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Had my first experience with BlueRay (BR), and what a pain it is to get this extracted. I used MakeMKV which worked fine. Consumed over 50 gigs LOL. I then searched for the main movie after the conversion which was 22 gigs, and ran that through Handbreak which made a 2.2 gig MKV file (took 8 hours). The completed MKV file would not play in VLC. Not really sure as to why it would not, but my guess would be the resolution or it knows it's a BR disc.

So my questions:
1. Is there a free BR player for the PC?
2. Is it possible to convert the BR to a standard DVD format that will work with VLC?

I know clonebd was just released. If you have anydvd hd it was $95 for a lifetime license. From what I read it takes a lot of the hassle out of it and allows you to down convert at the same time.

http://www.slysoft.com/en/clonebd.html

As a side note I always used blu2mkv with good results. Could never get subtitles to work though. With proper codecs (I use shark007 package) playback worked well with windows media player or
Wmc.

Currently using plex media server and streaming to an Xbox one with the mkv's I created with blu2mkv.



https://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.ph ... ray-to-Mkv

I know I'm going to sound like an old fart, but I don't see the point in ripping BluRay discs. Everything I own is either DVD or a BluRay/DVD combo. I rarely watch BluRay - I find the bloated menus and unbypassable ads annoying. I rip all my DVDs to a Nas (after ripping out the menu and ads) that can be watched from any TV in the house using Windows Media Center. Modern DVDs watched on modern upscaling DVD players look more than good enough. BluRay is over hypedvwith a few exceptions.

Too much trouble (and a waste of space) to rip BluRays. I became dissolutioned after I bought the BluRay version of Apollo 13. The menus and ads are so bad, it's unwatchable.

I agree. This was my first BR disk that my daughter bought for me. I've had a BR player that I bought over 2 years ago, but never bought one until my daughter bought one for me.
If I can't find a solution, then I'm done with BR ripping - takes forever and consumes 5x more space than a standard DVD movie.

I've never considered burning or converting any standard DVD to to Bluray but since buying our new TV about 3 yrs ago, I always get Bluray DVDs and have no problems viewing them.
The only issue I have is that many BR DVDs don't keep a stored memory point, like when you stop it and return a day later and that was never an issue with standard DVDs. I'm in a habit of writing down the time, chapter where I left off so I can quickly get right back next time I decide to watch. Seems to be getting better lately so maybe that was with earlier BR DVDs?

There are no free blu-ray players for the PC that I've found to work. You're supposed to be able to use VLC to play them but I've never gotten that to work. http://vlc-bluray.whoknowsmy.name/

I rip Blurays because my daughter's laptop doesn't have a player and she likes to use it to watch movies. I use MakeMKV to rip the movie off the disk. Then I use handbrake with the following settings:





You will have a 3 to 4 GB file once Handbrake finishes.

Hey thanks. I'll try that one more time. How long did it take to encode using Handbreak?
Also, what settings did you use for MakeMKV? When I first tried it, I selected "backup" which took everything on the disk. Later, I found that I only need the one large 20+ gig file for the video.

Using Medium, I can encode a 90 min movie in about 2 hours on my 2500K I5. Slow takes me 3 to 4. I generally encode at night when I don't need to use my computer. It's not a fast process.

For Make MKV, after inserting the disk and clicking on the large disk icon, I deselect everything except the main movie and English Audio:

Thanks again. I'll play with it this weekend when I have more time. Going forward though, I doubt I'll be buying any BR movies. I really can't tell the difference compared to a standard DVD movie. It's probably me - old age.

Executioner wrote:Thanks again. I'll play with it this weekend when I have more time. Going forward though, I doubt I'll be buying any BR movies. I really can't tell the difference compared to a standard DVD movie. It's probably me - old age.

My wife is the same way with HD. I catch her watching the standard def channels and ask, "why don't you watch the hi def?" She states she doesn't see the difference. I can't stand to watch standard definition anymore.

I was looking into software to playback Bluray on the PC and most of the programs cost upwards of $30+. I personally think that's BS. My advice would be to hook up a cheap Bluray player to your monitor and call it a day.

As for a BR player, I uninstalled VLC-32 and installed VLC-64. I never knew they had a 64 bit version. Seems to play better than the 32. One of these days, VLC will be able to play BR, but according to what I've been reading, it's a hit or miss decent playback.

Hmm, I'll have to try the 64-bit version myself. VLC is all I use for video playback on everything except the Media Center PCs.

Have fun finding it. Here is the link I used:
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html

Good tips Err.

As for VLC 64 bit, yeah, it's working well for me too. I also found out that they finally have a beta Android version which works pretty well so far.