Perfect Blu-ray MP4/MKV Ripping & BR Collection Backups Howto

Monday, 07 February 2011 11:09

If you want amazing High Definition video backups, this howto will demonstrate, in our experiance the best and easiest way to rip your own Bluray and DVD collection.
Through much trial and error, we've found this to be the best, cheapest and easiest way to get our Bluray's onto our Media Center and NAS at near perfect HD quality.

If you don't have dignificant file size constraints on your Bluray video collection (averaging around 5GB-10GB per movie) and need surround sound quality then this tutorial is for you.
This is only for creating personal backups of your BR discs and we in no way condone or support ripping of illegal material.

Requirements:

• Download and register a copy of Slysoft AnyDVD HD  (or alternatively DVD-Fab Blu-ray Copy) *
• Download the amazing free HandBrake (Mac and Windows)
• A Blu-ray player (we use an External Player via USB with our Macbook Pro)
• A decent PC with a fast processor
• At least 40GB of free Hard Drive space

* = Commercial Software that will only run on Windows 32bit/64bit (We run this on a Windows Virtual Machine)

Step 1. Ripping

The first thing to do is to decrypt your bluray disc to your hard drive.  We do this with AnyDVD HD using the following steps.

1. Run AnyDVD HD and put in your bluray disc
   
   
2. Once AnyDVD HD has detected the AACS Keys on your disc, right-click on the taskbar icon of AnyDVD and click on "Rip Video DVD to Hard Disk".
3. Next make sure you select your "Source" bluray disc drive (if you have more than one), enter a "Destination Directory" for your rip and click "Copy DVD".
4. Once finished, you will now have a copy of your unencrypted Blu-ray on your computer ready to encode.

Step 2. HandBrake Settings 

Now that you have a copy of your Bluray on your Hard Disk, it's time to fire up HandBrake.  Do the following:

1. Run HandBrake and let HandBrake download the default settings for the first time.
2. Now click on "Source" -> "Folder" or Ctrl+Shift+O and locate your new Bluray Folder.  Make sure you highlight the Main Bluray Folder (without going into it on some machines), select it then click OK.
3. Wait a Minute or so as HandBrake does "Processing Title[s]" of your Bluray folder.  Depending on your disc, this can be anywhere between 1 and 1000.
    
4. Next you need to select the Title where your movie or main video is available on the Bluray disc.  Usually the longest video in length is the one you want, and this is the one HandBrake selects by default.  Click on the Preview button to make sure it is the correct video you want to rip.
5. Once you've got the correct video selected to rip, you need to best settings to rip your Bluray disc.  At present HandBrake doesn't have a default preset for Bluray discs so we need to create our own.  Follow these steps:
   a) First select the "Normal" Preset to base our encoding settings on.
   b) Highlight the "Large file size" checkbox. (If anything always make sure this is on when using MP4).   We prefer the amazing Matroska "MKV file" format for all our rips, but use MP4 if you're using an older media center that doesn't support MKV.
   
    You may skip the next few steps if you wish.
   
   c) For perfect 5.1/7.1 channel surround sound, click on the Audio tab and click Add Track to add a second Audio Track. Make this second track "AC3 Passthru".  Along with giving you perfect sound, this will also make your files more compatible with more Media Centers.
   d) For subtitles click on the Subtitles tab. We always add all our subtitles provided they don't add as "Burned In" subtitles.  "Closed Caption" subtitles are the best. Alternatively use an external SRT file to import your subtitles into your Bluray encode.
   e) Lastly, if you have a list of the Chapter Name's from your Bluray disc you can name them with your Bluray encode.  Very nice when viewing your final Bluray MP4/M4V files in players like Quicktime.
6. Lastly make any other changes you wish and save your Preset with the Add button.  Also always save your preset setting "Use Picture Size" with "Source Maximum" set for best quality in the future.

Step 3. Encoding

Finally time to encode your Bluray.  This can take from less than an Hour through to more than a Day to encode depending on your processor and original video length.

1. In HandBrake, it's time to press "Start".  This will start encoding your Bluray based on all the above settings.  Usually you don't encounter problems unless you have limited RAM free or disk space on your computer.  We always make sure we have at least +20GB of free space for the encode.
2. Amazingly HandBrake also offers a Video Queuing feature.  So feel free to add another another Bluray or even DVD (with DVD's we just use the "High Profile" Preset to get the best results) to your queue.  As your current encode is in process, click on the Source and add as many other Video encodes you wish and then clicking on "Add to Queue" to have your computer do all the work as you sleep.

Conclusion

We have use this same process for the last 2 years without too much drama and once set up it works flawlessly.  

Blueray Screenshot of Finished Encode

The biggest issue we have had has been with Bluray MP4/M4V encodes being unviewable simply because the "Large file size" checkbox wasn't checked.  Bluray MP4 files have a 32bit file size limit of 4GB and from experience most Blurays take up over 6GB of space with the above settings, so always select "Large file size" support in Handbrake.  

Also when it comes to the "Output Format" we ourselves exclusively use and recommend the amazing MKV (Matroska) format.  We only use MP4 formats when we need compatibilty with iPads and other devices - usually we just re-encode our MKV file (from the above process) at lower MP4 qualities using Handbrake again.

Have fun.