Native Blu-ray ripping for OS X is finally here!

[REK]

Next, REK: "any type of disc burning..." it's my understanding that anyone who uses this rip software will need a blu-ray disc drive. Is your point that the blu-ray drive is a burner?

This is what I meant.

That's what the support page at MakeMKV. The drive has to write something, even if it's just a CD or DVD burner and only a Blu-ray ROM drive. My problem is my drive reads Blu-ray, DVD and CD discs, but does not write to any of them.

So the ripper can read from the blu-ray while in OSX.

On another note, after going through makemkv what is the quality of the remaining file? I would think its compressed a little but how much. Just curious if say I wanted to keep a back up of the blu-ray disc, as close to original as possible, and then encode to other formats from it for itunes. Later on I could possibly burn the original makemkv file back to blu-ray and get close to original quality? (of course, minus menus and such)

 

[TuckBodi]

for those looking for a bluray drive, this seems to be the cheapest I have found:

http://3btech.net/paujblbdredv.html

of course you would still need an enclosure!

-edit-

here seems to be a cheap enclosure with usb/fw:

http://3btech.net/chaliefi3had.html

So you could get a bluray drive for >$100 it seems

Go for it and let us know if it works. Saving $50 bucks versus the alternative got my attention.

 

[Cave Man]

On another note, after going through makemkv what is the quality of the remaining file? I would think its compressed a little but how much.

It appears that Make MKV simply repackages the video and audio into an MKV container (from an m2ts container). If the disc has HD audio, then the compressed cores are extracted prior to repackaging. This means no loss of the original video quality. If it were reencoding, it'd take a lot longer than 40-50 minutes to complete on a Core 2 Duo computer.

Go for it and let us know if it works. Saving $50 bucks versus the alternative got my attention.

I'm not too sure about putting a notebook drive in such an enclosure. It will likely require a cable adapter (40 pin desktop IDE to 50 pin notebook IDE).

 

[PsychoSid]

UK Recommdations for Blu-Ray drive for 2006 Macpro ?

Anyone in the UK recommend a drive to get for a Mac Pro (internal preferred - but the MCE one from jigsaw24 is £££'s).

I installed Win7 under bootcamp last night to prepare for this with AnyDVD HD as I finished ripping my DVD collection to ATV. So now for the Blu-Rays. Looks like a step I won't have to do...

 

[xxBURT0Nxx]

I'm not too sure about putting a notebook drive in such an enclosure. It will likely require a cable adapter (40 pin desktop IDE to 50 pin notebook IDE).

ahh, didn't realize it was a laptop drive... what about this one:

http://www.pcpartsohio.com/BookDetail.aspx?item_id=1122

or do they make enclosures for laptop drives?

 

[davwin]

Anyone in the UK recommend a drive to get for a Mac Pro (internal preferred - but the MCE one from jigsaw24 is £££'s).
..

I believe the best you can currently find is the LG GGC-H20L (UK version of the GGW I believe). This is a BD ROM/HD-DVD ROM drive with CD & DVD burning capabilities and the US version has been confirmed working with MakeMKV. This drive is £69 at Play.com right now or £79 pretty much everywhere else. PC World even carry this one in-store apparently. A

Since you said you would be installing it internally on your Mac Pro that should be all you need. For others any SATA > USB 2.0/FW 5.25 enclosure should be fine for this drive to use it externally.

 

[PsychoSid]

I believe the best you can currently find is the LG GGC-H20L (UK version of the GGW I believe). This is a BD ROM/HD-DVD ROM drive with CD & DVD burning capabilities and the US version has been confirmed working with MakeMKV. This drive is £69 at Play.com right now or £79 pretty much everywhere else. PC World even carry this one in-store apparently. A

Since you said you would be installing it internally on your Mac Pro that should be all you need. For others any SATA > USB 2.0/FW 5.25 enclosure should be fine for this drive to use it externally.

Thanks for that. All 4 disk bays are in use at the moment in the Pro (2006)although one optical bay is free. Not sure I can use a SATA drive so may have to go with an expensive MCE internal or an external. Am I right ?

 

[davwin]

At worst PsychoSid, you can still use that same drive in an external drive enclosure via USB 2.0 or FireWire.

 

[Oneness]

I apoligize for such a noob question but I just want to get this straight in my head.
I can take a Blu-Ray drive with writing capabilities, rip a BR disc using MakeMKV. I will then get a BR quality file in a MKV container that is playable on my Mac Mini Media Server (2.16 ghz Core 2 CPU/2 gb RAM).
Thus I am able to finally enter the HD world without buying a BR disc player, right?

 

[northy124]

LG GGC-H20L

At play.com there are 2 different drives, one retail the other bare bones, is there a difference?

 

[REK]

At play.com there are 2 different drives, one retail the other bare bones, is there a difference?

Bare drive, sometimes called oem parts or brown box, usually comes with limited accessories.
In this case a reviewer noted that nothing besides the actual drive (no sata cables, not even mounting screws) were included.
Its usually a good deal, sometimes bundled software and accessories are even included, at newegg when you buy oem you get whatever is in the photos, and warranties still apply to the manufacture, but not the company purchased from.

 

[yoak]

Excuse my ignorance, But why do you want to play a 1080 blu-ray disk in a compressed 720 format from the apple tv?
Why not just play it off a blu-Ray player?
No one seems to comment on how the quality is from the apple tv, how different is it?
I understand the plus side of being able to get your disks onto the your iPhone etc.

 

[donster28]

I apoligize for such a noob question but I just want to get this straight in my head.
I can take a Blu-Ray drive with writing capabilities, rip a BR disc using MakeMKV. I will then get a BR quality file in a MKV container that is playable on my Mac Mini Media Server (2.16 ghz Core 2 CPU/2 gb RAM).
Thus I am able to finally enter the HD world without buying a BR disc player, right?

technically yes or at least that's what we're aiming for.

makemkv still does not do every bluray disc out there, especially ones that have BD+ capabilities (one example is the Fantastic Four 2 Bluray disc), but you can convert at a least a number of them to MKV to start with.

and if you want to use them with your apple tv and want to save around 10gigs of space and still preserving a 720p HD quality video and digital surround, you can convert the MKV to MP4 using handbrake.

 

[nando2323]

Excuse my ignorance, But why do you want to play a 1080 blu-ray disk in a compressed 720 format from the apple tv?
Why not just play it off a blu-Ray player?
No one seems to comment on how the quality is from the apple tv, how different is it?
I understand the plus side of being able to get your disks onto the your iPhone etc.

720p at 5500 kbps for me is superb to say the least. Chicken Little for instance looks unbelievable and that was re-encoded down to 720p from 1080p.

 

[dynaflash]

Well, *if* the appletv is your device playback of choice, there is no doubt that a hb encode from 1080p br will look much better than from a standard dvd. Even though the blue ray encode will be scaled down to 720p to fit the atv's specs.

As an example, on the hb forums there is always someone asking how the apple hd movies look so nice even at 720p. Of course the answer is the source they are encoding from. They do not make those from sd dvd's or even 1080p br.

 

[nando2323]

I am not sure if someone has asked this question yet but can this program use .iso's created from my PS3 or does it have to have an external drive to work?

 

[Cave Man]

Excuse my ignorance, But why do you want to play a 1080 blu-ray disk in a compressed 720 format from the apple tv?

Because that's what the Apple TV takes.

Why not just play it off a blu-Ray player?

Some of us want all our video files on the network so they're accessible by our computers and our Apple TV. We have two desktops (one of which is a home theater Mac with a 1080p projector) and three laptops. All of them can access our HD content by wifi.

No one seems to comment on how the quality is from the apple tv, how different is it?

On my 40" LCD TV there's no perceptible difference between the original Blu-ray rips and my 720p transcodes. On my 10 foot screen the difference is clear.

 

[yoak]

720p at 5500 kbps for me is superb to say the least. Chicken Little for instance looks unbelievable and that was re-encoded down to 720p from 1080p.

Hi. thanks for posting.
Edit: and to everyone else that has helped enlighten me

 

[donster28]

Excuse my ignorance, But why do you want to play a 1080 blu-ray disk in a compressed 720 format from the apple tv?
Why not just play it off a blu-Ray player?
No one seems to comment on how the quality is from the apple tv, how different is it?
I understand the plus side of being able to get your disks onto the your iPhone etc.

First, encoding your blurays to your hard drive eliminates the need to pop in the actual disk itself whenever you want to watch the movie. You also have the convenience of having Apple TV organize them neatly as if you are using a jukebox to play music (or iTunes to play music). Mine even has the cover art showing up on Apple TV selection screen.

Second, 720p encodes do not take a lot of space therefore, you can fit a lot in your hard drive. And you know what, that quality is amazingly close to 1080 (heck I don't even notice the diff. on my 32' and 100" screen). Imagine the size diff. from a 25 gig MKV file to a 4gig MP4 Apple TV file. Oh and yes, this is the movie only...no added crap. You can always pop in your BD disc if you want to watch the extra stuff.

 

[sparklesinmotio]

So no one has found the plist you need to edit to get a BD-ROM (no burning) working? I can't find a post that says which one you have to edit....

 

[yoak]

First, encoding your blurays to your hard drive eliminates the need to pop in the actual disk itself whenever you want to watch the movie. You also have the convenience of having Apple TV organize them neatly as if you are using a jukebox to play music (or iTunes to play music). Mine even has the cover art showing up on Apple TV selection screen.

Second, 720p encodes do not take a lot of space therefore, you can fit a lot in your hard drive. And you know what, that quality is amazingly close to 1080 (heck I don't even notice the diff. on my 32' and 100" screen). Imagine the size diff. from a 25 gig MKV file to a 4gig MP4 Apple TV file. Oh and yes, this is the movie only...no added crap. You can always pop in your BD disc if you want to watch the extra stuff.

You guys make this sound very tempting. What holds me back is the fact that the mac pro is in the editing suite and I would have to use my mbp for encoding. How long would my mbp use for a decoding?

 

[randy98mtu]

You guys make this sound very tempting. What holds me back is the fact that the mac pro is in the editing suite and I would have to use my mbp for encoding. How long would my mbp use for a decoding?

I'm holding off to see if the next ATV supports 1080p content before I invest time in encoding. I'm definitely watching this thread with interest though!

 

[REK]

makemkv still does not do every bluray disc out there, especially ones that have BD+ capabilities (one example is the Fantastic Four 2 Bluray disc), but you can convert at a least a number of them to MKV to start with.

Is there an easy way of telling which is which? How can we tell what blu-ray has BD+ before just seeing if it works with makemkv or not?

 

[donster28]

Just want to give my 2 cents on makemkv on the mac and to help those who are confused on what this thing really does.

Up to now, I've been using Windows to rip my blurays/HD-DVDs to my hard drive, and I play them with TotalMedia Theater. But there are cavetes to this:

1. The blu-ray/HD-DVD rips are big (about 25-50gigs), therefore my 1TB drive can only accomodate an average of about 25 movies.

2. TotalMedia Theater, a Windows only app is buggy as heck. Sometimes it plays sometimes not. I had to resort to re-installing it every time it doesn't want to play. And it always does this after updating itself (which is often).

3. You don't get the convenience of a menu driven interface (like iTunes) without the bugginess.

The good side of things:

This is where my Apple TV comes into play. It will not only let me stay in the Mac realm but it will solve the above mentioned problems for me.

Using makemkv is fast. It re-wrapped my Blu-ray to MKV in about 50 minutes, afterwhich I encode the MKV to an Apple TV friendly file (MP4) with Handbrake for about 5 hours. And that's about it. What do I get?:

1. A 720p copy of my Blu-ray (movie only) with digital surround sound in a smaller size file (about 4 gigs), maintaining the HD quality of my movie.

2. I then copy this to iTunes, give it coverart, fill in the movie info and wala, I have it selectable in Apple TV.

3. All of the above taking only a total of about 6 hours work (on my MBP 13").

Now the bad side (of using makemkv alone):

1. Makemkv does not support BD+ blu-rays and HD-DVDs which I have a lot of in my library.

2. Subtitles seem to be a no show.

3. An issue with DTS which I have not encountered yet.

For all it's worth, Makemkv is still not the 'AnyDVD' alternative on mac. It's still in it's infancy. But it's still usefull for the rest of my blu-ray collection. I just won't put my blu-ray and HD-DVD players aside, I'll still need them for some of my discs.

I am thankfull for it though and I'll probably end up with a good number of my discs on my hard drive utilizing just my Mac for a change.

But the wait is still not over unfortunately for me...

 

[donster28]

Is there an easy way of telling which is which? How can we tell what blu-ray has BD+ before just seeing if it works with makemkv or not?

just read the label on the back of the case/cover of the bluray disc. it should say if it's a BD+ disc.