My Blu-Ray Ripper Reveiws

[yao847zi]

Okay so I spent hours playing with different options for ripping blu-rays into a format that could be transferred to my

Xoom and I would like to share what I have learned.


The Rippers
I started with some research and downloaded six or seven different programs designed for ripping blu-rays that were

recommended some where on the web.

I almost immediately discarded all but three rippers. Two were immediately ruled out after just examining the UI and

noticing the lack of customization options. Another three were ruled out based on the fact they required a separate program

called AnyDVD to run at all. This didn't bother me too much but further investigation found that AnyDVD costs $60+ in

itself and does not offer the most user friendly experience.

It's also worth noting I did not try out the beta of DVD Catalyst because it also requires AnyDVD or a similar program

running in unison both of which would be added cost and added hassle. If your only looking to rip DVDs then DVD Catalyst

for only $10 is the way to go from what I hear.

What I ended up with were three blu-ray ripping trials.
DVDFab Blu-ray Ripper - $60
Pavtube Blu-Ray Ripper - $49
Aunsoft Blu-Ray Ripper - $49


At first glance Pavtube and Aunsoft seemed almost identical in UI but they performed very different.


Customization
DVDFab was the first ripper I tried and I was very disappointed with the lack of control when ripping the blu-rays. There

were nine different profiles to choose from when selecting .mp4 output format. Five of which had either 'ipad' or 'iphone'

in the name and had very low max resolution outputs. In the end the only profile that was workable was the basic profile

for h264 and for some reason did not support 1920x1080 resolution.

Pavtube and Aunsoft had, like I mentioned, identical UIs and actually shared identical customization options. In addition

to having many more built in profiles for everything from different Android phones and IPhones to gaming consoles and even

power points, it also had basic profiles for common video formats.

Where both Pavtube and Aunsoft set themselves apart from DVDFab was in the customization of these profiles. While DVDFab

attempted to give me control of resolution, frame rate, bit rate, and audio, Pavtube and Aunsoft actually allowed me to

change these to an assortment of options including 1920x1080 at multiple frame rates.


Testing
In order to get a good base line of these programs I popped in Avatar on blu-ray into my blu-ray rom and selected a chapter

to use as testing so I didn't need to rip the entire movie every time.

From here on you will see me post settings in the form:
Codec: [codec used, file type always .mp4]
Resolution: [resolution]
Bit Rate: [bit rate]
Size: [file size generated]
Speed: [time it took to rip, in minutes]

In DVDFab I was only able to make one good base test due to the lack of customization. I set the settings to:
Codec: h264
Resolution: 1680x946
Bit Rate: 5000
Size: 130mb
Speed: 9:33

This test led me to believe that DVDFab was a possibility because the picture looked phenomenal with good 3d depth and very

little artifacting around moving objects. The problem was that it was laggy. It took 10-15 seconds for what appeared to be

buffering before the clip would smooth out and then I would get bullet lag quiet often.

I was confident this would be improved if I played with the settings but found that quality had to really be reduced in

order for the clip to smooth out.

DVDFab was essentially ruled out.

I then put together some test batches for both Pavtube and Aunsoft. I chose to go with four different profiles for each

program. h264 with HD standards, h264 base standards, MPEG 4 (xvid) with HD standards, and MPEG 4 (xvid) with base

standards. These were the final settings and results:

Note: The chapter I chose was 3:34 long and my computer is using an Nvidia GTX 570 paired with an Intel E6750 2.66GHz dual

core processor. You can use this information to judge the speed it took to rip these files. CUDA acceleration was on for

all but the first video, CUDA is an Nvidia technology that speeds up the encoding and decoding of h264 files which is the

reason the h264 files were significantly faster than the xvid files.

PavTube
4 files

Codec: h264 HD
Resolution: 1920x1080
Bit Rate: 9000
Size: 230mb
Speed: 12:57 (CUDA acceleration was off)

Codec: MPEG(xvid) HD
Resolution: 1920x1080
Bit Rate: 12000
Size: 307mb
Speed: 8:40

Codec: h264
Resolution: 1920x1080
Bit Rate: 9000
Size: 232mb
Speed: 3:20

Codec: MPEG(xvid)
Resolution: 1920x1080
Bit Rate: 12000
Size: 307mb
Speed: 8:40


Aunsoft
4 files

Codec: h264 HD
Resolution: 1920x1080
Bit Rate: 9000
Size: 232mb
Speed: 3:19

Codec: MPEG(xvid) HD
Resolution: 1920x1080
Bit Rate: 12000
Size: 307mb
Speed: 8:40

Codec: h264
Resolution: 1920x1080
Bit Rate: 9000
Size: 232mb
Speed: 3:20

Codec: MPEG(xvid)
Resolution: 1920x1080
Bit Rate: 12000
Size: 307mb
Speed: 8:47

As you can see the file sizes and speeds were almost identical between Aunsoft and Pavtube. Except of course for the first

one where I forgot to turn CUDA acceleration on for the ripping.


Quality
Now here is where it got difficult. I know right off the bat people would ask me why I even tried the xvid codecs and

instead just accepted that h264 would be the better codec. But I actually found the quality of the xvid looked better than

the h264. After watching these clips over and over again both on the Xoom and hooked up to my HD TV, I settled on either

the h264 with the HD standard and the xvid with the base line standards. Don't ask me why these two because I couldn't tell

ya.

I like to think I have a pretty good eye for video quality, I currently sell HD TVs and can see the difference between 100k

contrast and 120k contrast if that gives me any sort of justificaton.

I eventually agreed (with my girlfriend who was helping me judge) that the MPEG 4 with the xvid codec ripped by Pavtube was

the best quality of the bunch. The colors were much more vibrant on my 42 inch plasma while the edges of moving objects

were not blurred at all.


Results
What was important to me:
Quality of the Video
Compatibility with the Xoom
Usability of the program

What was not important to me:
Time to rip (I'm happy doing one movie overnight every night if need be)
Size - to an extent (quality is more important)

After reviewing every aspect of these programs that was important to me I can honestly say that Pavtube gave the best

quality and also the best user experience. The reason it beat out Aunsoft is the fact that Aunsoft would convert some of my

videos (the ones with the HD standards) to a 4:3 aspect ratio and also four tests made by Aunsoft failed to load on the

Xoom while only one Pavtube test failed to load.

So I will now begin ripping my entire blu-ray collection into MPEG 4 formats at 12000 bit rate. But note at these settings

your probably looking at 10GBs per movie so these settings are for people who share what is and isn't important for me.

Even if this is not what your looking for I would still recommend Pavtube as the ripper of choice but instead of the xvid

codec at 12000 bit rate I would go with the h264 codec at 9000 bit rate because you won't sacrifice clarity, just color.


Tips
If you are looking to test video quality for yourself look for a chapter when under Title Mode (on the Pavtube UI) that is

rather short but has a good display of colorful moving objects and rip that chapter into different formats and settings.

When ripping the full movie switch the UI to File Mode and rip only the main file. The reason I recommend switching to File

Mode is because if you rip both the title and all the chapters under Title Mode it will actually rip the movie twice. If

you read my previous edits you will have seen how this doubled my file size.

Manually set the frame rate to what your looking for, I recommend matching the source. But do not use original frame rate

when ripping the full movie, for me it got it wrong and played my movie in what appeared to be fast forward.



Epilogue
I need to note that I'm in no way affiliated with any of the above programs and did this testing because I couldn't find

any reviews that were not sponsored by the programs themselves.

I'm entirely new to compression and ripping so this was a learning experience for me and hope that my terminology and

assumptions of how the process works is accurate.

As a CS major I'm looking to get familiar with technical writing and I hope this review was readable, informative, and to

the point.

Everything above is simply my opinions based on the time I spent with these programs

[remainnameless]

I personally have nothing bad to say about AnyDVD HD. It will rip 90% of blurays (in conjunction with IMGBurn). I'll also use Make MKV for blurays with alternative copy protection.

I personally like RipBot264 for making MKV containers. There are a lot of customization options, and on my i7, it will convert an m2ts to MKV at 100% quality in about 3 hours. Ripbot264 is free too.

Good write up.

Btw, I'm not sure if the Xoom will play MKV, but you can always convert MKV to other formats pretty easily.

[xiaNaix]

What if you're just looking to shrink Blu-Ray discs to BD25? I've been debating DVDFab vs. AnyDVD for a while now and haven't purchased either yet.

[remainnameless]

What if you're just looking to shrink Blu-Ray discs to BD25? I've been debating DVDFab vs. AnyDVD for a while now and haven't purchased either yet.

Do you only want the video without menus? I use AnyDVD to rip the bluray, and compress it using Ripbot264. Avatar, for example, was about 42 gigs before compressing. After keeping ONLY the video track and the DTS audio, it was around 9 gigs as an MKV.

[Yuki]

I generally prefer to use F/OSS for encoding as it often gives a much greater degree of control than proprietary software.

My ripping process is pretty much too complex to go into depth over but this is my basic workflow:

1. Decrypt and copy the BD to HDD with AnyDVD HD.
2. Extract the relevant streams by using eac3to on the main .mpls file - If it's an archive rip I'll normally transcode any lossless audio stream to FLAC to save space, if I'm not planning to keep it I'll extract the DTS/AC3 core from the lossless stream.
3. Index the extracted video stream with dgindexnv.
4. Knock up a quick Avisynth script for any deinterlacing/resizing that needs doing. I tend to use the GPU to do this for speed, unless the source causes problems.
5. Use the x264 CLI to encode, favourite arguments are --preset veryslow and --tune film or --tune animation depending on the source - whether I use 2pass or CRF and the overall quality in general will also depend on whether I intend to archive the rip.
6. Mux the streams (including chapters and subtitles if appropriate) into an .mkv using mkvmerge.

If I'm feeling particularly lazy or want an exact copy I'll just remux the streams into an .mkv file (omitting steps 3-5). Just doing this alone can reduce the size of the movie by several GB.

EDIT:
I'd also like to mention that CUDA encoders aren't at a stage where they can offer anywhere near the quality of good CPU encoders such as x264. I wouldn't recommend the use of DXVA accelerated video playback either, especially for videos you've ripped yourself. The settings I've briefly described above will not play back correctly on any GPU as far as I am aware.

The one place where CUDA is useful is for MPEG indexing and frameserving (dgindexnv) but again this relies on the GPU being able to decode the source. This shouldn't be an issue for Blu-ray or HDTV sources and you shouldn't be reencoding from any other sources to be brutally honest.

If anyone wants a sample video to see what's achievable after some practice with manual encoding PM me and I'll be happy to oblige.

[jumper]

I use anydvdhd to get the decrypted m2ts from the disc, and recently I started using handbrake to transcode. Handbrake works excellent compared to avidemux which is what I was using.

I recently ripped "The Dark Knight" which is nearly 2.5 hours long and just over 30gb, to be fair it has 5 audio tracks all with 6 channels. I used pretty much the default mp4 settings in handbrake, I switched the audio to ac3 passthrough and only set up the one track I wanted, and it auto-detected that it could crop the video to 1918x800. Everything else I left alone (default video codec is x264), it took my 2.0ghz athlon x2 a little over 13 hours to do the one pass encode and the finished file is 5.88gb.

I compared it side by side to the actual disc playing and I couldn't find any differences, I was pretty surprised at that. I have a few other movies that I did two pass x264 encodes on using avidemux, the file sizes are generally bigger and there are a few hard to notice imperfections, they also took much longer to encode (probably because of the two pass).

[Yuki]

I use anydvdhd to get the decrypted m2ts from the disc, and recently I started using handbrake to transcode. Handbrake works excellent compared to avidemux which is what I was using.

Avidemux has the potential to be a great program but it's got so many bugs it's pretty much useless as a BD ripper. It's fantastic for cutting video clips without having to reencode though.

As for using Handbrake I just have a couple of constructive criticisms for you.

I switched the audio to ac3 passthrough

This leaves you with quite an inferior audio stream, there's no excuse to do this for TrueHD tracks since there's now a F/OSS decoder for them. The last time I checked, however, Handbrake did not support any kind of HD audio tracks.

it auto-detected that it could crop the video to 1918x800.

Always crop manually. In this case, the automatic algorithm has cropped the IMAX scenes to the same aspect ratio as everything else. It's also made the width non mod16 which will hurt encoding efficiency.

[gundamwfan]

As it appears I'm in a forum of the proper people to ask, I have a question that has been bugging me for a while and I was hoping you all could answer it. Every once in a while, I'll find a blu-ray rip on the 'net that only weighs in at about 2GB, down from however gigantic it was on the actual blu ray, with very little discernible decrease in quality, and it's definitely in the 720P section of the website. Then, even far more infrequently, I find a Blu Ray rip compressed to 500MB again, with a very sharp quality, no artifacts or blocking of the video. HOW do people manage to compress these videos to this size, still at 720P, still with a high native resolution, and keep that sort of quality?

[Yuki]

As it appears I'm in a forum of the proper people to ask, I have a question that has been bugging me for a while and I was hoping you all could answer it. Every once in a while, I'll find a blu-ray rip on the 'net that only weighs in at about 2GB, down from however gigantic it was on the actual blu ray, with very little discernible decrease in quality, and it's definitely in the 720P section of the website. Then, even far more infrequently, I find a Blu Ray rip compressed to 500MB again, with a very sharp quality, no artifacts or blocking of the video. HOW do people manage to compress these videos to this size, still at 720P, still with a high native resolution, and keep that sort of quality?

I've not seen any as small as 500MB but I guess it's possible if it's animation and/or the sound quality has been reduced a lot. As for ~2GB it's really not difficult to achieve that level of compression if you avoid automated tools and know a bit about the codecs you're dealing with.

[jumper]

This leaves you with quite an inferior audio stream

I was going to post that I couldn't tell the difference, but I was listening with my old Logitech 5.1 setup... I pulled the m2ts from the disc again to compare with some cheap-ish earbuds, and the difference is obvious in some places, I can only imagine how obvious it would be with some real audio equipment.

Always crop manually. In this case, the automatic algorithm has cropped the IMAX scenes to the same aspect ratio as everything else. It's also made the width non mod16 which will hurt encoding efficiency.

I either got confused while setting up multiple jobs, or I completely missed that the video frame changes size in this movie. I would bet that the 2px cropped from one side wasn't necessary either.

So now that I'm wanting to do it over I'm reminded of something that pretty much sucks about handbrake. When you want to encode just a clip as a test, you can only select from start position "1-10", and then you can choose from 5 to 60 seconds length in increments of 5. So at best, you can only clip from 10 different 1 minute segments of the movie.