What optical drive works best with MakeMKV?

[Heymbit]

Hey, I love MakeMKV, and I want to get an external blu-ray drive for my iMac so I can rip blu-ray discs. My question, is this. Will this blu-ray drive (http://store.fastmac.com/product_info.p ... cts_id=406) allow me to insert a blu-ray disc, have MakeMKV detect it, and convert said film to an .mkv file on my harddrive? If so...YAY! If not...can someone please help tell me why? I don't want to buy this drive if it won't work. Also, if someone does this, and has a recommendation for the hardware, all the better ^_^

[mike admin]

You need a drive that is capable of writing to _some_ media. Since this drive supports CD and DVD writing it should work fine with MakeMKV.

[Heymbit]

Right, but I'm not using it for CDs and DVDs, only for BluRay discs.

[Bling2Ming]

I think mike is referring to the facts mentioned on this page. http://www.makemkv.com/osxmmc/

As long as the bluray drive can write to some kind of media (cd-r, dvd+-r) then it should work ripping bluray disks with Makemkv on OSX. The drive doesn't have to be able to write bluray disks.

[Heymbit]

Yayz! Thanks to both, I can't wait ^_^

[DaveGee]

Right, but I'm not using it for CDs and DVDs, only for BluRay discs.

This (to the best of my understanding) is an OS X ... Apple-Imposed ... issue...

OS X can (for some time now) read BR movie disc's without any issues...

However...

Due perhaps to BR licensing issues or whatever... OS X does not have BR movie playback functions and to that end and perhaps to appease the BR license authority OS X has been (for lack of a better word) neutered into NOT reading from and/or recognizing read-only BR drives. Make no mistake, this seems to be a SELF IMPOSED punishment. In other words, Apple had to go out of their way to some degree to make a read-only BR drive not show up...

Now, if a BR drive has any form of WRITE functionality then Apple couldn't in good faith to its customers block the drive from being seen by the OS.

So for people like us to work around this issue... the only solution is to buy a drive that can WRITE to a disc... Does it have to be able to write to a BR disc? Nope, not at all... Does it have to be able to write to a DVD... Perhaps not... but since you'd have a hard time finding a BR disc that ONLY supported burning CD media... the next step up is a Read-Only-BR+DVD-WRITING

Well this is my understanding of the situation anyway...

[Heymbit]

Sounds good to me. The only reason I'd prefer BluRay reading only is because I figured it'd be cheaper, but now I think getting one that reads and burns cd, dvd, and bluray may be the best to make sure it works. I can't wait for Christmas.