DVD decrypting slow/failing on new iMac...?

[Frosticus]

Morning all... I hope somebody can help as all my Googling has been somewhat fruitless.

Yesterday I bought a lovely new 27" iMac - 2.7GHz i5..

One of the main reasons I got this mac was to be able to rapidly rip my vast DVD collection for use with my ATV2 and therefore reclaim some shelf space.

As a switcher, I previously used AnyDVD and CloneDVD or Handbrake on PC, and I have previously used Handbrake with no problems on my girlfriend's 2006 MacBook too. Both worked reliably, but were slow.

I installed Handbrake and VLC on the new iMac, popped in a DVD (tried The Hangover, Toy Story 3 etc), selected the source as the DVD... I can hear the drive spinning away and the activity windows shows it is doing "something"... but it is taking forever to decrypt the disk - this was near instant on my old PC and on the MacBook. I eventually have to force quit the application. Also tried Mactheripper, and this seems to take forever and does not work..

Because I've been unable to get beyond stripping the disc protection this is very frustrating.

Any suggestions??

Many thanks

 

[Aidoneus]

I would imagine that the new iMacs come with RipLock built into the firmware of the drives. Unfortunately, there is no way round this, apart from using an external drive attached by USB.

 

[Frosticus]

I hadn't considered that.

Anyone know if there is a way of stripping Riplock from the drive firmware on these new iMacs?

Alternatively, any recommendations for a suitable external drive?

Edit: I see Binflash may do the trick although as the Mac is brand new, I'm a little wary of this... Any advice on which route I should pick?

 

[dlegend]

Why not rip the disk first to the hard drive with something like MacTheRipper and then try to encode. That should be quicker anyway.

 

[Frosticus]

Why not rip the disk first to the hard drive with something like MacTheRipper and then try to encode. That should be quicker anyway.

As I mentioned in the first post (although probably didn't explain too well), I cannot complete the initial rip as it is taking forever - including using Mactheripper - this appears to be due to riplock on the drive which I am trying to find a way around.

Once I have bypassed the protection etc, encoding won't be a problem.

Possibly looking at putting the internal drive from my old PC in an enclosure as I know this drive has no problems. Not very elegant though...

 

[ibglowin]

AnyDVD is just too darn good to give up. This weeks release of the Green Hornet was a perfect example. New protection found and update out the same day it was released. I keep a PC around just for that alone. It feeds the ripped files to handbrake and then on to the TV2

 

[Frosticus]

I'd happily run AnyDVD under Windows on the Mac as I'm used to it and it provides good results, however it would probably have the same problem as with VNC, Mactheripper etc as Riplock affects the optical drive at a hardware level..

 

[Aidoneus]

There are ways to remove the drive limitations through firmware changes, but if the iMacs use new optical drives, there won't be a fix for some time (I went through the same thing a couple of months back with the 2011 MacBook Pros).

My solution has been to buy an external Blu-ray drive, and use that for all disc rips. I was going to buy one anyway, so I'm not actually out any money. Even if you don't plan on converting Blu-rays, external DVD drives don't cost a lot of money.

 

[KevinC867]

My solution was to build a PC with a quad-core 3 GHz AMD CPU, 2TB hard drive and a Blu-Ray drive, all for about $400. (With a smaller hard-drive and a DVD instead of Blu-Ray, it could have been close to $300.) I use MakeMKV for ripping Blu-Rays/DVDs and HandBrake for the encoding. The latest iMacs may be a little faster at the encoding, but not very much.

My primary machine is a MacBook Pro, and I really don't want it churning away on video encodes all day, generating heat and fan noise. A cheap (and fast!) PC in another room is the perfect solution for me.


However, in regard to the OP's problem with his iMac - You might want to try a few more disks. Some disks use tricky methods to block ripping. This can cause apparent read errors and retries which make the rip grind to a halt. Somehow, these disks work OK when used with a movie player, but not when being read as "data". I think Toy Story 3 might be such a disk.

Unless the new iMacs are doing something different, rip-lock should slow down ripping, but not completely cripple it. Do you hear the drive starting and stopping repeatedly? That can be a sign of a disk with a more sophisticated copy-protection scheme.

 

[Frosticus]

There are ways to remove the drive limitations through firmware changes, but if the iMacs use new optical drives, there won't be a fix for some time (I went through the same thing a couple of months back with the 2011 MacBook Pros).

My solution has been to buy an external Blu-ray drive, and use that for all disc rips. I was going to buy one anyway, so I'm not actually out any money. Even if you don't plan on converting Blu-rays, external DVD drives don't cost a lot of money.

To be honest, an external blu-ray drive would be the ideal solution for me as I would like to do HD rips of blu-ray movies. What make/model drive did you get and how did you ensure it would work before buying it?

I'd greatly appreciate your feedback.

Cheers

 

[Aidoneus]

I bought this one, for no other reason that it was the cheapest Amazon had to offer

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B003VJ0FR0/ref=oss_product

I can confirm that it works great for Blu-ray rips using MakeMKV.

 

[gunthermic]

I just did Green Hornet with no problem on Mac Mini. Nothing special, I use what is in this thread..

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/805573/

Works so well. Although Disney movies do tend to cause problems because of the problem with 99 tracks thing they try.. However I can tell you having just done well over 1000, dont use your internal.. will burn it out, especailly on a iMac. Use externals, less heat, and can just be exchanged out if you burn it out.

I dont use HB to try and make it do the ripping.. It does it pretty well on the PC version, but have found that the Mac version isnt the same. IMO

 

[cuestakid]

I would imagine that the new iMacs come with RipLock built into the firmware of the drives. Unfortunately, there is no way round this, apart from using an external drive attached by USB.

Just as a point of reference, I have a 2011 MBP and have noticed any issues ripping media as of yet.

EDIT-just tried HB again and I am now having issues. HB keept crashing and was having issues scanning. I am now using MTR to scan a specific track from the disc. I was using the 64 bit HB version and will try that once I have copied the track using MTR. But it does seem that there may be some new issues we will have to find means to get around.

 

[doobs22]

no new iMac for me

given that I'm likely to have problems using Handbrake with one of my DVDs on the new iMac, I'm just gonna keep using my 2008 iMac for a good while longer. Glad I read this forum before I bought a new iMac.

 

[cuestakid]

So a little update-

I used MTR to rip a different disc and that succeeded. HB is now processing it-the MTR rip took about 28 min on a 2011 2.2 i7 MBP (base configuration)

 

[KevinC867]

So a little update-

I used MTR to rip a different disc and that succeeded. HB is now processing it-the MTR rip took about 28 min on a 2011 2.2 i7 MBP (base configuration)

That sounds right. My PC with no rip-lock on the drive rips a 2:20 movie in 10 minutes. So, rip-lock on the Mac drives makes the rip several times slower, but it doesn't make it impossibly long.

 

[cuestakid]

That sounds right. My PC with no rip-lock on the drive rips a 2:20 movie in 10 minutes. So, rip-lock on the Mac drives makes the rip several times slower, but it doesn't make it impossibly long.

wow. Kinda defeats part of the reason to have a faster machine if it has been bottlenecked by hardware locks...

How long have Macs (or PCs) had RipLock and how do I know if the external device I get will or won't have it ?

 

[Frosticus]

I bought this one, for no other reason that it was the cheapest Amazon had to offer

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B003VJ0FR0/ref=oss_product

I can confirm that it works great for Blu-ray rips using MakeMKV.

Thanks for that, I'm more than happy to pay £60 for a BD drive if it does the job - does it work ok for DVD rips too? Faster than the internal drive?

wow. Kinda defeats part of the reason to have a faster machine if it has been bottlenecked by hardware locks...

Exactly! I didn't get a Mac purely for ripping my DVD collection, but I was hoping that it would at least be faster than my old PC..!

 

[KevinC867]

Exactly! I didn't get a Mac purely for ripping my DVD collection, but I was hoping that it would at least be faster than my old PC..!

The good news is that although the ripping speed is kind of slow, it is still probably faster than the speed of encoding a movie for iTunes. That means that the overall throughput of your DVD conversions won't be reduced.

It also sounds like your real problem is not the rip-lock "feature" on the Apple drives. You might try some newer ripping software like RipIt. (Hopefully, they have a free trial period.) That might be able to handle any clever copy protection on certain disks.

 

[Frosticus]

The good news is that although the ripping speed is kind of slow, it is still probably faster than the speed of encoding a movie for iTunes. That means that the overall throughput of your DVD conversions won't be reduced.

It also sounds like your real problem is not the rip-lock "feature" on the Apple drives. You might try some newer ripping software like RipIt. (Hopefully, they have a free trial period.) That might be able to handle any clever copy protection on certain disks.

That is true. I tried an encode of a previously ripped DVD and it was, as expected, much quicker.

To work around the problem of the slow rip, and to also enable me to rip Blu-ray, I have bought a Plextor PX-B120U which is being delivered today. I will give that a go with Ripit on some DVDs and post the results later.

The riplock feature of the internal drive is a pain in the a**, but being pragmatic about it, I guess it means I won't be burning out the drive anytime soon!

Please continue to post workarounds/ solutions to this problem so we can collectively develop an optimal workflow.

 

[utazdevl]

To work around the problem of the slow rip, and to also enable me to rip Blu-ray, I have bought a Plextor PX-B120U which is being delivered today. I will give that a go with Ripit on some DVDs and post the results later.

Will this Plextor drive work with you Mac interface, or do you have to boot in windows to use it?

I ask because I am looking for a reasonably priced BD Drive for my Mac, but I don't run windows on it. I want to be able to use it with the Mac OS. Amazon lists that the Plextor drive is PC compatible, but no mention of Mac compatibility.

 

[Frosticus]

The Plextor drive works fine on OSX, just plugged it in and off I went. You cannot play blu-ray discs on it under OSX though, you will have to boot it into Windows for that. However, it works just fine for ripping blu-rays with Makemkv, and for ripping DVDs with Ripit & handbrake.

 

[utazdevl]

The Plextor drive works fine on OSX, just plugged it in and off I went. You cannot play blu-ray discs on it under OSX though, you will have to boot it into Windows for that. However, it works just fine for ripping blu-rays with Makemkv, and for ripping DVDs with Ripit & handbrake.

Thanks. I have no need to play the BD's on my 15 inch Macbook Pro, just want to be able to encode from my BD's.

I might just have to re-encode my entire collection in HD now that I know I can do it for little hardware investment. Maybe I shouldn't be thanking you...

 

[Frosticus]

Thanks. I have no need to play the BD's on my 15 inch Macbook Pro, just want to be able to encode from my BD's.

I might just have to re-encode my entire collection in HD now that I know I can do it for little hardware investment. Maybe I shouldn't be thanking you...

Indeed, it wasn't my solution, but for now, it works very well.

Ripped my Avatar blu ray from BD>MKV>M4V in a few hours - not bad considering the size of the files involved. I just used MakeMKV and Handbrake 64 (Apple TV 2 defaults). The quality of the final output was very good, although a slight drop in frame rate here and there - barely noticeable, but I'm sure it can be easily remedied.

Thanks to Aidoneus for recommending the Plextor drive! 'twas a bargain!

Edit: If anyone knows of a way to directly rip from BD > M4V, please let me know - I've searched high and low but not found anything yet.

 

[cuestakid]

My solution was to build a PC with a quad-core 3 GHz AMD CPU, 2TB hard drive and a Blu-Ray drive, all for about $400. (With a smaller hard-drive and a DVD instead of Blu-Ray, it could have been close to $300.) I use MakeMKV for ripping Blu-Rays/DVDs and HandBrake for the encoding. The latest iMacs may be a little faster at the encoding, but not very much.

My primary machine is a MacBook Pro, and I really don't want it churning away on video encodes all day, generating heat and fan noise. A cheap (and fast!) PC in another room is the perfect solution for me.


However, in regard to the OP's problem with his iMac - You might want to try a few more disks. Some disks use tricky methods to block ripping. This can cause apparent read errors and retries which make the rip grind to a halt. Somehow, these disks work OK when used with a movie player, but not when being read as "data". I think Toy Story 3 might be such a disk.

Unless the new iMacs are doing something different, rip-lock should slow down ripping, but not completely cripple it. Do you hear the drive starting and stopping repeatedly? That can be a sign of a disk with a more sophisticated copy-protection scheme.

Would you be willing to list out what parts you got for that price? I am open to the idea of "off-loading" the ripping process to another device.