www.makemkv.com

I've just took delivery of a film on Blu-ray and the disc has a small scratch on it. The Blu-ray is actually one of three titles for a special film night I have planned, so I don't really want to watch it before hand to check whether the disc will playback without problems. So my question is... if MakeMKV is able to rip the disc without reporting errors, is that a reliable indicator that the disc will play in my Blu-ray player without freezing, skipping, stuttering etc.?

I'm hoping it is because it'd be great to be able to verify the functionality of a disc without having to watch and listen to every second of the content on the disc.

NOTE: Please don't tell me to just return the disc. Not only is that an undesirable option in this particular case. Even if it were a good option, I'd still like to know the answer to my question.

if MakeMKV is able to rip the disc without reporting errors, is that a reliable indicator that the disc will play in my Blu-ray player without freezing, skipping, stuttering etc.?

The short answer is no, as a clean rip seems to be easier to achieve than a "clean play". I've tested this before and I've had multiple Blu-rays that I ripped just fine and despite this, they were still showing playback errors. The good news is that if you clean your Blu-ray disc with a clean, slightly damp microfiber cloth and then dry it with another clean, dry microfiber cloth before putting it back in the drive, it is likely (not 100% guaranteed but likely) to get rid of most stuttering issues. As it turns out, the protective chemical haze that comes with movie Blu-rays is far more likely to cause issues than "a small scratch". I've been able to rip (and play) discs that were full of scratches with few issues (Blu-rays are somewhat scratch-resistant); whereas even a small spot of haze could give me some serious trouble for both ripping and playing.