Blu-Ray to Apple TV

[dvdflashbacks]

In Makemkv are you keeping it simple and just selecting one audio track and no subtitles and Handbrake's is still crashing? I've had some problems with handbrake when I don't deselect everything except for the main Audio/video track.

Yes. I have tried re-ripping with makemkv as well. Unless I know the movie has forced subtitles, I always only select video and audio. Everything else goes unchecked.

As I suspect there are actually three different video files (according to bdinfo) Two are identical streams for the main movie (stream 950 gets excluded by makemkv) and the other is the bluray live version. I also have now tried using tsmuxer through windows and exporting both .ts and .mpts in Handbrake. Handbrake crashes on both. also at the same timeframe in the encode (about half-way through at what would be chapter 12).

 

[dvdflashbacks]

Hey astrorider,

So I have determined the exact point in the film where handbrake is crashing. It is inbetween chapter 12 and 13. I am not sure if this is where the dual layer on the blu ray kicks in, but i did notice that it is the only time that there is a subtitle in the film. It where Robert Downey says one line in French.

It is really odd. I can't seem to get any support over in Handbrake forum either.

I have tried several ways to rip this film to my hard drive prior to handbrake. I have tried makemkv, anydvd hd, and even a program called mac blurayripper pro. Once I have the entire bluray on my hdd (all 59.4 GBs of it) I have then tried using makemkv and tsmuxer. I have tried both windows and mac versions of handbrake as well.

I think I am out of options. (Although I was able to use makemkv and handbrake to rip the normal combo dvd that came with the bluray and it worked fine.)

 

[astrorider]

Hey astrorider,

So I have determined the exact point in the film where handbrake is crashing. It is inbetween chapter 12 and 13. I am not sure if this is where the dual layer on the blu ray kicks in, but i did notice that it is the only time that there is a subtitle in the film. It where Robert Downey says one line in French.

It is really odd. I can't seem to get any support over in Handbrake forum either.

I have tried several ways to rip this film to my hard drive prior to handbrake. I have tried makemkv, anydvd hd, and even a program called mac blurayripper pro. Once I have the entire bluray on my hdd (all 59.4 GBs of it) I have then tried using makemkv and tsmuxer. I have tried both windows and mac versions of handbrake as well.

I think I am out of options. (Although I was able to use makemkv and handbrake to rip the normal combo dvd that came with the bluray and it worked fine.)

What you said makes it sound like the rip with MakeMKV includes subtitles? If not, ignore the rest of the post, and I'm out of ideas. If so, try ripping within MakeMKV without any subtitles selected, i.e. just the video and main audio track. Does Handbrake still crash in this case?

You could then add an SRT of the subtitles (for example from subscene.com). I use either Subler to add the SRT to the file Handbrake creates, or MKVtoolnix to add the SRT to the MKV file that MakeMKV creates.

 

[dvdflashbacks]

What you said makes it sound like the rip with MakeMKV includes subtitles? If not, ignore the rest of the post, and I'm out of ideas. If so, try ripping within MakeMKV without any subtitles selected, i.e. just the video and main audio track. Does Handbrake still crash in this case?

You could then add an SRT of the subtitles (for example from subscene.com). I use either Subler to add the SRT to the file Handbrake creates, or MKVtoolnix to add the SRT to the MKV file that MakeMKV creates.

Actually I have tried it both ways. With or without subtitles doesn't seem to make a difference. For grins I even tried adding in the French audio track (thinking that maybe they did something clever like throwing this one tiny segment in as using the French audio).

So basically I am out of options. The disc plays perfectly on my PS3. AnyDVD HD, makeMKV, tsmuxer, bluray ripper pro...Handbrake always crashes at the same point regardless of the method used to extract the movie. I have also tried to get HB to open the .m2ts instead and still nothing.

The way I figured out where it was crashing was by trying to encode chapter 11, 12 and 13 separetely. The point in the film that Sherlock says that one line in french (just a few seconds in length) must be getting ignored/stripped out of the .mkv somehow. It occurs at the tale end of chapter 12 so when I ripped 12 and 13 individually they both completed in HB but that tiny segment was missing. If I tried to encode 12-13 together HB would crash right after chapter 12 finished. Does that make sense?

So my last option (unless someone else has Sherlock on Bluray and can figure it out) is that I am trying to find an alternative to HB that I can atleast create a full .mp4 file from instead of trying to do an .mkv first and then import into HB. (I have a few movies that for some reason ended up with no chapters and resulted as a .mp4 and were a bit larger than the .m4v, but they still played well on the aTV)

Thanks.

 

[astrorider]

Actually I have tried it both ways. With or without subtitles doesn't seem to make a difference. For grins I even tried adding in the French audio track (thinking that maybe they did something clever like throwing this one tiny segment in as using the French audio).

So basically I am out of options. The disc plays perfectly on my PS3. AnyDVD HD, makeMKV, tsmuxer, bluray ripper pro...Handbrake always crashes at the same point regardless of the method used to extract the movie. I have also tried to get HB to open the .m2ts instead and still nothing.

The way I figured out where it was crashing was by trying to encode chapter 11, 12 and 13 separetely. The point in the film that Sherlock says that one line in french (just a few seconds in length) must be getting ignored/stripped out of the .mkv somehow. It occurs at the tale end of chapter 12 so when I ripped 12 and 13 individually they both completed in HB but that tiny segment was missing. If I tried to encode 12-13 together HB would crash right after chapter 12 finished. Does that make sense?

So my last option (unless someone else has Sherlock on Bluray and can figure it out) is that I am trying to find an alternative to HB that I can atleast create a full .mp4 file from instead of trying to do an .mkv first and then import into HB. (I have a few movies that for some reason ended up with no chapters and resulted as a .mp4 and were a bit larger than the .m4v, but they still played well on the aTV)

Thanks.

Yep, I'm sure someone else will try this disk soon and chime in on this thread. Good luck.

 

[tommylotto]

Anamorphic HD content on AppleTV

AppleTV will play Anamorphic HD content. I loaded a 1080p MKV into Handbrake. Under the picture setting, I changed the Anamorphic setting to "Custom". That made the window bigger, exposing more options. I made the width 1280 and the height 720, with "keep aspect ratio" checked. With the Dark Knight, the display width was set at 1723. I encoded one scene with this setting. The resulting file was 1280x720, Anamorphic 1723x720 Custom. I synced the file onto my AppleTV and the file played fine. Looked good too. I have not made any critical analysis, but this setting may give use better use of the limited pixels afforded to us by AppleTV.

 

[dvdflashbacks]

Still nothing for Sherlock Holmes Bluray to aTV?

So does anyone know of a good alternative to Handbrake that would work? I have tried pretty much every program I can think of and no matter which method I try, HB just crashes at the same point with Sherlock.

Has no one bought a copy of this movie yet to try backing it up to the aTV?

 

[tommylotto]

I think this is pretty significant. If this works like I think it works, it increases the resolution of wide screen BluRay encodes from 1280x544p to something like 1723x720p. That is a 78% increase in perceived resolution and a 32% increase in actual lines of resolution. I think I am going to have to re-encode many of by files.

AppleTV will play Anamorphic HD content. I loaded a 1080p MKV into Handbrake. Under the picture setting, I changed the Anamorphic setting to "Custom". That made the window bigger, exposing more options. I made the width 1280 and the height 720, with "keep aspect ratio" checked. With the Dark Knight, the display width was set at 1723. I encoded one scene with this setting. The resulting file was 1280x720, Anamorphic 1723x720 Custom. I synced the file onto my AppleTV and the file played fine. Looked good too. I have not made any critical analysis, but this setting may give use better use of the limited pixels afforded to us by AppleTV.

 

[tbayrgs]

I think this is pretty significant. If this works like I think it works, it increases the resolution of wide screen BluRay encodes from 1280x544p to something like 1723x720p. That is a 78% increase in perceived resolution and a 32% increase in actual lines of resolution. I think I am going to have to re-encode many of by files.

Great advice...tried this trick on a new copy of Apollo 13, ended up being 1694x720, played fine on both TV and on my iPad. Haven't watched on PLEX yet i'm guessing will look even better. Thanks.

 

[tommylotto]

Here is a picture of the anamorphic settings that work with AppleTV and a picture of the anamorphic version next to the normal version to give you an idea of the increased size and resolution:

 

[ManWithAPlan]

Struggling a bit here

Guys, been reading up and testing to some degree by I think I'm missing some key elements to my process and need a sanity check on a few things that may seem really basic to most of you.

1. With the latest makemkv, version 1.5.4, I still don't know if I'm ignoring important audio files to my rips...of course, I only want to create the .mkv once if possible, don't want to find later I ignored something I later need. So, should I grab subtitles for most movies, at least the forced ones? Am I correct in assuming that if I don't choose the forced subtitles, then in a movie that has non-english parts to it, I will not get the english subtitles at all??? Say a movie like Bourne Identity for instance, with many non-english dialogue portions.

2. I have a nice receiver that can decode all the new HD audio tracks, but if AppleTV is the end device for my HB encdodes, is there any benefit at all for choosing the TrueHD track in makemkv at all? Or should I just stick to DD when possible?

3. Lastly, is it still necessary to use the cli tools for getting DTS tracks into AC3 tracks? It seems that there may be other ways to do this now, no? Would TSmuxer be able to convert DTS to AC3?

Thanks guys, sorry I have some gaps in my understanding of things...i've ripped many many DVD's and used handbrake for years, but I think I'm missing some things in my quest for HD encodes.

Cheers.

 

[rshillshooter81]

I have been trying for days to get Blu-Ray of Sherlock Holmes to convert from MKV with Handbrake it always crashes at 46%.

I can make a copy with DVDFab but the output quality is HORRIBLE.

 

[dynaflash]

Maybe try the latest HandBrake nightly build, there have been some improvements and it may work better.

 

[tbayrgs]

I have been trying for days to get Blu-Ray of Sherlock Holmes to convert from MKV with Handbrake it always crashes at 46%.

I can make a copy with DVDFab but the output quality is HORRIBLE.

I previously read about everyone's problems trying to encode the rip from MakeMKV but gave it a go regardless. I encode my BD rips twice--one for use on PLEX, TV, and iPad and another for iPhone, iPod. Weird thing is that my 720p encode done with TV preset made it all the way through yet my second run using Universal preset keeps crashing (not sure at what point but I know it's later than 46%). I had read that it was suspected that the audio track was responsible but I used the same audio settings for both encodes. I've tried multiple times but can't get the 2nd run to finish.

For reference, I used the first title of the entire movie (believe there were two found using MakeMKV). I'm not sweating not having the lower resolution encode as I can watch if needed on my iPad or use Air Video to convert on the fly on my iPhone, if needed.

 

[tbayrgs]

Latest version of MakeMKV out, can decrypt Avatar BD+

Might be old news but I didn't see any mention of it yet...

MakeMKV v. 1.5.5 is out now with the ability to rip the Avatar blu-ray disk. Just be sure to also download the latest combined SVQ file here (link midway down the page) into "SVQ directory" set in MakeMKV preferences (on BD+ tab).

Now on to try to figure out how to find a good .srt file with subtitles only for the Navi speaking parts and add it in Handbrake or Subler (advice on what works best or if you have a link to a good file would also be greatly appreciated ).

 

[hpereyda]

I have been trying for days to get Blu-Ray of Sherlock Holmes to convert from MKV with Handbrake it always crashes at 46%.

I can make a copy with DVDFab but the output quality is HORRIBLE.

I do not have this problem. I use MakeMKV 1.5.4 to make the MKV file and able to convert with Handbrake using the settings listed here:
http://dynaflashtech.net/2009/11/06/handbrake-appletv-hi-profile-setting/

BTW, thank you dynaflash!

 

[dynaflash]

Might be old news but I didn't see any mention of it yet...

MakeMKV v. 1.5.5 is out now with the ability to rip the Avatar blu-ray disk. Just be sure to also download the latest combined SVQ file here (link midway down the page) into "SVQ directory" set in MakeMKV preferences (on BD+ tab).

Now on to try to figure out how to find a good .srt file with subtitles only for the Navi speaking parts and add it in Handbrake or Subler (advice on what works best or if you have a link to a good file would also be greatly appreciated ).

Both hb and subler can add external .srt's. Both use the same muxer (note subler is written by ritsuka who is a hb dev).

I would check something like this to find .srt files for avatar http://subscene.com/Avatar/subtitles-80311.aspx

Also http://www.opensubtitles.org/

 

[tbayrgs]

Both hb and subler can add external .srt's. Both use the same muxer (note subler is written by ritsuka who is a hb dev).

I would check something like this to find .srt files for avatar http://subscene.com/Avatar/subtitles-80311.aspx

Also http://www.opensubtitles.org/

Thanks dynaflash...believe I found one on opensubtitles.com and added it to my encode job in HB...we'll see how it goes. BTW, should I check the forced box? I did under the assumption this would embed them right in the movie (cannot turn them on or off).

 

[dynaflash]

Thanks dynaflash...believe I found one on opensubtitles.com and added it to my encode job in HB...we'll see how it goes. BTW, should I check the forced box? I did under the assumption this would embed them right in the movie (cannot turn them on or off).

Depends if the srt is only the forced subs (only when the navi speak) and if not if the srt has flagged forced for just forced. In short for srt's in hb as long as the srt only has the forced subs just select it and leave it alone.

Also realize this: the atv does not respect the "default" checkbox in hb. This means that on first playback you will NOT see the navi subs. You will have to hold down play/pause to bring up the sub menu then pick the subs. After that the atv will always show the subs.

Please understand that this is not the same as the traditional "burned in subs" you are used to seeing from dvd sources with HB where they are always on with no options. Having said that much better because imo they render much nicer and in the case of optional subs can be turned on or off.

Quick Edit: note that with Jubler you can actually view the subs in a text format to see if they look like just the forced navi subs before doing a long encode.

 

[bucksaddle]

Also realize this: the atv does not respect the "default" checkbox in hb. This means that on first playback you will NOT see the navi subs. You will have to hold down play/pause to bring up the sub menu then pick the subs. After that the atv will always show the subs.

If you set your default subtitle language in the ATV settings then you do not need to go into the play/pause menu for each movie - they will be on by default. This is true for both regular and forced subtitles. However, please note that I add my subtitles via Subler so i'm not sure if that is doing anything different to what HandBrake does.
EDIT: Just done a quick test by adding the srt via HandBrake and the forced subtitles appear as expected on the ATV without having to go into the play/pause menu.

 

[Tod0boT]

So does anyone know of a good alternative to Handbrake that would work? I have tried pretty much every program I can think of and no matter which method I try, HB just crashes at the same point with Sherlock.

Has no one bought a copy of this movie yet to try backing it up to the aTV?

I was also having issues transcoding the Sherlock Holmes Bluray disk using Handbrake. I eventually switched to my PC and used RipBot264. That seemed to work just fine.

 

[dynaflash]

If you set your default subtitle language in the ATV settings then you do not need to go into the play/pause menu for each movie - they will be on by default. This is true for both regular and forced subtitles. However, please note that I add my subtitles via Subler so i'm not sure if that is doing anything different to what HandBrake does.
EDIT: Just done a quick test by adding the srt via HandBrake and the forced subtitles appear as expected on the ATV without having to go into the play/pause menu.

Right,my assumption though was that the user did not want to set a global pref to always use subs on all movies. Though your point is well taken.

 

[NateCook]

So what are our available options now

Would someone mind summing up what our available options are regarding software for converting Blu-rays to Apple TV? I'm currently using MakeMKV and Handbrake, however, when those don't work, I revert to Pavtub Blu-ray Ripper. Are there any other software packages out there? Are there others better than these?

I, like others, have had trouble ripping Sherlock Holmes. MakeMKV worked fine, Handbrake crashed, Pavtub Blu-ray Ripper worked, however the audio synchronization in the output file seems to be off on the later half of the movie. Any suggestions?

 

[stevol]

Blu-ray drives?

I am looking to start ripping blu-ray movies and I have read a lot on this forum / thread about software, but not much about the hardware. I have no immediate need for a blu-ray burner, so I am wondering if I could save the money and just buy an external (I have an iMac, needs to be external) blu-ray reader (readers are about $200 cheaper than burner right now). Any thoughts or suggestions for external blu-ray readers? What do you guys use who post here? Fastmac? OWC? LG? ASUS? Will any external blu-ray drive work even if it is advertised as compatible with Windows (and Mac is not mentioned)? How much does the speed of the drive matter for ripping (the basic Fastmac external drive runs at only a 2x speed). Any good reason to consider a burner instead if all I want to do now (and in the immediate future) is rip, not burn? Thanks in advance.

 

[GermanSuplex]

I am looking to start ripping blu-ray movies and I have read a lot on this forum / thread about software, but not much about the hardware. I have no immediate need for a blu-ray burner, so I am wondering if I could save the money and just buy an external (I have an iMac, needs to be external) blu-ray reader (readers are about $200 cheaper than burner right now). Any thoughts or suggestions for external blu-ray readers? What do you guys use who post here? Fastmac? OWC? LG? ASUS? Will any external blu-ray drive work even if it is advertised as compatible with Windows (and Mac is not mentioned)? How much does the speed of the drive matter for ripping (the basic Fastmac external drive runs at only a 2x speed). Any good reason to consider a burner instead if all I want to do now (and in the immediate future) is rip, not burn? Thanks in advance.

I bought an internal reader... only about $150 and does what I need it to do, which is rip Blu-Ray. I just didn't see the need for a burner with blank Blu-Ray discs being so expensive at the moment.

With speed... it takes a long time to rip a Blu-Ray with an internal drive, I reckon an external drive will take a bit more time, but I'm not sure it will matter much unless you plan on ripping tons of Blu-Rays in a small amount of time. If you only buy a Blu-Ray once every week or two or whatever, then it shouldn't be much of an issue.