Are You Backing Up Your Precious Blu-rays?

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › Are You Backing Up Your Precious Blu-rays?

1gkar

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Ultimate Geek

#30464 9-Feb-2009 18:06

So, you've invested in a nice, new BD drive for your HTPC. Are now spending a small fortune on buying the discs. What next: are you backing up onto your HDDs for file access over your LAN/server? Or transcoding to save space on your drives? Remuxing down to a 15-20GB single file? Or just doing a direct copy of the BD files using AnyDVD HD & that's it.

Personally, I am continuing what I started years ago. Transcoding into a Matroska (MKV) media file, incorporating chapters & sometimes multiple soundtracks. It does take significant time, more than I initially thought but if I organise my timing, it happens overnight & when I'm at work.

Have completed 3.10 To Yuma & Ironman so far with excellent results using methods I researched on various forums & guides. The net result: one main movie file with DTS/AC3 (not HD variants) sound & chapters rolled into one media file that can fit onto a DVD dual layer disc -8.5GB.

How about you?

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BDFL - Memuneh
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#194947 9-Feb-2009 18:08

Just a reminder that while I think it's a great business decision to create a backup copy of your investment in content, we have to remember that media shift in New Zealand is only allowed for music - not for video.

Don't ask me why. When asked why did he vote for this, Willianson couldn't even understand the reason why the law was written like this...

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1gkar

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#194951 9-Feb-2009 18:27

Mauricio,

Are you politely saying no more topics on this subject? If so, please lock off this thread, or delete it. Cheers.

dedoughboy

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#194956 9-Feb-2009 18:29

Excuse I'd like to know how your doing this? I tried to backup some of my Blue Ray disk (BRD) to my media server, but they are all copy-protected. I'm no expert on video streaming, and I'd like to learn how to get it onto TVio box other than using my webCAM to snag the content? I've used rippers before but nothing copies BRD format.

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#194960 9-Feb-2009 18:56

1gkar: Mauricio,

Are you politely saying no more topics on this subject? If so, please lock off this thread, or delete it. Cheers.

I am just saying people need to be aware of the current laws.

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1gkar

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#194961 9-Feb-2009 19:08

dedoughboy: Excuse I'd like to know how your doing this? I tried to backup some of my Blue Ray disk (BRD) to my media server, but they are all copy-protected. I'm no expert on video streaming, and I'd like to learn how to get it onto TVio box other than using my webCAM to snag the content? I've used rippers before but nothing copies BRD format.

I simply use AnyDVD HD to rip my Blu-ray disc to HDD. From there, you can demux, remux or transcode.

eXDee

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#194973 9-Feb-2009 19:52

I'm not sure how far Handbrake is on the blu-ray front but it does h264 Freeview HD so i assume it can handle bluray.
It does all you mentioned, encodes as MKV, allows chapters, multiple sound tracks and has a queueing function. Its great for DVD's, can't afford bluray atm.

lchiu7

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#195054 10-Feb-2009 08:31

I am not backing up my BD collection since I treat them pretty well and in most likelihood if they ever did get damaged (I only lend them out to trusted friends!) I can always replace them. Plus they are coated with a special hard coat which makes them more immune to poor handling.

However I am backing up my HD-DVD collection. This is because there is no ongoing development in players and and if/when my Toshiba player dies, I will be dead in the water. At least having a backup on the server helps mitigate this risk.

As for compression etc. once they are backed up (and I won't talk about that's done in the interest of keeping this thread "clean") I use megui to compress them, eac3to to extract the audio I want (whether it's DD, DD+ converted to DD or DTS) and tsmuxer to mux them back into a ts file. Or given how much hard drive space cost is dropping these days, just retain the original video file from the disk.

I don't use Handbrake since for the most part for h.264 compression it just calls x264 code anyway and I never process the audio that way. But slightly OT, Handbrake is good for content that has corrupt data so that audio/video can lose sync - there seems to be code in it that looks for discontinuities in ts streams and maintains the audio/video sync

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psk20

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#195069 10-Feb-2009 09:11

Hmm, my blu-ray drive is hopefully arriving this week. Impatient as I am, I went and picked up 300 and the dark knight from whitcoulls yesterday :) Let's just hope my video card doesn't hate blu-rays as much as it hates hardware h.264 decoding! And hopefully the bundled powerdvd software either does everything I want it to or it is cheap to upgrade :D Anyway, I digress.

This is an interesting topic. If I wanted to rip my movies to hard disk with full 1080p video but only 5.1 DD english audio, what programmes would I need? What kind of file would I end up with and which software should I use to run it? The closest thing I've done to this is ripping an .mp3. I shied away from ripping dvds, it always looked so prohibitively complicated!

gehenna

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#195071 10-Feb-2009 09:41

I'm not backing up, basically because right now I'm not buying many Blu-rays - except what might be on special or is a TV show I can't live without. I just rent them from Fatso and send them back when I'm done. Works well for my needs. I can't be bothered with the time and effort to "back-up" my Blu-rays and it would be pretty illegal for me to rip the ones I rent

lchiu7

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#195075 10-Feb-2009 10:01

psk20: Hmm, my blu-ray drive is hopefully arriving this week. Impatient as I am, I went and picked up 300 and the dark knight from whitcoulls yesterday :) Let's just hope my video card doesn't hate blu-rays as much as it hates hardware h.264 decoding! And hopefully the bundled powerdvd software either does everything I want it to or it is cheap to upgrade :D Anyway, I digress.

This is an interesting topic. If I wanted to rip my movies to hard disk with full 1080p video but only 5.1 DD english audio, what programmes would I need? What kind of file would I end up with and which software should I use to run it? The closest thing I've done to this is ripping an .mp3. I shied away from ripping dvds, it always looked so prohibitively complicated!

All you ever wanted to know and more can be found here

http://forum.doom9.org/forumdisplay.php?f=9

Not the faint hearted if all you have ever done is rip a mp3

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

1gkar

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#195215 10-Feb-2009 22:36

psk20: Hmm, my blu-ray drive is hopefully arriving this week. Impatient as I am, I went and picked up 300 and the dark knight from whitcoulls yesterday :) Let's just hope my video card doesn't hate blu-rays as much as it hates hardware h.264 decoding! And hopefully the bundled powerdvd software either does everything I want it to or it is cheap to upgrade :D Anyway, I digress.

This is an interesting topic. If I wanted to rip my movies to hard disk with full 1080p video but only 5.1 DD english audio, what programmes would I need? What kind of file would I end up with and which software should I use to run it? The closest thing I've done to this is ripping an .mp3. I shied away from ripping dvds, it always looked so prohibitively complicated!

Simple: rip BD to HDD with AnyDVD HD; Load the main movie playlist file in TSMuxer; use same app to downconvert audio to DTS/AC3 & demux video, then remux audio & video to *.ts or *.m2ts file. End result: full 1080p video/DTSorAC3 audio in one file about 15-25GB. But think about the data space required. A 1TB HDD using only remuxed BD movies: 1 000 000÷20 000(mean)=50 movies only. Maybe gehenna has the right idea. But, still, if you want to transcode, it is relatively easy. It just takes time.

I am in the process of writing a guide (really only for BD>MKV), mainly for my own purposes, but will be more than willing to share. It will take some time to complete. Otherwise, do what I have done: research.

lchiu7

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#195242 11-Feb-2009 07:05

As I noted, tons of information at the link I posted earlier in this thread.

Also while the process you described I am sure works, having been working on this myself lately. I can't say it's quite as simple as you describe, First and foremost, Anydvd is not freeware - it's 70 Euros for a 2 year subscription and if you don't use it, then you are reallly getting in the complexities of copy protection.

Sort of reminds me of seeing sample answers to maths problems - an proof is presented with lots of detail missing with a comment like "the rest is left as an exercise for the reader" :)

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1gkar

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Ultimate Geek

#195732 13-Feb-2009 18:48

lchiu7: As I noted, tons of information at the link I posted earlier in this thread.

Also while the process you described I am sure works, having been working on this myself lately. I can't say it's quite as simple as you describe, First and foremost, Anydvd is not freeware - it's 70 Euros for a 2 year subscription and if you don't use it, then you are reallly getting in the complexities of copy protection.

Sort of reminds me of seeing sample answers to maths problems - an proof is presented with lots of detail missing with a comment like "the rest is left as an exercise for the reader" :)

Actually, I never even intimated the act of transcoding was simple; merely the process by which the transcoded file is obtained.

How is using ONLY AnyDVD(HD) avoiding the "complexities of copy protection"? When Slysoft's own programme disables the stated protection? Are they paying royalties to ALL the various movie studios for ANY protected Blu-ray movie their programme can circumvent? I don't think so. if that was the case, their product would cost a heck of a lot more than it does: prohibitively so.

lchiu7

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#195737 13-Feb-2009 19:39

1gkar: Actually, I never even intimated the act of transcoding was simple; merely the process by which the transcoded file is obtained.

If you run AnyDVD then it's not so hard (tonmt is a good tool if you are targetting a Popcorn to play the backups).

If you don't have AnyDVD then the compexities set in

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1gkar

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Ultimate Geek

#195759 13-Feb-2009 21:24

lchiu7:
1gkar: Actually, I never even intimated the act of transcoding was simple; merely the process by which the transcoded file is obtained.

If you run AnyDVD then it's not so hard (tonmt is a good tool if you are targetting a Popcorn to play the backups).

If you don't have AnyDVD then the compexities set in

Looks like we're on totally different wavelengths. My posts have been regarding the total concept of transcoding; not just those surrounding the ripping of BD discs

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