Blu-ray and Plex

[psycoperl]

Good day fellow Mac Users
I am wanting to migrate my DVD and Blu-ray collection of disks to my Plex instance on my Synology NAS.
I have a 2017 MacBook Pro and am looking for recommendations on affordable tools and hardware to accomplish this.

while I have used the USB SuperDrive and Hand Break for DVDs, that would not work with HD Blu-ray.

 

[barbu]

I suppose you’ll need a bluray drive as well then, assuming Handbrake can rip Br

 

[psycoperl]

I suppose you’ll need a bluray drive as well then, assuming Handbrake can rip Br

Obviously…, but what decent device and software. This is an area where I know so little.

 

[barbu]

Best Blu-ray drives for Mac in 2024

Your Mac doesn't come with a built-in Blu-ray drive, but you can rectify this with these great drives.

www.imore.com

And see this thread

Handbrake won't rip Blurays

So I'm about to lose my damn mind. I got a new Mac and started setting it up to rip blu-rays. I went through my usual process from the article here: https://sixcolors.com/post/2015/01/how-i-rip-dvds-and-blu-rays/ No matter what I do however Handbrake refuses to read the bluray discs. It reads...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[Audit13]

Load Windows using bootcamp and run makemkv to rip.

 

[niteflyr]

MakeMKV works well to rip. MakeMKV has a Mac version also.

 

[QuentinWilson]

The best tool for 1:1 rips is definitely MakeMKV, as already suggested. I have been using it for years to rip my DVDs and BDs for my Plex library. Do note this will take a lot of disk space though, but you can always decide to re-encode with Handbrake later, if your NAS fills up.
As for hardware, any external BD drive (or internal one plus enclosure, for that matter) will do for DVD and BD. It‘s only when trying to rip UHD BDs that you have to do research, because for that only specific drives will work and it‘s not obvious which ones those are. This is not an issue with normal Blu-Ray though, only UHD.

 

[priitv8]

There is a lot of info about uhd ripping on makemkv forum available.

 

[barbu]

If you already own the discs, you might as well just download a torrent that has already been nicely encoded for you and save a lot of money and energy. Is it piracy? I’d say you’ve held up your end and have the discs to prove it, so it’s ambiguous at a minimum, with gusts to completely harmless.

 

[Codestud]

As a lockdown project I ripped all of my DVDs and BluRays with MakeMKV. I then re-encoded them all with Handbrake to reduce them to a more acceptable size. Then there's getting the metadata right which can get challenging especially for TV shows.

 

[phrehdd]

Go to MakeMKV forums. You can learn a great deal and yes, it is a good plan to put "archived" movies on a NAS and should work with Plex.

 

[HDFan]

I then re-encoded them all with Handbrake to reduce them to a more acceptable size.

Since disk is inexpensive I always keep the full resolution rip. I can always encode to a lower resolution if needed. Eventually I'm going to run out of space for my physical media - I just had to get rid of all of my ripped CDs. That way I will have original quality recordings even though I no longer have the optical source disks.