Rip Blu-ray Guide » Blu-ray to MKV

What is the file size of a Blu-ray rip?

jairaj — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 03:06:06 +0000

One common complaint I hear about storing movies on a a hard drive is the large size of the HD movie files. Here are two rules of thumb regarding file size:

ISO files are exact replications of the Blu-ray disc. These files run about 30-40 GB.
If you rip out the trailers, the menus, and the extras, you can usually get the file down to around 20 GB.

As I have mentioned before, I convert my movies to HD MKV files. I also rip out all the extra fluff that comes on the disc. I do not want to lose any quality so most of my files are around 20 GB in size. I also like when I select a movie to watch, I do not have to sit through the trailers etc.

Rip Blu-ray | 3 Essential Tools

jairaj — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 03:29:38 +0000

Since this site is called RipBlurayGuide.com, it makes sense to talk about how to rip blu-ray movies, right?

I rip my movies to a hard drive so I can convert them to MKVs. This provides me flexibility to watch my movies without a Blu-ray player software. This article only focuses on the process of ripping the blu-ray disc to a hard drive and removing the copy protection.

The Blu-ray copying process can be broken down into two steps: the removal of the copy protection and the actual ripping of the movie to a hard drive. If you are just getting started in the Blu-ray ripping world, your first stop should be slysoft.com and check out their free trial of AnyDVD HD. While expensive, AnyDVD HD is the industry standard for moving copy protection from a disc. I personally use this software and think its great. AnyDVD can work in the background, removing the copy protection on the fly. This allows you to use other software to actually rip the blu-ray disc without having to make an ISO file.

Right now, there are three legit ways to rip blu-ray movies to a hard drive, which can be done after removing the disc’s copy protection.

Eac3to- This freeware is community supported and gets the job done in conjunction with AnyDVD HD. This is the software I use to convert movies to MKV. Eac3to will create individual audio and video files that then need to be compiled into an MKV file using mkvmerge.
MakeMKV – MakeMKV is an all-in-one solution that removes blu-ray copy protection and converts the movie to an MKV file. I actually tend to use MakeMKV to convert DVDs to MKV files. MakeMKV does not require the use of AnyDVD. However, it does not do as good of a job keeping up with the latest copy protection.
Handbrake - This piece of software is free but it does not provide any means of removing copy protection. This is the software of choice for converting movies to iPod or iPads.

Cheapest way to stream ripped Blu-rays to an HDTV

jairaj — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 02:02:51 +0000

Now that you have ripped your Blu-ray movies to a hard drive, hopefully as MKV files, you might be wondering how am I going to watch this on a TV? There are several options for streaming movies to an HDTV, with the cheapest being the Roku XD and the AppleTV. The problem though is finding such a box that supports 1080p MKV files (forget ISO files for now). Yes, I am looking at you Roku. Apple is a snob like that. Roku should know better.

While I would love to play MKV files over an Apple TV, it just is not happening. You would need to convert everything to mp4, which is possible using Handbrake, but a pain just the same. My recommendation is a Boxee, which runs about $200. Yes it is more expensive, but it can do just about everything an AppleTv can, except for buying moveis from iTunes.

Here is a screenshot of the movie interface. Simple and clean.

The product sepecifications are as follows:

Dimensions (LxWxH): 4.5″ x 4.5″ x 4.6″
Language Support: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish
Network Protocol Support: IPV4, ARP, TCP, UDP, ICMP, DHCP Client, DNS Client, DDNS Client, HTTP Server, Samba Client, RTP/RTMP, VPN: PPTP, DLNA 1.5 (DMP)
Wireless: 802.11n/g/b
Ports: HDMI 1.3, 10/100 Fast Ethernet, 2x USB 2.0, Optical Audio (S/PDIF), Analog Audio (RCA L/R)
Memory Card Support: SD, SDHC up to 32GB, MMC
Audio Formats: MP3, WAV/PCM/LPCM, WMA, AIF/AIFF, AC3/AAC, OGG, FLAC, Dolby Digital/Dolby True HD
Video Formats: Adobe Flash 10.1, FLV/On2 VP6 (FLV/FV4/M4V), H.264 AVC (TS/AVI/MKV/MOV/M2TS/MP4), VC-1 (TS/AVI/MKV/WMV), MPEG-1 (DAT/MPG/MPEG), MPEG-2 (MPG/MPEG/VOB/TS/TP/ISO/IFO), MPEG-4 (MP4/AVI/MOV), DivX 3/4/5/6 (AVI/MKV), Xvid (AVI/MKV), WMV9 (WMV/ASF/DVR-MS)
Image Formats: JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF
Playlist Formats: M3U, PLS, WPL
Subtitle Formats: SRT, SUB, SSA, SMI, ASS
Supported Resolutions: H.264: 1080p at 30 fps, 1080i at 60 fps; WMV9/VC-1: 1080p at 30 fps, 1080i at 60 fps; MPEG4: 1080p at 30 fps, 1080i at 60 fps; MPEG2: 1080p at 30 fps, 1080i at 60 fps
Two-Sided RF Remote: with 4-way navigation and full QWERTY keypad

MakeMKV | Convert Blu-ray to MKV Easily

jairaj — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:07:51 +0000

MakeMKV is a free program that converts your Blu-ray movies to MKV files, which can be played on most computers with the proper codecs installed.

MakeMKV’s main selling point is that it is easy and makes fairly good conversions. The one drawback I see in MakeMKV is that you can’t use lossless audio codecs like FLAC. The high fidelity of blu-ray discs will be lost in coversion to AC3. This may not be a big deal for some though, especially if you do not have a high-end receiver and speakers.

MakeMKV has some capability to remove the copy protection from your discs though I would plan on still using AnyDVD HD, which is by far and away the best ripper for Blu-rays.