Tutorial for Creating Blu-Ray & DVD Files For Clean, Beautiful Playback on Boxee Box

[gmd024]

MakeMKV is brilliant but you will have to buy it after a 30 day fully working demo, well worth it though

I believe MakeMKV may still be free (While in beta) - for DVD use I think it's been stated that it will always be free - but at some point it will be a pay-for app for Blu-Ray use... http://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1053

In any case, I purchased a license for MakeMKV about 2 years ago, to support the Dev (Mike) in his effort to keep the app 'afloat' and updated

But I must also say I agree with aaronwt, in my opinion ISO's are the way to go -- they are an 'image/copy' of the original physical disk -- you can store the original away for safe keeping and still have a copy (image) of it to do most anything you want to - one example would be... you can mount the ISO with a 'free' virtual drive and create an MKV of it using MakeMKV - and most anything else you can do with the original physical retail disc -- plus you have BD menu support (if using media streamers that support either full menus or BD lite menus)

[galladanb]

Maybe I'm doing something wrong...

So I made a mkv of a movie from dvd, and it has the DTS (5.1) soundtrack, (confirmed with my stereo system)...
This file turns out to be over 5 GB!

When I use handbreak, I only get stereo. First time, I forgot to check that track in handbreak, then I re-made
another and this time, I made sure to check the 5.1 option. It still came out as stereo.
This new file is just over 1 GB with the subs left checked.

I made the second file with a new name, I made sure to check the 5.1 option. so I could cross check and verify.
This second file ends up at just a little over 800MB, with the subs left unchecked.

Am I missing something?????? Can ya post some screenshots of the correct way to set the prefs, PLZ!!!

[gmd024]

This Guide from a very helpful forum member may help... http://forums.boxee.tv/showthread.ph...encoding+guide

[galladanb]

I took a look at the thread you suggested, but it didn't really answer the issue I mentioned.

So, I dug a little deeper on my end here, and I found out what I was doing wrong.

It's simple really...

My source had both a 5.1 and a DTS track. I simply "Moved to top" the 5.2 track and removed the other one.
Turns out you can "Right-Click" on the track and a pop up allows one a choice to move up, down, or remove.

I discovered this when I was poking around in Boxee Box, the file was playing, and I found the 3 icons in the lower left corner of the video paly window and tried each one to see what they did. The middle one, a globe like looking thingie, allowed me to change the audio source to 5.1 or stereo, whichever I wanted. Because I had not bumped the 5.1 track in HandBreak, it was there, but Boxee Box played the top one.

Problem solved. WOW!!!

So now, my files can now be under 1.7GB, instead of 5+GB!

Now where is that stack of disc's???

[drunkwithpower]

I use MakeMKV to put the video files into the MKV container. While doing this I only select the audio option I want to keep (DTS if it's available). Once I have the completed MKV file (5-7GB), I use Vidcoder, which is an enhanced GUI for Handbrake, to encode (compress) the file (1-2GB). Under the audio settings I choose Passthru (Auto), which keeps the audio in the exact same format as the original while still compressing the video. I chose to do this because I wanted the file compression but also wanted full quality audio. This may not be for everyone since I know a lot of products won't play DTS without transcoding, so it really depends on the playback device you are using. Since I only play them back on Boxee and my Samsung SMART TV, I leave the full audio in the file.