Noob questions regarding bluray/DVD ripping and SageTV

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Thu, 07/07/2011 - 8:39pm

sumrtym

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Joined: 4 Dec 2006

Noob questions regarding bluray/DVD ripping and SageTV

Ok, some really general questions here. The last time I ripped DVDs was years ago with DVDshrink, that's how out of it I've been.

I want to rip Blu-ray/DVD movies and TV shows. Quality is paramount. As such, I'm looking for only lossless solutions here, no compression. I currently have a speaker system with a built-in DTS and Dolby Digital decoder. I will upgrade at some point to the newer HD audio formats, so I need to preserve both options (for now, and later). I'm not above stripping out some things to save room however, such as foreign language subtitles / audio. I do like watching the extras sometimes though.

Given the above, I thought:

1) My best option for Blu-ray / DVD rips was as ISO. I believe with VirtualCloneDrive that it will automount the ISO file in SageTV when you select the movie...unless I'm wrong? That would allow me to then choose my audio source each time for, as I said, now and then later after I upgrade a receiver. Do you have any recommendations regarding this for software / methods, and is there an easy way to then remove some of the extras I don't want to keep (such as for sure the foreign language bits) to save space?

2) For TV shows, it gets complicated. I'm wanting to have them listed in SageTV by show, season, and episode. I like seeing them better that way, plus, it allows you to actually track which ones you've watched and which you have not. Since usually the blu-ray or DVD has multiple shows per disc, I need to rip them individually. Is my best option, keeping in mind my quality and audio requirements, to do this using makemkv? And if so, how would I select an audio stream then (say DTS or Dolby Digital now, but DTS-HD or DD+ later)?

Any pointers / examples you can give would be great.

Fri, 07/08/2011 - 11:29am

Ugadata

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Joined: 3 Mar 2007

AnyDVD HD will allow you to rip BluRays and HD-DVDs (and DVDs). You can rip to the BDMV folder format or to ISO format.

I don't do any more than rip to ISO. Something to note is that the folder format for BluRay is very different then that of the DVD folder format.

you could also look at DVDFab, HandBrake, ... I'm sure there are others, I just can't think of what they are as I type this.

Unencumbered by the thought process!

Fri, 07/08/2011 - 12:22pm

(Reply to #2) #3

George Schmauch

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Joined: 21 Dec 2006

Sadly, you're looking at the most annoyingly complex scenario. For the record, it's almost the same thing I do. :-) I chose to go with MKV containers, using this as the GUI for EAC3to. This allows everything you want, but it still requires some manual intervention and it's a bit time consuming. Where I diverge from your desire is that I remove the standard AC3 track and only put in the HD audio, plus I add cover art to the MKV.

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Fri, 07/08/2011 - 12:34pm

(Reply to #3) #4

sumrtym

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Joined: 4 Dec 2006

skirge01 wrote:

Where I diverge from your desire is that I remove the standard AC3 track and only put in the HD audio, plus I add cover art to the MKV.

Thanks, I'll look into that. I'm thinking that with BMT and Pheonix, the coverart / posters / backgrounds will get downloaded automatically in SageTV without needing to chose to do so during ripping. Regarding audio, are you saying I have to make a choice of just one (or again, will there be some way to choose which I want to listen to)?

Sat, 07/09/2011 - 12:38am

autoboy

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Joined: 15 Mar 2007

You never said if you were using an extender or you played the disks from the SageTV computer. That can make a big difference in how you want to store the disks and rip them. I'm going to assume an extender since that is what I know.

You will probably want to look into ClownBD. It allows you to strip out extras while leaving the video alone. You can also re-encode the audio and include multiple tracks if you check the "Media Tank Options" option. I use this to re-encode to Dolby so my TVs can decode the audio and sometimes also include the HD audio track.

I rip to BDMV because I find it is easier to deal with.

So far I haven't found a good way to rip TV show disks for SageTV. Sometimes you can find a track that has all the shows in one big 3.5 hour playlist, but other times it doesn't. So, I use a Dune media player and just rip the whole disk and the Dune is able to play the menus. The Dune is an expensive route, unless like me you also needed a BD player so the wife could play her disks normally and then it's still kinda pricey

Sat, 07/09/2011 - 3:36pm

(Reply to #4) #6

George Schmauch

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Joined: 21 Dec 2006

sumrtym wrote:

That's correct. The cover art will absolutely get added via BMT, assuming it can correctly identify it. I like to future proof as much as possible, so I wanted to add the cover art directly to the MKV. This should allow me to take the file with me to any media manager and utilize the embedded cover art. SageTV doesn't actually use embedded cover art, BTW (hence the "should").

As far as the audio goes, no, you certainly do not need to choose one or the other. Adding the HD track will normally include the AC3 core audio, by default. Add as many or as few audio tracks as you desire. Most programs will allow you to choose whichever one you want to play back and will usually choose the proper one by default. MKVs actually allow you to set default flags to assist with that, but support for those flags varies. Again, with my future proofing attempts, I set the flags. I'm not sure if SageTV supports those, either. If you do decide to add multiple audio tracks, ensure you name them something which is obvious, so you know which one is being played back. ffdshow will show you the name of the audio track, as will many other programs, but something like "audio track 1" isn't very helpful.

Noob questions regarding bluray/DVD ripping and SageTV

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