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How to convert a BluRay disc into a .MKV 720P file

ioannis66 posted 2009 Jan 11 11:28

After reading a lot of material about that conversion in the last couple of days, i managed to complete my first successful convertion from BluRay to .MKV 720P file. I wasn't able to find a simple step by step guide from the beginning to the end, so i decided to make one. I hope to help other members that have difficutly in doing that kind of conversion, as i did. The only thing missing is the DTS-HD conversion to DTS stream using eac3to, i intend to update this post as soon as i have a BluRay disc with DTS-HD audio in my hands. Any suggestions are welcome. ___________---- A STEP BY STEP GUIDE ----___________ ------CONVERTING A BLURAY DISC INTO A .MKV 720P FILE------ THE BASIC STEPS ARE: STEP 1. PREPARATION-INSTALLATION AND THE TOOLS NEEDED. STEP 2. DECRYPTION OF THE BLURAY DISC. STEP 3. FINDING THE CORRECT .MPLS FILE AND THE DESIRED STREAMS. STEP 4. EXTRACTING AND CONVERTING THE AUDIO STREAM [4 -A : Dolby TrueHD Audio ----> AC3 5.1 Audio stream OR 4 - B: DTS HD Audio ----> DTS Audio stream] STEP 5. EXTRACTING THE VIDEO STREAM. STEP 6. ENCODING THE VIDEO STREAM AND MULTIPLEXING WITH THE AUDIO INTO .MKV FILE. PROCEDURES DIAGRAM: STEP 1. PREPARATION-INSTALLATION AND THE TOOLS NEEDED. The most important program you will need is AnyDVD HD. It removes all the protection from the BluRay and HDDVD discs and allows you to rip their content into your hard drive. The HD Encoding tools you will need, are: BDInfo v0.5.1: Just double click on BDInfo.exe to open the program. tsMuxeR v1.8.8b: Double click on the file tsMuxerGUI.exe to open the program. eac3to284 v2.84: Double click on the file yr_eac3to_more_gui.exe to open the program. RipBot264 v1.11.5: Double click on the file RipBot264.exe to open the program. You will notice that in order to work properly with Ripbot264, you should install 3 more programs. AviSynth v2.5.8.4: Double click on the file AviSynth_080912.exe to start the installation. Leave the Standard install option as is, don't change it. ffdshow rev2527: Double click on the file ffdshow_beta6_rev2527_20081219.exe to start the installation. When the Select Components appears just before the installation, be sure to check AviSynth scripts serving and Application plugins: AviSynth. Do not change any other options, just click on Next to proceed with the installation, and then Finish. Matroska Splitter v1.8.122.18: Double click on the file MatroskaSplitter.exe to start the installation. Do not change any options, just complete the installation. After you have installed the last 3 tools, you will notice that RipBot264 opens normally. STEP 2. DECRYPTION OF THE BLURAY DISC. We will use AnyDVD HD in order to remove and copy all the contents of the BluRay disc into the hard drive. Insert the disc in your BD-ROM. Wait some seconds until the following message dissappears. Right click on the AnyDVD icon on the bottom right of the screen and select Rip VideoDVD to Harddisk... Choose the Destination Directory and click on the Copy DVD button. It will take a while, so you can get a cup of coffee... You will end up with these files in your hard drive: STEP 3. FINDING THE CORRECT .MPLS FILE AND THE DESIRED STREAMS. We have to note some things now. Examine the contents of the files, in order to choose the correct .MPLS file that points to the main movie and the desired video and audio streams. We want the untouched 1920x1080 video stream and the DTS or AC3 audio stream. Open BDInfo, click on the Browse... button and select the folder that contains the ripped files. Click OK, wait a few seconds and your screen will look like this: We are looking for the .MPLS file that is the "playlist" of the main movie. Take a look at the Length column. The time 01:29:11 tells us that this is the main movie. So, the first .MPLS file that points to the main movie is 00004.MPLS. That was easy. But what if the BluRay contains 2 versions of the main movie. like Director's Cut and Theatrical Version? Play the BluRay disc, select the fist version, move the movie at the end and note the duration of the fist version of the movie. Do the same for the second version. For example the new X-Files Bluray contains the Director's Cut 01:48 and the Theatrical version 01:44 Now that we know the durations, we will be able to decide which .MPLS file points to the version we want. So, we will choose the first .MPLS file that has exactly the duration of the version of the film we want to keep. Remember, with BDInfo we do not do anything, it is just a tool to help us decide the .MPLS file and the examine the available streams. The video stream is easy to choose, we always choose MPEG-4 AVC Video 1080P High Profile 4.1. We see 2 audio streams that are available in English: Dolby TrueHD Audio and Dolby Digital Audio. We always use the best audio stream available. Dolby TrueHD Audio is our selection but we can not use it with a .MKV file. So, we will convert it to AC3 5.1, using eac3to. What if we had a DTS HD stream? If we see a DTS HD stream, we can convert it to a DTS stream with the help of eac3to so we will use that stream. We note that we want: the 00004.MPLS file, the MPEG-4 AVC Video 1080P High Profile 4.1 stream, the Dolby TrueHD Audio stream or the DTS HD Audio stream. If you have a Dolby TrueHD Audio stream, go to STEP 4 - A. If you have a DTS HD Audio stream, go to STEP 4 - B. STEP 4 -A. EXTRACTING AND CONVERTING THE AUDIO STREAM. Dolby TrueHD Audio ----> AC3 5.1 Audio stream. Open eac3to and from the Paths section click on the Add/Change button just under eac3to. Then select eac3to.exe and click on Open. Your screen will look like this: This is a one-time setting, in order to inform the GUI, where the .exe file of the main program, is. Under the Sources section, click on the Add Source Folders button. Then, browse to the folder on your disc that is the name of the movie and contains the extracted content of the BluRay disc. Now click on the second tab of the program, Eac3to Audio. Under the Input Files or Folder, select Source Folder. Your screen will look like this: The secondary window, informs us about the number of titles that are available in the main .MPLS file. It is obvious that we want Title Number 1, which contains the main movie. But what if the BluRay contains 2 versions of the main movie. like Director's Cut and Theatrical Version? Play the BluRay disc, select the fist version, move the movie at the end and note the duration of the fist version of the movie. Do the same for the second version. For example the new X-Files Bluray contains the Director's Cut 01:48 and the Theatrical version 01:44 Now that we know the durations, we will be able to decide which Title Number that contains the version we want. So, we will choose the Title Number that has exactly the duration of the version of the film we want to keep. Under Title Sets, select 1). The program will do some calculations and the secondary window will now inform us about the number of the tracks/streams that are available in the selected Title. It is obvious that we want Track Number 3, which is the Dolby TrueHD Audio stream. Under Tracks, select 3: and under the Filename enter the name of the converted file, like CONVERTEDAC3. Under Save as Type select ac3 and click on Run Command Line button. Your screen will look like this: From the Command Line area you can see where the converted Audio file wil be on your hard drive, when the conversion ends. This will take a while. You will end up with one .AC3 file in your hard drive, the converted stream (from Dolby TrueHD Audio to AC3 5.1 Audio stream): Now that you have a AC3 5.1 Audio stream, go to STEP 5. STEP 4 -B. EXTRACTING AND CONVERTING THE AUDIO STREAM. DTS HD Audio ----> DTS Audio stream. Open eac3to and from the Paths section click on the Add/Change button just under eac3to. Then select eac3to.exe and click on Open. Your screen will look like this: This is a one-time setting, in order to inform the GUI, where the .exe file of the main program, is. Under the Sources section, click on the Add Source Folders button. Then, browse to the folder on your disc that is the name of the movie and contains the extracted content of the BluRay disc. [COLOR="Red"]Some additioal steps about DTS HD converting will be added soon.[/COLOR] Now that you have a DTS Audio stream, go to STEP 5. STEP 5. EXTRACTING THE VIDEO STREAM. Now we will extract the video stream. Open tsMuxeR, click on the Add button and open the 00004.MPLS file. This is in your hard disc folder where you extracted the BluRay disc, in this directory: \[MOVIE_NAME]\BDMV\PLAYLIST\, for example \PROMNIGHT\BDMV\PLAYLIST\ Your screen will look like this: From the tracks uncheck everything except this stream: ---->H.264 Profile: High@4.1 Resolution 1920x1080p and Click on the Demux button, then Browse to select your destination folder and finally the Start Demuxing button. Your screen will look like this: You will end up with one .264 file in your hard drive, the video stream. STEP 6. ENCODING THE VIDEO STREAM AND MULTIPLEXING WITH THE AUDIO INTO .MKV FILE. RipBot264 will do 2 jobs for us. It will encode the video stream with specific setting into a 720P H264 stream. It will also multiplex that stream with our audio stream into a .MKV file. The audio stream is the final AC3 5.1 stream or the final DTS stream. Open RipBot264 and click on the Add button. Your screen will look like this: ---->Insert the video file: Browse to your .264 file. ---->Wait a few minutes until the program finishes indexing the video stream. ---->Insert the audio file: Browse to your .AC3 file OR to your .DTS file. (It depends on which step you followed: Step 4 - A or Step 4 - B) ---->Select the .MKV option in the Save As area. Now, your screen will look like this: ---->Make sure that under the Profile, the x.x COPY STREAM is selected. ---->For Mode, select the 2-pass option from the dropdown menu. ---->The Lock Size option will now be available in the right corner of the program. Check this and insert 4480, as this will be the DVD5 fixed size of the final .MKV file. ---->Under Output, select the folder you want the final file to be. ---->Now click on the Properties button in the center of the program. Your screen will look like this: ---->Under the Crop option, select Automatically. ---->Under the Size option, select HD-Ready 1280x720. ---->Click on the Preview Script button to check your options. ---->Click OK. You will return to the previous window. Click on the Done button. Your screen will look like this: Click on the Start button and wait... The RipBot264 will make the 1st pass encode and when it's over, it will start the 2nd pass. This pass is the most important and will take 3 times the duration of the 1st pass, so leave your pc until it's over. You can burn the final .MKV file into a DVD5 disc.

ron spencer posted 2009 Jan 11 11:56

nice one this guide!!!! Note though that you will need to test all m2ts files in the playlist if you choose another language if there are multiple angles in the movie....just to ensure that flows ok

joe_2385 posted 2009 Feb 20 14:25

Hi, I am new to the world of HTPC's, however I have 15 years expereince in computing. Anyway, I have followed your guide to the T, and have encountered a problem. My issue exists duriong step 5 of your guide: I selected my playlist and the app loaded the tracks, however, the track I need which has the 22GB video, is in the VC-1 formate, as opposed to your guide which shows yours as a H264. I underdstand that Blu-Ray's have three different types of formates, and this is one of them. However, when I finish step five and create the VC-1 Demuxed file, I proceed to the next step, where I cannot import a VC-1 into RipBot264. I looked at the pulldown in RipBot, and the VC-1 is clearly not supported. I have WMP11, which I understand has this codec and therefore should be loaded into RipBot. Please, I need some help here from someone who is much more knowlegable than I in this area. I did google around for a way to import the support, but only found information about enabling VC-1 in eac3to, which I did. Appreciate any help!

minerva.thegift posted 2009 Aug 26 10:10

joe_2385: I'm not sure if you'll see this, but this is at least good for others to know. I had the same problem (got a vc1 file rather than a 264 file) and here's what I had to do: Using RipBot264, under the Video Input select the "playlist" file from the BD directory (should be under [moviename]->BDMV->PLAYLIST (if you're not sure which you need, use BDInfo as recommended in this guide.) By loading that whole playlist file into RipBot264 it will pop up a menu giving you audio and video options and it will then also demux it all for you (thus skipping some of the steps in this guide.) Note that it can only do one audio stream at a time this way (at least as far as I can tell at the time of this post) so if you want to use multiple audio streams (as well as subtitle streams if you're feeling brave) you can just let it go ahead and encode with one video and one audio stream but then use the mkvtoolnix utility called mkvmerge to mux in additional pieces to that completed file (once it is finished encoding, of course.) I'm rather new to this myself, but that's what I've been getting to work so far so I thought I'd share it. A few links of interest: For handling BD Sup files, try BDSuptoSub from this doom9 thread (a Java applet that converts sup files to sub files, which can be put into an MKV and thus avoid having to OCR them into text - still in a bit of a beta stage though) For another similar guide, try this guide.

joe_2385 posted 2009 Aug 26 12:59

minerva.thegift- Thank you very much for the reply. I had put this project on hold but will attempt your suggestion when I have some free time.

minerva.thegift posted 2009 Sep 13 02:35

joe_2385 Oh good! I'm glad you saw my post. As I've been learning more about Blu Ray stuff, I've found that there seems to be a list of 'official' Blu Ray media formats (i.e. formats that all Blu Ray players must be able to read.) You can read about all that in this Wikipedia section. Anyways, I've found that RipBot264 generally handles whatever codec I throw at it so I've started just letting RipBot264 do the main demuxing and encoding (and then I demux additional audio and sometimes subtitle streams with tsMuxer GUI and mux those straight in to a .mkv file with mkvmerge.) You can read my guide (which works but is still somewhat of a work-in-progress) here.

videodj posted 2009 Sep 23 07:17

Hi Can anyone suggest which audi track I would use for the following Movie

minerva.thegift posted 2009 Sep 23 20:43

videodj : Hi Can anyone suggest which audi track I would use for the following Movie In general, the answer is "the biggest one" or "the top one." That'd mean the first track (which also happens to be the largest track.) However, that might not be in a format you can use and one of the other two English tracks might be the same thing only in the .ac3 format (handy for containers like .mkv.) If there is no .ac3 (Dolby) version of the main audio, you'll likely have to use eac3to or something similar to convert that top (big) audio file - note that such a lack of a main .ac3 file would be surprising. As a further explanation, I'd guess that the 2nd English track is the same as the first one only in the ac3 format and the 3rd is likely a director's commentary (and, for what it's worth, if you ever find yet another English audio track it might be a cast commentary or something like that - I've run in to that with a few different Blu Ray discs so far.) Of course, if you want one of the other languages, go ahead and grab those, too. It does look like you're on the right video piece (that one is by far the longest and presumably is the length of the movie - double check, as I've encountered a few instances where there is a Director's Cut or something that is longer than the movie itself and this might not be what you want.) Feel free to post here, PM me, or post in my guide's thread here with any other questions.

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