Feature requests

[Oddwunn]

Hello,

I recently downloaded the latest beta, and though I really like what I see so far, I have 2 requests for future features:

1. As things stand now, the subtitles do not work in either of my 2 software players, Zoomplayer or Media Player Classic Home Cinema. I normally use a program called "BDSup2Sub" to convert the BD subtitles to a format that is playable in software DVD players. Then I mux the subtitles with the audio and video streams using "MKVmerge". I would like to see MakemKV have an option where the subtitles would be converted on the fly in order for MakeMKV to truly be a one step process.

2. Along with the subtitle conversion issue, the high definition audio tracks also need to be converted to FLAC, as the DTS-MA and TrueHD tracks are not playable in my software players either. Once again, an option to convert lossless (LPCM, TrueHD, and DTS-MA) to multichannel FLAC on the fly would go a long way to making MakeMKV into an efficient one step process to convert from Blu-ray directly to MKV.

If these things can be done with MakeMKV already and I am simply ignorant of the methodology, please let me know, as right now I can only create MKV's with vanilla DTS or AC3 and no subtitles. I can always demux the MKV's that are created by MakeMKV, do the conversions, and then remux, but this process is more complicated than current procedures using other software. It would be really awesome if MakeMKV could do everything in a one step process!

[Marc_G]

+1 for the subtitle request.

Personally I'm less interested in the FLAC issue but I see it would be useful for those that use FLAC.

[lochnar]

I didn't realize that MakeMKV was ever supposed to be a one-step process. For me, it's always been a method to lift the movie from the Blu-Ray so that it can be encoded in Handbrake or some other "final stage" software. While Handbrake can't use TrueHD (yet) either, it can convert DTS or AC3 to 6 channel AAC - or just do a passthrough of the existing. While this isn't lossless, it's still very good.

I don't know why or how anyone would store the files MakeMKV spits out as they are. They are huge, and I certainly wouldn't be able to keep many movies on my media server that way.

As for the subs, I usually go grab a SRT and insert it during the final encoding process - it's just really easy that way.

[tdtran1025]

I share the same view with the previous user as it is too much to extract PGS subtitles.

[Krobar]

I don't know why or how anyone would store the files MakeMKV spits out as they are. They are huge, and I certainly wouldn't be able to keep many movies on my media server that way.

I store all of my films ucomppressed (Or at least without any further compression). Quality is better on a big screen and I know I would just need to re-rip later otherwise.

[Oddwunn]

I store all of my BD's as single .MKV's on a hard drive. This is actually the smallest, most efficient way to store the movie only (minus menus and extras), as it requires less overhead than the full BD, it removes any and all copy protection and region coding, and retains just the audio, video, and subtitles streams that are important to YOU. My old method of doing this was to use AnyDVD to rip the entire disc to the hard drive, then use Eac3to to convert and demux audio (on the fly), video, and subtitle streams. Next I would run the subtitles through BDSup2Sub (only takes a few seconds) to convert the subtitles to .idx format which IS playable in software players, as well as extract forced subs into a separate stream. Then remux with MKVmerge and you now have the movie only with *full bandwidth* audio and video (and you can keep regular AC3 and DTS if you want), with the subs that you want, in the very smallest and easiest to use container available. This is the beauty of using the .MKV format!

My assumption was that MakeMKV recognised the usefullness of the .MKV container and is attempting to provide its users with a simple and easy interface to accomplish these same tasks, ALL IN ONE SINGLE OPERATION. This is what attracted me to the program in the first place. But if MakeMKV can not create subtitle streams that can be played back in software players, then what good are the subtitle streams? And a LOT of us want to have full bandwidth audio, and as far as I know, FLAC is the only full bandwidth audio format that is supported in most all software players, so keeping full bandwidth audio in the .MKV's in the form of TrueHD and DTS-MA is useless, again as far as I know.

MakeMKV has great potential, but currently is limited in use due to the 2 restrictions I have mentioned. But if you don't need and/or want subtitles, and are willing to live with compressed audio streams, then MakeMKV does a wonderful job right now.

[lochnar]

@Krobar

Where are you storing these files? My BD rips average 16GB per file (movie only), and that would eat up a lot of storage in a hurry. I have 8TB on my media server and even that would fill up fast. I have several hundred movies and TV series on there in h.264 format.

I maybe watch a single movie once every couple of years, and I only need them to look good on my 63" TV. I will admit that I have turned the compression WAY down on many films (like the Matrix trilogy) to save the extreme detail - but even that is probably overkill. Maybe I'm just getting too old and my eyesight is going.

I should also mention that I'm a recording engineer, and while lossless audio is fine, the truth is that most people can't tell the difference. As a matter of fact, most people can't tell the difference between an Ipod and a digital master coming right from the studio monitors (this ACTUALLY happened)! Lossless audio is great, but unfortunately for most it doesn't matter. Too many people are listening to 128k MP3s (ugh). For the record, I store my music in FLAC format.

While I understand wanting to store it uncompressed as I would also LOVE to do that, there just aren't many instances where I would care to store full HD and lossless audio for extended periods of time. I'm sure many disagree. If I want to see a movie in it's full uncompressed HD glory, I'll pull the disc out of the archives. For me, ripping them is really for the convenience of having them on-demand.

@Oddwunn

If you want subs, DL an SRT from opensubtitles.org and mux it in with MkvMerge. It doesn't compress anything and works perfectly with the MKV files MakeMKV generates. It only takes a couple of minutes and saves a lot of brain damage trying to extract them from the BD.

[Krobar]

@Krobar

Where are you storing these files? My BD rips average 16GB per file (movie only), and that would eat up a lot of storage in a hurry. I have 8TB on my media server and even that would fill up fast. I have several hundred movies and TV series on there in h.264 format.

I maybe watch a single movie once every couple of years, and I only need them to look good on my 63" TV. I will admit that I have turned the compression WAY down on many films (like the Matrix trilogy) to save the extreme detail - but even that is probably overkill. Maybe I'm just getting too old and my eyesight is going.

I should also mention that I'm a recording engineer, and while lossless audio is fine, the truth is that most people can't tell the difference. As a matter of fact, most people can't tell the difference between an Ipod and a digital master coming right from the studio monitors (this ACTUALLY happened)! Lossless audio is great, but unfortunately for most it doesn't matter. Too many people are listening to 128k MP3s (ugh). For the record, I store my music in FLAC format.

While I understand wanting to store it uncompressed as I would also LOVE to do that, there just aren't many instances where I would care to store full HD and lossless audio for extended periods of time. I'm sure many disagree. If I want to see a movie in it's full uncompressed HD glory, I'll pull the disc out of the archives. For me, ripping them is really for the convenience of having them on-demand.

My BD rips probably average early 20Gbs. I dont use the lossless audio yet but have a decent 1080P 100" projector and re-compression does not look too good. With Lossless audio I tend to agree that differences are small, I had an early ILink Preamp with SACD/DVD-A content and went through A/B testing for a while. The improvement culd be heard in A/B testing but not if you played one format and asked me to tell you which it is

I think my main reasoning is simply that I dont want to re-rip them again. I store my rips here and I have not even started ripping much of my collection (NAS is half full of disks and can work with SAS expanders):

[lochnar]

Not wanting to rip again is why I stored my SD DVDs in ISO format. Doesn't help me much today, and I considered that when I decided to compress my BD rips. We used to think that DVD was really good resolution! It also helped that I converted from Win to Mac at about the same time as BD won out. I then quickly discovered the wonders of Handbrake, built myself a Quad core Snow Leopard machine, and now encode like a madman.

I suppose at 100", I would see the compression artifacts. It also depends on how much you compress and with what encoder settings. I'm quite sure that in the no-to-distant future I'll be ripping again to some other format. I'm about 50% done with replacing my SD rips with HD rips. About the time I got done with SD, Blu-Ray won the format war. About the time I get done with this go-around, the next technology will be out and I'll want that, too. I keep saying I'll draw a line somewhere, but it hasn't happened yet.

Ahhh... it's a great life being a technophile!

Sorry to get off-topic.

[Oddwunn]

The reason I want lossless audio is because I CAN tell the difference between compressed and lossless, as my audio system and room are second to none, so my system brings out even very subtle details. Once you hear the difference you can never go back (unfortunately). My video must also be at full bandwidth (as much as possible), as my screen is 136" wide (not diagonal), 2.35:1 AR, so once again, even a small amount of added compression looks pretty nasty. I am not worried about HD space - so far I am up to 32 tb over 4 servers and I have room for more if I need it.

[Wasabi]

I didn't realize that MakeMKV was ever supposed to be a one-step process. For me, it's always been a method to lift the movie from the Blu-Ray so that it can be encoded in Handbrake or some other "final stage" software. While Handbrake can't use TrueHD (yet) either, it can convert DTS or AC3 to 6 channel AAC - or just do a passthrough of the existing. While this isn't lossless, it's still very good.

I don't know why or how anyone would store the files MakeMKV spits out as they are. They are huge, and I certainly wouldn't be able to keep many movies on my media server that way.

2TB drives are dirt cheap, and I simply can't be bothered with the re-encoding process. Lately, I've been tucking $2 away every time I buy a Blu-Ray disc. Once I have enough rips to fill a 2TB drive, I've also saved the money to buy the drive and a six-pack. It all works out quite well.

[dtblair]

I have been ripping movies to my server since the early days of DVDShrink. I do it for two reasons:
1. To remove all crap associated with warnings and previews,
2. To be able to stream movies to any TV in the house

Since Blu-ray, I have become more selective on replacing my existing DVDS because of the variability of the transfer. I always check the reviews on DVDtown or Blu-ray.com because some Blu-rays are not much better than their original DVDs and to me it is not worth the upgrade. New releases are a no brainer. I have a 120" theater projector and bad BDs are really very apparent. That is also why I never compress. Storage is becoming cheaper every day, I've seen deals of $80/TB

HD audio is real if you have the right system. My wife and I can hear real differences between DTS-HD and the core in Cast Away for example. HD audio is supported if you have the correct hardware such as ASUS HDAV or the 5000 series of ATI Radeon cards and the current version of ffdshow

Subtitles are still a pain, but using BDSup2Sub isn't that much of a hassle and you can usually find srt files on the internet if you want. I'm sure that codecs will be available soon to handle the Sup streams