Blu Ray drive for Mac Pro (1 Viewer)

[Yeoman007]

Thanks Dave, I used ffmpeg way back in 2005 or so. But I lost track, so it’s good it’s still available for the new OS. I’ll check that out.

It would be cool to extract the commentary tracks too as podcasts! Years ago I was reminded of the Criterion commentary tracks on the first three James Bond laserdiscs that had that track removed because the producers didn’t like some of the comments. I have those discs, so it would be cool to see if those can be extracted.

Nelson, the work has already been done for you. Go to archive.org and do a search on "james bond laserdisc commentary" for them.

Rick

 

[DaveF]

Thanks Dave, I used ffmpeg way back in 2005 or so. But I lost track, so it’s good it’s still available for the new OS. I’ll check that out.

It would be cool to extract the commentary tracks too as podcasts! Years ago I was reminded of the Criterion commentary tracks on the first three James Bond laserdiscs that had that track removed because the producers didn’t like some of the comments. I have those discs, so it would be cool to see if those can be extracted.

I think ffmpeg is available for your toaster! There’s a version for everything.

PowerDVD 20 (Windows version) easily extracts the audio from video files. I've been transferring Laserdisc titles to mp4 video. And use PowerDVD to capture the commentary as a m4a. Just did this with Criterion's LD of Hitchcock's BLACKMAIL. Right-click the video file and choose 'extract audio.' Of course, PowerDVD isn't free.

That’s interesting. I’ve got PDVD 16. I don’t think it can do any of that. It’s purely playback AFAIK.

 

[Nelson Au]

Hey Rick, ha, ha! Yes, I’ve heard that someone had done the extraction of the audio commentary from the Criterion James Bond laserdiscs! Part of me thinks that I should do my own since I have the discs. But sure, it’s a lot easier if it already exists.

 

[Nelson Au]

Dave, I just did a search and I see ffmpeg for Mac OS. I see there’s a site for it, ffmpeg.org. It has the source code and links to executable files. I guess that means files that one could download and it’s an actual application.

 

[DaveF]

Yes. You want executables. Unless compiling open source tools is your jam.

I’ve used other command line tools like Ruby and Python. So Homebrew can feel like an easier option in some cases. )

 

[Nelson Au]

Yes, I would have no idea how to compile open source tools! Not my area of interest or skill!

 

[DaveF]

Here are some links I had bookmarked when I was figuring out converting MPA to AAC and MP3

Encode/AAC – FFmpeg

trac.ffmpeg.org

FFmpeg command to convert MP3 to AAC

I can issue this command: ffmpeg -i input.mp3 -acodec alac -ab 128k -ar 48000 -ac 2 -y output.m4a to create a m4a file. But when I issue this command ffmpeg -i input.mp3 -acodec alac -ab 128k...

superuser.com

Convert audio files to mp3 using ffmpeg

I need to convert audio files to mp3 using ffmpeg. When I write the command as ffmpeg -i audio.ogg -acodec mp3 newfile.mp3, I get the error: FFmpeg version 0.5.2, Copyright (c) 2000-2009 Fabrice

stackoverflow.com

I use this to convert AAC to MP3 and embed metadata and artwork into commentaries for use as ”podcasts”.

Forecast: Podcast MP3 Chapter Encoder — Overcast

The podcast MP3 post-production tool designed, developed, and used by professional podcasters.

overcast.fm

 

[Nelson Au]

This is great Dave, thanks! I’ll check the links out.

 

[Nelson Au]

Hey guys- not sure you guys would have insight, but I thought I’d ask.

This weekend, I finally got around to making MKV files of the first Christopher Reeve Superman movie on blu ray from the 2011 Anthology set. I did the theatrical cut first and set-up all the extras as featurettes and trailers. But for some reason they do not show up in Plex. The film itself does. And the extra, Superman and the Mole Men shows up as a separate film in Plex. So that’s OK. But the Bugs Bunny and other animated shorts do not show up. I might have to make those as individual films.

I made an MKV of the Superman Expanded Cut on the second blu ray disc next. I was able to get Plex to recognize it as a separate film that I titled Superman [expanded edition] (1978). The extras from that disc were given titles and a deleted scene title and featurette title and they all show up in Plex. And what is odd is those extras also show up in the Superman theatrical version too.

I might have to do more experimenting to get all the extras to show up. Just odd this happens. Must be the way the extras are named.

I plan to make MKV’s of the Superman II disc and want to get the Fleischer animated Superman shorts from that and the Superman Donner Cut disc too. I suspect those would end up as individual titles. Would be cool if it was possible to place those Fleischer shorts into a single place and access like they are TV show episodes.

 

[Rodney]

Nelson:
Whenever I have an extra not work, I find it is invariably because I mistyped the file or accidentally put a space after it. Here is the rule from PLEX site:

• -behindthescenes
• -deleted
• -featurette
• -interview
• -scene
• -short
• -trailer
• -other

Note: The filename must end in the -Extra_Type value exactly. The hyphen is important and you cannot have spaces after it.

 

[Nelson Au]

Thanks Rodney for chiming in! I was pretty sure I checked those values. But yes, human error is a factor.

i’ll double check and hope I can make it work.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Sometimes Plex just misses stuff. It can help to remove the clips it didn’t scan from the folder and then put them back in and see if that forces a rescan.

On their forums, some users have reported that using the folder method rather than tagging method yields better results, while some users have said the opposite. I think it’s just a well intentioned but imperfectly implemented feature.

 

[Nelson Au]

Thanks Josh. I’ll give your suggestion a try too of removing the files and put them back in.

I’ve got some movies extras in folders for featurettes and shorts and trailers and some where I don’t use folders. Both methods are working.

 

[Nelson Au]

Guys, on my Superman issue with extras, I’ve been fiddling with naming and value types. And now the extras disappeared from Plex. I’ll keep trying, but perhaps it’s just not to be.

I also did one rip of the Superman II theatrical cut. Not all the extras show up in Plex either. But all the Fleischer Superman animated shorts are there. They show up as films. I’m trying to figure out how to place them into a collection. I tried tags and that’s OK. I was hoping for a TV shows type of set up where they show are a collection of titles. I’ll figure it out.

One more issues I’m trying to figure out is why Warner has two copies of Superman and Superman II on the discs. I figured maybe one copy is the US English version and the other is a foreign language version. But both play in English on my computer and have identical file sizes. Maybe I just haven’t found the difference yet. I just picked one to use and save the other in another folder outside of the library.

 

[DaveF]

In Emby, it just has “Extras”. I don’t bother to categorize bonus features, just put everything into the Extras folder.

Sometimes a bonus feature is a short that’s listed in IMDB and such. If the file is named just so, it will show up as a movie, and then can break the Extras in general.

At least with Emby, the key is to either name it so it’s not recognized as a movie, or to make it its own movie in your library. I now tend to do that: Pixar shorts are added to my library as separate movies and then associated with the original feature film via Collections.

 

[Nelson Au]

Hey Dave, what you described as an extra named correctly, it will recognized as it’s own movie is what I found in Plex as well. That surprised me. So the extras for the Fleischer Superman animated shorts all shows up as movies. The featurette on the Fleischer series shows up a separate movie. The Making of Superman II featurettes though and similar type of featurettes from Superman and Superman II for some reason will not show. Same with the trailers and deleted scenes, they do not show up. I’ll keep playing around it.

As for Collections, I found that Plex has that feature. What I was hoping to do was like a TV show situation where you select the show, and it opens a window with each season and within each season you pick a title. I’d like to do that for the Fleischer Superman shorts. ( And later with all the Looney Tunes) in the Movie section. But now they show up in the Movies section as individual titles. It could be this is just the way it works as the Movie section is a large depository of movies that you go through. I’d like to just select the folder for Fleischer Superman and open it to see all the shorts.

There is one more avenue I have not fully considered yet, and I was wondering if it makes sense for the Superman shorts and later Looney Tunes. On the left of the Plex screen, you have a list of Home, TV Shows, Movies, Music, Podcasts, etc. One time I added a folder there called Other and placed some random DVD rips there as a test. If I select that folder in Plex or Infuse, it opens to show those videos. So maybe I could just create specific folders on the top level for those specific titles that meet the traditional Movie or TV Show definition. I would prefer though to do this in the movie section.

As I get into this more, I’m sure I’ll figure out both things.

Dave, I have so much time invested in Plex, and Infuse, I‘ve not investigated Emby. I just had a look and I see it’s available for AppleTV. I’ll read up more about it. It sure looks similar to Infuse. Since Infuse came highly recommended by Josh and it’s abilities to stream all the audio formats, I went with that. But that was over a year ago, and the apps have all been updating and improving. So maybe it has reach a point they are all of similar capability.

 

[DaveF]

Emby had some specific features I liked when I was trying out the options in 2016, so I went with it. But they’re all substantially similar, with slightly different strengths.

Emby has iOS and AppleTV apps.

Because the naming conventions are basically standard, you can often install multiple HTPC servers to try them out. I’ve run Plex and pointed it at my existing Emby library to try it out. You could try out Emby if you wanted.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

For anyone looking to add some storage, Best Buy has the WD Easystore 14tb external drives on Black Friday sale for $199!

 

[Nelson Au]

Hey Josh, thanks for the heads-up!

My current Toshiba internal 12TB drive is nearly full, about 2TB left. I was pricing the same internal 12TB drive and it’s $299. Or the Toshiba 14TB is going for $324.00.

I have not tried Dave’s suggestion to get a drive like that WD and shuck it.

 

[DaveF]

Shucking was pretty easy. But an afternoon to do it all. For me, worth the money saved and two years later, no problems.