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Blu-Ray to Apple TV
- Thread starter Cave Man
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guess thats all you ever hear about when bluray is brought up- sony. figured apple + sony= heads butting over licenses...
heck even MS doesnt want to bring it to the 360.... so again figured it was a reluctance from both to accept it from a "competitor"...
well finally got all the pieces tonight to try on my own, and want to say thanks to all!!
i know this is apple tv thread but i also wanted to say that for my first few min, i tried coding for the 360 using the preset and have to say i was able to stream wireless to the box with no signs of stutter... only for a few min of coding like i said, but promising... picture looked grainy in movements on white and blacks but my tv is only a 26" 720 and not by sony or samsung so that is prob the issue...
ok thats enough for 360 talk- not enough for a whole new thread and besides i wouldn't know what i was talking about anyway to help...
now off to try the appletv settings per the thread...
i know this is apple tv thread but i also wanted to say that for my first few min, i tried coding for the 360 using the preset and have to say i was able to stream wireless to the box with no signs of stutter... only for a few min of coding like i said, but promising... picture looked grainy in movements on white and blacks but my tv is only a 26" 720 and not by sony or samsung so that is prob the issue...
ok thats enough for 360 talk- not enough for a whole new thread and besides i wouldn't know what i was talking about anyway to help...
now off to try the appletv settings per the thread...
got a question
so i know it can take a while for HB to scan the source, but is 3 hours and counting normal? if not i need a better work flow....
its for some HDdvds (got for like $6 each vs. their $30 bluray counterparts) that i was hoping was the same process as bluray, but i guess not. yeah they have 2 .evo files, but i thought "join" in tsmuxer was what that meant. ive also tried evodemux in the mix to make one file... still took HB hours to scan before i gave up
all i can find are forums with what seems to be 14 complicated steps or more and 4-5 more obscure software to download... which is just not worth it... anyone know of the best place for quicker instructions? is it just not as easy as bluray? or is HDdvd really dead!!??!
thanks in advance for any kind of help... even if not for the
TV at this point
so i know it can take a while for HB to scan the source, but is 3 hours and counting normal? if not i need a better work flow....
its for some HDdvds (got for like $6 each vs. their $30 bluray counterparts) that i was hoping was the same process as bluray, but i guess not. yeah they have 2 .evo files, but i thought "join" in tsmuxer was what that meant. ive also tried evodemux in the mix to make one file... still took HB hours to scan before i gave up
all i can find are forums with what seems to be 14 complicated steps or more and 4-5 more obscure software to download... which is just not worth it... anyone know of the best place for quicker instructions? is it just not as easy as bluray? or is HDdvd really dead!!??!
thanks in advance for any kind of help... even if not for the
TV at this point
I've been ripping my HD DVDs to play on my ATV since the Xbox 360 is such a noisy beast.
My solution has been to use a program called DVDFab 5 under Windows in Parallels since this is free for basic ripping versus AnyDVD. I've been using Vista since it understands HD DVD drives out of the box. Tell Parallels to connect the drive and memory unit to the VM and Vista recognised the new hardware and installed drivers. With that in place, DVDFab was able to see the disc and rip the entire contents.
Next, use the program eac3to (under Windows too unfortunately) but it will save you lots of time. This page explains how to use the command in detail (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Eac3to/How_to_Use#Command_Line_Syntax) and with it you can literally just point eac3to at the disc extraction and it will tell you what the main feature is, audio tracks, subtitles and so on. Using this I am able to extract the vc1 file (including converting it to 1080p), the core AC3 audio, any subtitles I want (sup format) and the chapters.
Now while still in Windows (last bit, honest) I used a program called SupRip which is pretty simple to use and can OCR the sup subtitles into an SRT format. You may need to manually edit these to make sure the OCR has worked correctly. Only need to do this for foreign language segments of films such as Tokyo Drift. Now you have all the pieces.
Use TSMuxerGUI under OS X to mux the VC1 and AC3 together into a .ts file and don't forget to set the language. Handbrake will understand this fine opening it in less than a minute and you can now convert it to 720p. I find that using the Apple TV preset with the width moved out to 1280 (don't worry if the height isn't 720 since a cinemascope film will typically only be 544 pixels high at this width, that is normal and it is still 720p). I also set constant quality to 62% because I have found this produces files which are not too large (typically 5GB for a normal under 2 hour movie) and the quality is definitely better than the 59% default for the preset. Check that audio is correct (AAC and AC3) and let it rip. This will take a lot longer than a typical DVD rip. My MacBook Pro Core Duo takes around 12 hours.
Now you have an MP4 file that will play on the ATV but you're going to want to jazz it up a bit. Get a program called Subler. With this you can now add in the SRT subtitles and the chapters. Write this out. Now open it in MetaX to add all the nice details such as cover art and you are good to go. On the ATV when playing you can press and hold the play button and the chapters and subtitle options will come up.
If you're feeling really keen, it is also possible to produce the HD/SD type so it will sync with an iPod while streaming in HD to the ATV. Takes a bit more effort but the guide here (http://www.thecheapgeek.org/2009/03/14/creating-dual-resolution-video-files-in-itunes/) is pretty good.
Does DVDFab do Blu-rays for free? Last time I tried it, it would not (free or otherwise).
I believe so. I have just got myself a Samsung BD-P1500 Blu-ray player having found I can make it region free for DVD (a big problem since I have a lot of out of zone DVDs) but I also have my hands on an LG Blu-ray/HD DVD combo SATA drive which I'm going to experiment on using the same method as I have used to rip HD DVDs. I'm less worried about the Blu-rays though since the player is nice and quiet. Worth doing rips so I can have iPod compatible versions though.
One Movie has me stumped
First, this a great thread, I prolly wouldn't of tried to do this with out the excellent instruction.
However, for the life of me I can't get "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" to convert to aTV.
Anyone else have any luck?
I'd prefer not to have to move my PS3 so the wife can watch it
As far as I can tell it's the PCM audio that's causing havoc with HB.
TIA
First, this a great thread, I prolly wouldn't of tried to do this with out the excellent instruction.
However, for the life of me I can't get "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" to convert to aTV.
Anyone else have any luck?
I'd prefer not to have to move my PS3 so the wife can watch it
As far as I can tell it's the PCM audio that's causing havoc with HB.
TIA
From my understanding ripping the blu-rays I already own Apple TV can only play it back as 720p not 1080p. And so the quality of the movie would look like the HD movies you can rent from Itunes store, with the size being about 4-5 Gb each?
So its the Apple TV hardware that limits full 1080p playback? Is there something out there that can stream 1080p from my Mac Pro?
So its the Apple TV hardware that limits full 1080p playback? Is there something out there that can stream 1080p from my Mac Pro?
its the
TVs hardware that limits the playback, not the bandwidth limitations of the HD, wireless etcetc.. sorry
I know I'm going to get shouted at but honestly, a high bit rate (5-6Mbps) 720p encode from an HD source looks very good indeed. I have Blu-ray and HD DVD and the rips I have done from HD DVD look very crisp even on my projector. Looking closely it is possible to see some compression artefacts but the 1080p version seems to have some noise and film grain too and the actual sharpness doesn't look much better. This does depend on the source though but really, 720p is very good and the difference in size is significant. My rips are going from about 15GB for the 1080p version down to 5GB for 720p and look significantly better than HD rentals from iTunes.
I noticed when I did my encodes that using the ATV preset bumped up to 1280x720 and at 59% CQ looked distinctly softer than the setting I now use which is 62%. At 59% it was obvious which was the rip and which was the original. At 62% the added detail makes it only possible to tell which is 720p when you look close to the screen and even then the extra resolution doesn't necessarily add much.
Actually, this does indeed appear to work.
The 5.something version wasn't recognizing the blu-ray disc, but after installing 6.0 beta (the download is linked from the same page) it showed up, the program recognized it, and at least in a partial extract it seemed to do just fine with pulling unprotected video out of it. Slow, but then that's not much of a surprise.
I also note that this is in XP running within VMWare Fusion--so long as I handed the external USB Blu-ray drive off to VMWare in its entirety (rather than as a "Virtual" drive or whatever--Windows is actually handling the USB device directly), it recognizes and will read the disc without requiring a reboot. Nice.
I admit, I've been experimenting with the free trials of other Blu-ray rippers, so it's possible one of the other things I installed added the appropriate disc format support to Windows which in turn allowed this app (in its free form) to read the disc, but I don't think that's the case.
Now if I could just figure out a way to do easier screenshots...
Theoretically, can Plex play Blu Ray rips without the need to encode using Handbrake?
If you downloaded a 720p file from the net (again, theoretically speaking), would you be able to play it in Plex straight away without the need to convert in handbrake?
If you downloaded a 720p file from the net (again, theoretically speaking), would you be able to play it in Plex straight away without the need to convert in handbrake?
No theory to it - Plex can play straight Blu-ray rips, provided they've had DHCP and encryption removed. The m2ts container of Blu-ray has been supported by Plex since its inception. The only issue is that it must transcode True-HD or DTS-HD to Dolby Digital or DTS, respectively, on the fly before sending it out the optical port (since TOSLink cannot support HD audio). This is computationally-intensive and can bog down the system.
Provided it's in one of the supported containers and codecs, then yes.
if you downloaded it off the internet (in mkv format or similar) it has already been converted. plex will play it easily.
Excellent, thanks for that. I've not even bought my Mini yet, but when i do i will be using it and Plex to run as a HTPC. I've got alot of DVD's to backup onto the Mini before i even start thinking about Blu-Ray really, but i'm just thinking aloud. This is a great thread and a comprehensive guide on how to rip the Blu-Rays, although im thinking paying for an external Blu-Ray drive and AnyDVD HD will have to wait a while yet, what with the Mini itself and an External Hard Drive to buy first! Bloody recession..
Thanks again for the help. Only reason i ask is that i've spotted some Blu-Ray rips (720p) to download at around the 2mb-4mb mark, which doesn't seem that unreasonable size wise. I'm thinking that if Plex can play them straight from the word go, then downloading these might bypass the need to convert in Handbrake. Stop me if i'm wrong though!
Thanks again for the help. Only reason i ask is that i've spotted some Blu-Ray rips (720p) to download at around the 2mb-4mb mark, which doesn't seem that unreasonable size wise. I'm thinking that if Plex can play them straight from the word go, then downloading these might bypass the need to convert in Handbrake. Stop me if i'm wrong though!
Excellent, thanks for that. I've not even bought my Mini yet, but when i do i will be using it and Plex to run as a HTPC. I've got alot of DVD's to backup onto the Mini before i even start thinking about Blu-Ray really, but i'm just thinking aloud. This is a great thread and a comprehensive guide on how to rip the Blu-Rays, although im thinking paying for an external Blu-Ray drive and AnyDVD HD will have to wait a while yet, what with the Mini itself and an External Hard Drive to buy first! Bloody recession..
Thanks again for the help. Only reason i ask is that i've spotted some Blu-Ray rips (720p) to download at around the 2mb-4mb mark, which doesn't seem that unreasonable size wise. I'm thinking that if Plex can play them straight from the word go, then downloading these might bypass the need to convert in Handbrake. Stop me if i'm wrong though!
i also want to do the same thing! i have near 25 downloaded movies (ahem), the problem is when i watch them i have to lug my MBP upstairs and plug the laptop in then get the speakers from the other computer and put them into the laptop and its just a lot of work. my poor old laptop struggles even with Plex so yea.
its a great way to bypass converting them yourself but i do plan on getting a BD drive to rip them at no loss of quality. currently the movies i download are about 10gb, which is roughly 4-5x less bitrate then the actual movies. its still decent to watch, but i want more!! haha
if your happy with the movies being at 2mb-4mb then thats fine! just MAKE SURE that the ones you download arent DVDs that have been upscaled to 720p (i.e. the downloads that are around 4gb in size, 720p should be about 6-7gb for reasonable viewing - however i do have a few of the upscaled versions and they look very nice)
goodluck with it!
Thanks mate, same to you, and thanks again for the help.
I'll be carefull what i download then in that respect, will keep an eye out. So you've already downloaded Blu-Ray rips from the net and played them through Plex the same as i plan to do? Anything i should know from your experience? Any tips or dangers i should be aware of?
Will deffo need an external Hard Drive or 2 if they're 10gb a piece though!
I'll be carefull what i download then in that respect, will keep an eye out. So you've already downloaded Blu-Ray rips from the net and played them through Plex the same as i plan to do? Anything i should know from your experience? Any tips or dangers i should be aware of?
Will deffo need an external Hard Drive or 2 if they're 10gb a piece though!