Maintaining a large DVD or Blu-ray collection can be difficult when your collection is too large. What if you have to move? After all, finding a place to store hundreds (or thousands) of drives and cases is hard work, as is keeping all your drives in tip-top condition while you’re moving.
Fortunately, for those of us willing to part with some of our precious physical media, there’s another option: digitize or “rip” your DVDs and Blu-rays to your home computer. The process itself is quite simple, but it does involve some hardware, software, and a bit of patience. To help you transcode your huge movie collection, we’ve put together this handy guide.
Warning
Technically, if a work is copyrighted, it is illegal, even if you own it. To be clear, we do not condone or encourage the illegal copying and/or reproduction of copyrighted material. Still, if you have home video (or anything that’s not copyrighted for that matter), you can do whatever you want with it, and that includes digitizing it.
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What you need to rip a DVD or Blu-ray and what you need to know
We’ve listed the items you need above, but here are more details:
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Your DVD or Blu-ray(s)
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DVD or Blu-ray drive on your computer – you won’t copy anything without it. If your computer doesn’t have a suitable drive, you can purchase an external DVD or Blu-ray drive for as little as $25.
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Enough storage space on your hard drive to keep your copied files: Blu-ray can take up a lot of storage space, so we recommend that you have 30 GB to 60 GB of free hard drive space if you want to copy it.
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File Copyer – In this tutorial, we will be using MakeMKV, which is available for Windows and MacOS.
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A program to transcode the file after it has been ripped. We recommend Handbrake, which is also available for Windows and MacOS.
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VLC media player to watch your video
How to Rip DVD or Blu-ray with MakeMKV
Whether you’re using Windows or MacOS or ripping Blu-ray or DVD, the process is the same for everyone.
Step 1 – Download and install MakeMKV and open the app when done.
Step 2 – The app will say “MakeMKV BETA” at the top; ignore it and insert the DVD or Blu-ray into the optical drive.
Step 3: Once the program recognizes your drive, click on the large drive icon to begin the copy process. In theory, this process could also remove copyright protection from the disc, but again, this is not something we condone or encourage.
Step 4: Once you’ve selected your disc, MakeMKV will return a list of chapters and segments that you can rip. To copy just the movie and not the extras or bonus material, select only the movie chapter or segment (usually the longest title or largest file) and uncheck all other boxes.
Step 5 – Specify the output folder where you want the file to end up after copying it.
Step 6: When you’re ready, press Create an MKV right button. This process can take anywhere from two minutes to a half hour, depending on your computer’s specifications and file size, but when it’s done, you should have an MKV file waiting in the specified folder.
exceptions
In some cases, you don’t even need to convert this file because MKV files are supported by the desktop and mobile versions of VLC, as well as the Plex media server. If these are your main methods of viewing videos from your library, you can stop here. However, it may be advisable to convert these files to save space. Blu-ray files in particular are huge. Therefore, you’ll want to use a transcoding program that will reduce the file size and/or play it across multiple devices.
A Note About 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Discs
With 4K increasingly becoming the standard for movies and TV series, many of you are probably collecting a whole new collection of Ultra HD Blu-rays. Many of these movies come with digital copies, but what if yours doesn’t, or you just prefer an alternative delivery system to the apps that require these codes?
One of the most important things you will need if you decide to embark on this painful journey is patience. If you want to rip a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray disc, it’s possible, but be prepared to spend valuable time troubleshooting any weird issues that might arise. As good as MakeMKV has become over the years—it now supports thousands of UHD discs—there are still persistent problems with certain drive and firmware combinations, and not all Blu-ray discs are created equal.
Just because you have successfully copied your copy Star Wars: Episode IV does not mean that you will have the same result with a comparable copy dark Knight. Some of you may find it difficult to mine HDR data and find a formula to crack proprietary codecs like Dolby Atmos, which turned out to be a major hurdle.
If you’re willing to deal with all of that, remember that we’re still in the early days of this, so it’s not exactly easy, even for those familiar with ripping other discs. First, you need a specific 4K Blu-ray drive to rip these discs, and chances are you don’t have one. It may also require some additional advanced steps, such as creating a text file with the decryption keys or downgrading the associated firmware.
Ultimately, this might be more trouble than it’s worth, but if you’re still steadfast after all these warnings and decide you want to keep ripping your 4K Blu-ray discs, visit the MakeMKV forums for more information. In particular, the UHD FAQ is a good place to start.
How to transcode with Handbrake
After successfully ripping your DVD or Blu-ray, you probably have a large file that needs to be transcoded for use on different devices. However, before you transcode, it’s a good idea to make sure your video looks good. We suggest using VLC for this.
Step 1 – To get started, install and open HandBrake (which you can get here for free), click on Fountain in the upper left corner and find the file you just copied.
Step 2 – Now you need to decide where you want to watch your video. Application developers have already created presets for many products.
Step 3: There are several different options for iOS and Android devices, as well as Sony and Microsoft consoles, along with various streaming devices. You can also modify any of these presets and save them under new names, or create custom presets from scratch.
Step 4 – Selecting one of these presets will automatically adjust all the settings to match what you choose.
Use HandBrake to resize files
You can also use HandBrake to resize files.
Step 1 – If, for example, you have a large MKV file, you can select a preset in the “Matroska” subset (MKV is short for Matroska Video) and run the program to shrink that file.
Step 2 – If you’re transcoding a Blu-ray disc, the process works the same way, but you’ll want to choose different settings to avoid unnecessary compression and preserve video quality.
Step 3 – For DVDs, there is no reason to choose a resolution higher than 480p. This will only increase the file size without increasing the quality. For Blu-ray discs, you’ll want to choose between 720p and 1080p; to save space, we recommend choosing 720p for anything that doesn’t take advantage of Full HD. For videos with more visual content, 1080p is probably worth it.
Step 4: Generally speaking, the “High Profile” preset, found in the Legacy subset, is a good place to start, with transient audio codecs selected (go for the lossless HD audio option, if that’s your bag). ) and a constant quality value of RF 18 or so. This is mostly a personal preference, so you should experiment to find out what works best.
Step 5: Once you have decided on the desired result, select the file destination and click on Beginning.
Step 6 – This part will take a while, so sit back, relax, and let HandBrake do its thing. Once the process is complete, you will have a new file ready to play on your chosen device. This process is also repeatable.
Step 7 – If you have several different devices, you can easily change the presets and run the program again for the same DVD or Blu-Ray (as long as you have selected a new destination to avoid overwriting the old result).
That’s all! You have successfully ripped and transcoded a DVD or Blu-ray disc. Now switch to watching using a media server like Plex or your favorite media player.
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Categories: GAMING
Source: newstars.edu.vn