# Best Guide/Tut to backup your BluRays in MKV/MP4



## sam9s (Jul 4, 2011)

Friends, 

I have seen lot of request and curiosity for the best possible way to back up your BD disk. Following is the guide which I (and most of the professional rippers) follow to back up BD with custom quality measures for both audio and video so as you have the full control over the final size of the output movie file.

Tools you would need .....

*MakeMKV*
*Handbreak*
*AnyDVD HD*

Ofcourse you need a BD ROM drive to read the discs.

*PART 1 :::: The Ripping Process​*
*STEP 1* :_ Make sure that AnyDVDHD is running at the background. Open MakeMKV and you shall be presented with the following screen._

*img33.imageshack.us/img33/3853/makemkv.jpg

*STEP 2 :* _Choose the correct source drive and the click on the "Bluray=>HDD" icon. You might be presented with the following error._

*img204.imageshack.us/img204/4328/popuperror.jpg

_Just click YES._

*STEP 3 :* _After you click on yes MakeMKV will process the disc and will present you with the following screen
_
*img687.imageshack.us/img687/2613/makemkvprocessingfinish.jpg

Select the main title (the max size) and remove everything else. Then click the drop down arrow against the main title and you will be presented with the Audio and subtitles options  ........ review the snap below ...

*img163.imageshack.us/img163/7995/makemkvchooseaudio.jpg

Every disc will either have DTS-HD or DD True HD for lossless audio AND DD 3/2+1 or DTS 3/2+1 for lossy audio. Now its up to you if you wanna keep lossless audio or lossy. I (and usually others as well) keep the lossy DTS or DD and remove all others. Similarly just check and opt english for subtitle and remove the rest.

Doing all of the above will itself save you *10-15 GB*. Like for example my Night at the museum was 32GB initially and after all the above deductions was stripped down to *15GB* file.

Mind you......... we have still not compressed anything, so the video is still at its full bit-rate and resolution (1080p). Audio also is at its full bit-rate (for DTS). All we have done is removed the extras and ofcourse HD Audio.

*STEP 4 :* _After all is done choose the output folder and click on MakeMKV at the top right hand corner._

MakeMKV will start the ripping process. Now depending on your system configuration and power this process might take anything between 30 minutes to 2 Hours. As a reference mine took 26 minutes.

At the end we will have a the ripped mkv with a name something like *title00.mkv*

*PART 2 :::: The Compression Process​*
Now we will try to compress the file by using codes like *x264*, reducing the resolution to *1280x720 (720p)* and compressing the audio to *AC3 or ACC*.


*STEP 1 :* _Open Handbreak and you will be presented with the following screen._

*img840.imageshack.us/img840/223/firsttab.jpg

*STEP 2 : *_Now click on source and choose the *title00.mkv* file that we ripped using MakeMKV.
_
*STEP 3 :* _Choose the destination. Choose MKV as the container. Now under the *picture tab*, under Anamorphic....change the option from "strict" to "None" from the drop down menu. Then change the resolution width from 1920 to 1280. The height would automatically change to 720. Make sure "keep aspect ratio" is selected._

*STEP 4 :*_ Now come to the video tab. Choose video codec as H.264. FPS same as source.  _

*img809.imageshack.us/img809/5892/videotab.jpg

Now comes the quality part.

Quality can be defined by three ways .........

*A. Target Size
B. AVG Bitrate 
C. Constant Quality.*

I personally prefer providing the size, which automatically determines the bit-rate and vice verse..... if you choose to provide the bitrate.

*NOTE *:: As a thumb rule, for each 1mbps (1000 kbps) bitrate the file size increases by 1GB. So for example if you define bitrate to be 5mbps (5000kbps) the file size would land to around 5GB ..... *IMP *::: Assuming that you have chosen the resolution as *1280x720* and the audio is untouched i.e *DTS *(which the source has). The file size can further be decreased if the resolution is reduced or the audio is compressed to AAC. 

*STEP 5* : _Now move to the audio tab. This is where we decide if we want to keep the source audio untouched i.e DTS or compress to AAC. Choose the source from the drop down menu and AAC or AC3 passthru from Audio Codec. As I sad I prefer audio untouched so you can see DTS passthru in my screen shot._

*img40.imageshack.us/img40/4803/audiotab.jpg

*STEP 6* : Move to subtitle track. Here though there is an option to chose hard coded subs, for some reason it did not work. I will research more on this. So I will suggest that you manually choose the SRT file by clicking on the Import SRT file. 

*img820.imageshack.us/img820/4755/subletrack.jpg

SRT Subs can be downloaded from the below link

Divxstation - subtitles [subscene.com]

Once that is done just click on START and the encoading will start. This is gonna be a looooooonnnngggg process  specially if you machine is a bit of the older generation. The process can take anywhere starting from 1 hour to 5 hours ..... again as a reference my system took 45 minutes to complete the encoding.

My result file details are as follows ..... ....

*img27.imageshack.us/img27/3051/filedetails.jpg

The resultant 10MB sample file can be downloaded at below ...

*Hotfile.com: One click file hosting: Sample-027.mkv*

Hope this guide will clear the doubts as to how one can take a decent backup of the BDs......

For any queries fill the thread ....... 

Regards
Sammy


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## topgear (Jul 10, 2011)

great guide and thanks a ton


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## sam9s (Jul 10, 2011)

Thanks, .......with no response I thought it was a wast putting it on TDF .......


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## comp@ddict (Jul 10, 2011)

Any other software to convert videos to .mkv format?

Free/OpenSource preferred, but paid will do if it's very good!


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## pnreddy (Sep 10, 2011)

Nice tutorial for backing up your Bds. Can you also suggest a minimum hardware configuration for backing up BD in about 2 hours. Thanks.


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