Ripping blurays onto a diskdriveless iMac

[TreasonsBeta]

Lol just a note, I know most anime isn't created in a 4k format. Alongside anime, I also edit with live action footage which is now commonly released in 4k for major blockbusters. I'm not sure if I am going to edit with it but I would like the opportunity in the future so that's why I ask.

The Asus BW-16D1HT isn't a USB based drive is it? As I said, the newer iMacs got skinnier and got rid of their DVD drives so it would be useless to me if it wasn't. And besides that, I was looking at it on their site and it said it is only supported with the Windows OS.

[Qyot27]

True. After checking CDJapan, there's currently not very much anime that's been released in 4K yet anyway. Most of it looks like things either old enough to have been re-scanned from film, or new enough that it may have been produced in 4K.

I'm still not working in 1080p, and a fair amount of anime I would be working with are basically just upscales anyway. How much anime is even being produced in 4K? And haven't a lot of classic series only recently gotten 1080p re-scans themselves? Like I THINK Utena just got a BD set quite recently. I cannot imagine we will be seeing 4K Utena anytime soon.

Pretty much. I'm sort of skeptical about them too, especially after seeing what '1080p' on the Toradora! and Kara no Kyoukai Blu-rays looked like (especially the latter; the backgrounds were really 1080p, or at least 720p, the character cell art was - poorly - upscaled).

The Asus BW-16D1HT isn't a USB based drive is it? As I said, the newer iMacs got skinnier and got rid of their DVD drives so it would be useless to me if it wasn't. And besides that, I was looking at it on their site and it said it is only supported with the Windows OS.

Like I mentioned before, there are either SATA-to-USB adapter cables or 5.25" drive enclosures that you can use to connect it through USB. You can go the cable route for as little as $10.

When Asus lists Windows under OS Support, they're not talking about the hardware. They're talking about the bundled CyberLink software, which has absolutely nothing to do with the OS being able to recognize or talk to the drive (and even if they were talking about a disk with device drivers on it, they don't have to put drivers for macOS or Linux distros on there because those OSes usually update those drivers through Apple's or the kernel's/distro's upgrade channels; Windows is usually the only one sloppy enough that the manufacturer has to do something, and even then it's often not necessary). This is true of *most* types of generic hardware like optical drives or add-on storage devices.

[Kionon]

Pretty much. I'm sort of skeptical about them too, especially after seeing what '1080p' on the Toradora! and Kara no Kyoukai Blu-rays looked like (especially the latter; the backgrounds were really 1080p, or at least 720p, the character cell art was - poorly - upscaled).

This is about what I suspected, although I know Keith has other needs.

[yKazari]

Is there any BluRay Decrypter/Ripper for Mac outside of MakeMKV. Personally I don't like its "hand-holding" and lack of advanced control (like picking a title/chapter range) and if I'm paying $50 I at least what to have the ability to rip the other sections of the disk without copying the entire 24GB of data.
I know of DVDFab Decrypter but I have yet to try it.

Maybe if anyone knows of something with more features (price is not an issue)

[Kionon]

Is there any BluRay Decrypter/Ripper for Mac outside of MakeMKV. Personally I don't like its "hand-holding" and lack of advanced control (like picking a title/chapter range) and if I'm paying $50 I at least what to have the ability to rip the other sections of the disk without copying the entire 24GB of data.
I know of DVDFab Decrypter but I have yet to try it.

Maybe if anyone knows of something with more features (price is not an issue)

I merged this topic with Keith's, since it is almost identical to his.

And as far as I know, everything seems to be worse than MakeMKV. But I thought you should be able to rip individual titles. Do you want chapter control?

[yKazari]

I usually was "fine" with MakeMKV until I wanted the OP/ED (the whole reason I bought the Blood-C complete series) but It only seems to detect the main episodes and the continuous version of all episodes. The only way I have found to get better selection and control is to Backup the entire disk to my server, search trough the streams and find the one I need, and re-encode them with ffmpeg.

I know there really is not much good software out there for BluRay. I use Mac DVDRipper Pro and thats a great example of what I like to see, just enough control and looks nice.

[Qyot27]

Well, it is at least possible to cut out the backup step. As long as you have the timecode information for whatever chapter it is in the corresponding playlist (mediainfo can do this if you know which playlist you need to query), you can have mpv convert it to [insert format here] straight from the disc using --start and --end to specify the in/out points. Just so long as you can play the disc with mpv in the first place - and for that there are two options: libaacs+the disc's keys being in KEYDB.cfg, or MakeMKV's libmmbd symlinked to libaacs so it gets used in libaacs compatibility mode (no keys get backed up this way, which is unfortunate, but it supports newer discs than the plain libaacs method currently can).

The only downside is that you'll have to actually convert; it won't do direct stream copy (even when I tried FFmpeg, it was able to convert when using the bluray: protocol, but couldn't direct stream copy).

[SQ]

I usually was "fine" with MakeMKV until I wanted the OP/ED (the whole reason I bought the Blood-C complete series) but It only seems to detect the main episodes and the continuous version of all episodes.

There is a setting in MakeMKV you need to change.
Under the "video" tab, at the bottom is an "options" area.
It says "minimum title length (seconds)". Change this to something smaller than 60.

I am not sure why this isn't in any guides (especially the AMV-related ones). But this option's default is 120, which obviously skips anything under 2 minutes. I suspect it was originally created to skip all the FBI warnings and stuff, but this is obviously detrimental if you want clean OP/EDs.

[yKazari]

WOW how did I not see that (or I guess I didn't understand it)
Thanks for that

[TreasonsBeta]

Qyot27 I see the SATA-to-USB adapter cables now that you pointed it out. My bad, I've never heard or used anything like that so I glanced over it. I'm glad to hear it will work on both operating systems. It would really suck if I bought it only to not have it work. I have had issues dealing with software compatibility with macs over the years and I didn't realize the bluray it'self would be running off a driver like a flash drive. A while back, I had to reformat old external hard drives from windows to mac to be able to transfer files so I didn't know exactly how that process would translate to the USB bluray.

I'd like to second yKazari's statement about control over which chapters to rip so you can do pieces instead of a whole. I haven't had a chance to use it but I noticed other people had the same issues here.
https://www.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17343
It was suggested that after a whole file rip, to use MKVtoolnix or Handbrake. This seems like a lot of time wasted just to make segments that won't crash your editing software. I personally had to use FLV Crunch for my old files.