don't transcode a DVD rip. They're relatively small already and on modern TVs, DVDs need all the help they can get. And I don't transcode 4K movies (unless I want a more portable 1080p version). Since I have relatively few 4K movies, I put them on my Plex server as they came off the disc and watch them in all their 4K glory.

[RobertMoo]

All good info again, thank you. I hadn't thought about the noise of the External Hard Drive. Good point, but I hope the sound of the movie drowns it out some.

I've never tried this before, but what about running the hard drive off another PC in my home network? Once I get it setup, could I play movies through my local wifi or would the access be slow to start and then possibly not smooth? I've never tried to access different hardware via my home network, but just curious if you know if this would work. The only purpose would be to eliminate the HDD noise (buy having it located in another room). My projector is already a little noisy when I'm not actually playing any audio through it.

I've built many a PC from components, but I've never messed with RAID. I appreciate the feedback, but that's probably more than I want to mess with. Also, flash drives just get cheaper and cheaper, so maybe in a couple years even bigger flash drives will be more affordable. This is also why I'm less likely to compress the video. That, and the fact that I probably won't grow my collection much once I finish ripping what I've got.

I'd probably buy two big hard drives and set a reminder on my calendar to occasionally back the one up to the other.

That's probably what I'll do.

Generally speaking, for a regular blu-ray, I compress it to a 10-bit, h.265, 4000 kbps average bit rate file using a two-pass encode using the x265 encoder.

Great, I downloaded Handbrake and will give this a try soon.

I generally don't transcode a DVD rip. They're relatively small already and on modern TVs, DVDs need all the help they can get. And I don't transcode 4K movies (unless I want a more portable 1080p version). Since I have relatively few 4K movies, I put them on my Plex server as they came off the disc and watch them in all their 4K glory.

That makes total sense.

And I'm picky (my friends might describe it as annoying )

I respect picky.

I'm having a little trouble with getting the right subtitles to display in English ONLY for the non-English parts, but I think I figured it out with help from a "Movie Subtitles" spreadsheet I found online which tells which audio tracks to use, when to enable disable "forced", etc. If you're aware of this spreadsheet, can you tell me if there's an updated version of it? I got mine indirectly through someone else's post.

Is there a similar type spreadsheet to identify which video tracks to use for specific movies? I think you said I can find posts of people discussing specific movies, but one spreadsheet with a database would sure be nice for quick reference, if it exists.