Blu Ray drive for Mac Pro (1 Viewer)

[jcroy]

Hi Jr, sorry if I miss led, I wasn’t referring to literally ripping only the effects shots if that’s what you’re saying. I was referring to ripping each episode in its original form, with the original optical effects from the Blu Ray set. This is opposed to my earlier effort where I ripped the episodes with the new 2006 remastered digital effects with CGI ships and new planet paintings.

I inferred you were probably referring to the entire episodes, and not just solely the special effects segments alone.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Many years ago I tried doing this, by putting together the original effects segments according to the playlist from the blurays. Fortunately the segments are in individual *.m2ts files, which made it easier to identify.

I did this manually by hand for an episode, just to see how easy/hard it was to concatenate the segments into one giant m2ts file.

It is certaintly doable, even manually by hand.

Let's maybe not scare Nelson - there is absolutely no need whatsoever for him to manually identify each segment on the Blu-ray disc and to create his own playlist. There's simply no need to even go there with someone new to ripping seeking general advice on how to get set up. This feels like a solution in search of a problem, where none exists.

 

[jcroy]

This feels like a solution in search of a problem, where none exists.

... or a "Rube Goldberg Machine" way of doing things.

 

[Nelson Au]

I’m not afraid Josh.

Jr, I re-read your post, and if I read it right I’m amazed you knew how to pick out each element to build the entire episode.

 

[jcroy]

I’m not afraid Josh.

Jr, I re-read your post, and if I read it right I’m amazed you knew how to pick out each element to build the entire episode.

On a bluray video disc, the playlists are in the \BDMV\PLAYLIST directory.

It was a matter of finding the corresponding playlist, which tells you the order sequence of segments to put together.

 

[AndyMcKinney]

Interesting AndyMcKinney.

I have never seen an actual real sata->ide connector. (Ide->sata are easy to find).

Does this sata->ide adaptor look like a commodity part? Or was it something that was custom made?

it's just a plug-in adapter (female SATA to male EIDE). I'm sure they're easily found on eBay.

 

[DaveF]

Here's a recent example of this, which happened over the weekend.

[hours spent on computer stuff]

the corresponding iso rips were all respectively identical

[...]

That’s a long way to say that retail discs are fine, so folks shouldn’t worry about it.

 

[jcroy]

In my experience, the one company which had the most defective discs where the damage was not visible to the naked human eye, were ones manufactured by the former Cinram. These were discs which had a perfect looking silver surface, but triggered the bulldozer algorithm on LG drives and gave back a read error on Samsung, LiteOn, Panasonic, etc ... drives. (I frequently encountered this in Fox released multi-disc sets such as tv show season sets like Bones, X-Files, etc ..., where quality control is much harder to do well).

Cinram's biggest long term client was Fox. Before mid-2010, another big client was Warner. (They were also a major manufacturer of HD-DVD discs back in 2006-2008, which developed disc rot or failed relatively soon).

After Cinram was bought out by Technicolor in late 2015, I didn't encounter as many defective disc problems of this type.

After 2015 just about all the big movie companies used Technicolor's mexico or huntsville, alabama plant to manufacture their dvd and bluray discs, except for Sony. Though when Sony stopped manufacturing cd/dvd/bluray discs at its Terre Haute, Indiana plant back in early 2018, Sony outsourced all their cd/dvd/bluray disc manufacturing to Technicolor's mexico plant.

Nowadays I'm less paranoid of cd/dvd/bluray discs manufactured at Technicolor's mexico plant, when it comes to quality control.

 

[jcroy]

That’s a long way to say that retail discs are fine, so folks shouldn’t worry about it.

(On a tangential aside).

I'll admit that a lot of my persistent disc checking, is primarily perfectionism compounded with ocd behavioral type issues for me. This behavior also manifests heavily in other niches in my life, such as comic book collecting.

Even with medication, this type of thinking/behavior is extremely difficult to overcome.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I think we’re getting away from the intended topic here... I don’t mean to be rude but I’m not really interested in another thread about imperceivable imperfections in discs. I'm thinking it may be best to give that topic it’s own dedicated thread. I’m interested in best practices, uses and experiences with using a Blu-ray drive on a Mac which is certainly relevant to me and may be of interest to others.

 

[Nelson Au]

Josh, When I get the Blu Ray drive, it will be interesting to share my experience with others and ask questions about best practices.

DaveF, sorry I missed your post. Thanks for the offer to give an HTPC primer. I’ll probably be posting questions as I get into this.

I’m still pondering the drive options. An external LG is the most mentioned so far. The Pioneer drive was my original thinking. And then the MCE internal drive option.

I’ll let you know what I go with!

Forgot to add, thanks to all for the input!

 

[Josh Steinberg]

You might find this useful:
https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/the-best-external-blu-ray-drive/

I was going to get the Pioneer, their first choice, but it was $110 at the time I was ordering. The LG, their second choice, was only $65 so I decided to go with the cheaper one.

I've found that it reads and rips both Blu-ray and DVD reliably (at least, after two weeks of use). It hasn't choked on any discs, ripped some things that skip in my Oppo player, and has generally been fast and easy to use. Wirecutter actually liked the LG better for ripping Blu-rays, but gave the Pioneer one a slight edge due to it burning DVDs faster. Depending on your intended usage, that might not matter to you.

 

[Nelson Au]

Thanks Josh! That Pioneer is the same model I was looking at. The LG rips faster. But the article said something that is giving me pause, that a built-in drive will be best since it can be powered by the computer and is likely faster. Now I’m pondering the idea of doing an internal. Or doing an internal drive in an external enclosure as was suggested. I’ll have another read of that article.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I had the opposite thinking: I wanted to get the cheaper drive and the most convenient option so I could try ripping some Blu-rays to determine if it was something I wanted to put real effort into. I’d ripped stuff back in the DVD days but BD was a whole new game for me.

I will eventually rip my TOS discs too - I’d like to easily watch the episodes in production order without switching discs and having to toggle menu options.

 

[Nelson Au]

Josh, you know after I posted last night, the same thought crossed my mind. That maybe I should just start with a modest investment and try it. I’m in the same kind of situation. I’d ripped several DVDs, but blu rays are a new game.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Josh, you know after I posted last night, the same thought crossed my mind. That maybe I should just start with a modest investment and try it. I’m in the same kind of situation. I’d ripped several DVDs, but blu rays are a new game.

I'm finding that they're more time consuming than DVD. Not just in the physical amount of time it takes to extract all the data, but the layers of copy protection can make it a little tricky to determine which thing you actually want to rip on the disc. It's not insurmountable by any means, but I'm finding that with DVD, I can just pop it in and start ripping and get what I want 99.9% of the time on the first shot, whereas with Blu-ray, it might take five minutes of comparing different titles/files on the disc and their runtimes to determine which is actually the movie. I don't say that to deter you from doing this as it's not a major problem, but it's a slightly less autopilot task than doing DVDs. I'm finding it kinda fun as a hobby thing but someone else might find it obnoxious or frustrating.

 

[jcroy]

That maybe I should just start with a modest investment and try it. I’m in the same kind of situation.

Another low cost "try it" option is to see what is available at local liquidation outlets. Nowadays you might not find anything like classic Plextor models, but you're likely to see slightly older LG external and internal dvd/bluray drive models for $25 (or less).

If you really want to roll the dice, there's always thrift stores where you might get lucky and are able to find an old dvd or bluray drive for $5 (or less). Places like goodwill, salvation army, etc ....

 

[Nelson Au]

Hey Josh, Jr, thanks for that insight into what it’s like to view the Blu Ray files. I haven’t done a Blu Ray yet, only experienced ripping DVD via Handbrake so it was pretty easy to find the titles as there’s a preview feature there to visually confirm what you’re selection is. I didn’t know you have to find the files you want to rip. So it’s interesting Jr that you picked and assembled the files specific to a Star Trek episode to rip.

Josh, yes, I can be a bit stubborn and sit and fight with the software to figure it out. So I’m not too scared off with the effort needed. Good to know it’s bigger time investment compared to Handbrake.

About the investment in a drive, I was prepared to spend about what has been shown, somewhere in the $100 range. Or a little more if it made sense to do an internal drive in a separate case. I just need to decide and pull the trigger. So many things to parse the funds towards!

 

[jcroy]

If you're going to have an internal drive in its own case, make sure the external case has a usb3 connection.

For single-layer bluray discs, the data can be read as high as 35 megabytes per second on my LG or Pioneer internal dvd/bluray drives.

IIRC, my usb2 ports (and devices) appear to max out at around 25-30 megabytes per second.

 

[jcroy]

In contrast, my usb3 devices can transfer data as high as 150-160 megabytes per second.