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Ripping or converting Blu Rays. Is it really worth it?

I

itsjustmeee

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 28, 2008
603
7
I posted this on another website blog and I'm curious about opinions here...

When a first got my Mini a few months ago, I started going crazy converting DVDs with makemkv for my library. At 7 or 8 gigs a movie, one can build up a pretty nice selection of movies. Then I investigated buying a blu ray drive so I could rip/convert those as well. But as I got to use Plex and my mini, I just came to the conclusion that having a DVD library is fine, but at 40 or 50 gigs per blu ray movie, is it really worth it? It seems that with a file that takes up that much room, isn't easier just to pop a blu ray disk into a player and watch it?
 
Most of the Blu-ray rips I have are in the 10-15 GB range. I have tried some that are about 40 GB but they seem to stutter at that high of a bit-rate and I notice only slight image enhancement, I am perfectly fine with the blu-rays in the 10-15 range. Hopefully this answers your question.
 
BR discs are getting so cheap that they might be cheaper to buy, than any HDD storage space, if you consider that for a decent film collection, you need dozens and media is not the only purpose for an average HDD, especially, if it is internal.


I have a 300+ DVD collection. I started ripping the discs with RipIt. It's a waste of time if I consider the quality loss and the fact that in terms of size, it's still 4-9 GB per discs. My TB HDD is already full and I haven't finished archiving. Even with DVDs, keeping most movie's size to the minimum is wise, I think. For the special ones, you might just want to keep the original disc in your DVD/BR player and watch a full clone/disc image on the computer.

With Blu Ray, I think the whole point is lost, once you start degrading it. They have such nice sound, that in the end, you need the whole AV setup to take full advantage. Otherwise, a small copy of the film or an ordinary DVD are just as good.
 
kernkraft said:
BR discs are getting so cheap that they might be cheaper to buy, than any HDD storage space, if you consider that for a decent film collection, you need dozens and media is not the only purpose for an average HDD, especially, if it is internal.


I have a 300+ DVD collection. I started ripping the discs with RipIt. It's a waste of time if I consider the quality loss and the fact that in terms of size, it's still 4-9 GB per discs. My TB HDD is already full and I haven't finished archiving. Even with DVDs, keeping most movie's size to the minimum is wise, I think. For the special ones, you might just want to keep the original disc in your DVD/BR player and watch a full clone/disc image on the computer.

With Blu Ray, I think the whole point is lost, once you start degrading it. They have such nice sound, that in the end, you need the whole AV setup to take full advantage. Otherwise, a small copy of the film or an ordinary DVD are just as good.
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I think the quality loss is very minimal when you re-encode them. Plus, there are many of uses for ripped movies, I can stream them to my iphone to watch while i'm out or display them beautifully with plex plus since 2 TB are only about 150 USD now it is cheaper to buy them then the Blu-Rays.
 
I'm using the Hauppauge HDPVR box along with the Mac HDPVRCapture application to record my Blu-Ray movies. It's much more convenient than ripping them and I can use the same device to record HD shows from my DVR. The recordings are not up to full Blu-Ray quality, but they're much better than DVD rips. A two hour movie recorded at a pretty high bit-rate will typically only be about 4GB.
 
itsjustmeee said:
I posted this on another website blog and I'm curious about opinions here...

When a first got my Mini a few months ago, I started going crazy converting DVDs with makemkv for my library. At 7 or 8 gigs a movie, one can build up a pretty nice selection of movies. Then I investigated buying a blu ray drive so I could rip/convert those as well. But as I got to use Plex and my mini, I just came to the conclusion that having a DVD library is fine, but at 40 or 50 gigs per blu ray movie, is it really worth it? It seems that with a file that takes up that much room, isn't easier just to pop a blu ray disk into a player and watch it?
Click to expand...

I rip BDs so that they can be played, instantly, in HD (720p), in multiple rooms in the house. There is a theoretical loss of quality going from 1080p to 720p, but I don't see it - especially on the smaller screens in the bedrooms. I am happy to trade an imperceptible loss of video quality for the convenience of access via Apple TV, and the fact that 720p files are a fraction of the size of 1080p files (a 30GB BD movie will compress down to ~4GB).
 
I agree on the convenience issue...it's more than worth it to me to be able to watch whatever DVD I want to by choosing it within a menu.

My DVD rips are not as huge as yours BTW...mine average right around 1GB...depending on length of movie, as small as 750MB.
 
There is no way your DVD rips should be 4+ GB each. There is NO need to have files that large regardless of what quality you want to maintain.
 
brentsg said:
There is no way your DVD rips should be 4+ GB each. There is NO need to have files that large regardless of what quality you want to maintain.
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Let's be a bit more accurate with terminology here. A 'rip' is simply removing or 'ripping' the copyright protection from a DVD or Blu-ray so that the raw file(s) can be copied. Encoding a ripped DVD or Blu-ray is converting/compressing that file into an different format (i.e. .m4v for playback on :apple:TV).

In my experience, most DVD rips are between 5-8 GB, blu-rays about 30-50 GB. I subsequently encode these rips using Handbrake for playback on :apple:TV, on Mini using Plex, or iPhone with most movies between 1-2 GB (DVD) or 3-5 GB (blu-ray converted to 720p). The convenience of having my library available at a click for me outweighs the minimal loss in quality, but of course, YMMV.
 
I'm wondering how you rip a blu-ray disc on a mac, are there blu-ray drives that are mac compatible?
 
Bodhi395 said:
I'm wondering how you rip a blu-ray disc on a mac, are there blu-ray drives that are mac compatible?
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As long as the drive is a blu-ray burner, then yes, it's compatible. The OS doesn't have support for blu-ray, but it will see it as a drive. The OS will not see read-only drives though.
 
slyreptile said:
As long as the drive is a blu-ray burner, then yes, it's compatible. The OS doesn't have support for blu-ray, but it will see it as a drive. The OS will not see read-only drives though.
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To clarify, it doesn't have to be a blu-ray burner, can be read only for blu-ray as long as it has some sort of write capabilities (DVD or CD).
 
tbayrgs said:
To clarify, it doesn't have to be a blu-ray burner, can be read only for blu-ray as long as it has some sort of write capabilities (DVD or CD).
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You're right-thanks for the clarification. As long as the drive is capable of burning at least one format (CD, DVD, BD), it'll work.
 
Garnishing a massive BluRay collection begins . . .

My apologies to all mac users but I am not a fan of any Apple products and consider them all beneath me. I use a HP Pavillion dvd6700 with light scribe. I can't imagine all your phenomenal complaints considering that I have none of them. I currently have 3.8 terabytes of movies or just over 5,000 videos in my personal collection. All my BluRay rips are 2 gigabytes or less but for them to be true BluRay they must all be 1080p simply "Google" 1080p vs. 720p I currently have 483 blu ray rips on a single terabyte drive which is full and the AVERAGE bluray rip size is 1080 vertical pixels standing at 1.3 gigs per disk. Just thought you should know that not all ripping programs inflate your data streams.:) perhaps it is because you are using Apple products that your data streams are inflated. I have personally never had to deal with any BluRay rips over 3 gigabytes for a single disk out of 200 disks at the very most. Thus when I hear of you all rambling on about 30 to 40 gigs and 8 to 15 gigs per rip it boggles my mind ahahaha
 
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JamieOl said:
My apologies to all mac users but I am not a fan of any Apple products and consider them all beneath me. I use a HP Pavillion dvd6700 with light scribe. I can't imagine all your phenomenal complaints considering that I have none of them. I currently have 3.8 terabytes of movies or just over 5,000 videos in my personal collection. All my BluRay rips are 2 gigabytes or less but for them to be true BluRay they must all be 1080p simply "Google" 1080p vs. 720p I currently have 483 blu ray rips on a single terabyte drive which is full and the AVERAGE bluray rip size is 1080 vertical pixels standing at 1.3 gigs per disk. Just thought you should know that not all ripping programs inflate your data streams.:) perhaps it is because you are using Apple products that your data streams are inflated. I have personally never had to deal with any BluRay rips over 3 gigabytes for a single disk out of 200 disks at the very most. Thus when I hear of you all rambling on about 30 to 40 gigs and 8 to 15 gigs per rip it boggles my mind ahahaha
Click to expand...

As someone already mentioned a "rip" is simply taking the entire blu-ray as is and taking off the protections. "Re-encoding" is shrinking the file using handbrake or something similar. You can't "rip" a blu-ray at 2 gigs because the sound file alone is bigger than that, not to mention the video file. When I "re-encode" my blu-ray rips they come out between 2-8 gigs depending on the movie length and detail, but a rip comes out at between 20-50 gigs. In a case like this we have to distinguish between rip and re-encode.

In short, your rips are not 3 gigs or less because that's not possible without re-encoding. Whatever program you are using is re-encoding the data streams not just ripping them. Before you start telling people to Google stuff, go Google rip vs re-encode.
 
JamieOl said:
My apologies to all mac users but I am not a fan of any Apple products and consider them all beneath me. I use a HP Pavillion dvd6700 with light scribe. I can't imagine all your phenomenal complaints considering that I have none of them. I currently have 3.8 terabytes of movies or just over 5,000 videos in my personal collection. All my BluRay rips are 2 gigabytes or less but for them to be true BluRay they must all be 1080p simply "Google" 1080p vs. 720p I currently have 483 blu ray rips on a single terabyte drive which is full and the AVERAGE bluray rip size is 1080 vertical pixels standing at 1.3 gigs per disk. Just thought you should know that not all ripping programs inflate your data streams.:) perhaps it is because you are using Apple products that your data streams are inflated. I have personally never had to deal with any BluRay rips over 3 gigabytes for a single disk out of 200 disks at the very most. Thus when I hear of you all rambling on about 30 to 40 gigs and 8 to 15 gigs per rip it boggles my mind ahahaha
Click to expand...

So you hate Apple products and think they're beneath you, yet you read a forum called MacRumors and took the time to register on the site and resurrect a 2 1/2 year old thread?:confused:
 
JamieOl said:
I have personally never had to deal with any BluRay rips over 3 gigabytes for a single disk out of 200 disks at the very most. Thus when I hear of you all rambling on about 30 to 40 gigs and 8 to 15 gigs per rip it boggles my mind ahahaha
Click to expand...

Well, actually, it's impossible to deliver good quality footage with so high compression rates. Your videos must suffer from the same problems as those of Apple's iTunes Store - heavy compression artefacts, banding etc.

There is a reason most people use around 10 Mbps encoding for 1080p video: the quality is much superior to the around 3 Mbps videos used by Apple (or you). Otherwise, they wouldn't waste that much storage.
 
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