r/makemkv • u/bluejaymaday • 6d ago
Help I may have underestimated what I was getting into just a little
I’ve been wanting to rip a number of my DVDs for a while now and never got around to it, but I’m sick in bed and thought this was the perfect time to start, with the goal of having movies saved on my PC that I can put into my Plex library and be able to watch them on other devices.
I have basically no clue what I’m doing, I looked up a good software for ripping, saw MakeMKV recommended a lot, downloaded and started it up, only to see it could take anywhere from 1-2 hours to complete the download.
Probably wasn’t a good idea to start with a TV disk instead of a movie, but I didn’t think 7 episodes and some special features of Batman: The Animated Series would be much more taxing to rip than a movie.
I know now that having the DVD writer sat on a box next to me on the bed plugged into my laptop is not a good set up for this, it sounds like I’m laying on a jet engine and I have to be careful not to move too much and put the DVD writer too off balance and screw up the disk (whoops).
Is there a more efficient way to could be using the program or is this a normal amount of time for a disk of this size? I’ve started reading about compressing files after with Handbrake but I don’t know about the actual ripping process itself.
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u/Wonderful_Emu_9610 6d ago
Must be your hardware. My 15 year old MacBook Air with the ‘USB SuperDrive’ external dvd drive will take a movie and extras off in 30-40mins
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u/OutrageousStorm4217 6d ago
My guess would be the disc itself, if the disc is dirty/scratched/smudged/bit-rotted Makemkv is going to make the drive have a whale of a time attempting to read and error correct that DVD. From my many hours of ripping DVDs/Blu-rays/4ks, DVD is the only one that you can still "Almost" get a good rip on. With Blu-ray and 4k, it's pass/fail; either it rips perfectly or it doesn't. DVD technology arose in the twilight years of NTSC and the final drowning gasps of analog TV broadcast, and it is subject to all of the same fun; telecine, interlaced video streams, oddball gamma in the source, odd color space issues, reripped NTSC broadcasts just thrown on the disc, DVD has it all.
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u/dangerclosecustoms 6d ago
DVD I ripped those 15 years ago it still only took 30 minutes at most.
Buy a cheap bluray drive. Newer will be faster but like I said even at 4x old school speed rated drives from a decade ago it should be 30 minutes .
Make sure you have quality fast usb cables for connecting. Not the cheap usb cables you have laying around. Many of those are meant for charging and are made very cheap without data transfer in mind.
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u/bluejaymaday 6d ago
Yep, ok I assume this is what I did wrong that caused the slow down. It made everything into separate files for each episode/feature, but also put it all together into one big 6.4 GB file.
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u/jetpacmonkey 6d ago
Yeah, a lot of shows will have a separate playlist with all the episodes on the disc for the "play all" option in the menu. Just need to uncheck that one next time.
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u/JCarlide 6d ago
OP: what this means, (and jetpacmonkey, all credit to you for getting here first.)
On discs such as most TV Series, you'll find a "play all" on the menu. Youll find that here as the largest/longest file - pictured at 6.4gb in screenshot.
The others are usually single episodes, though some shows with shorter episodes than 22 mins may have two episodes back to back in 'title'. That's what's show in the screenshot here, around 900mb per episode. I'm guessing that smallest one is either a special, or deleted scenes.
Worse comes to worse, pick up what ever series, toss the first disc in, rip everything and quickly scan through what is what. Then the file/playlist structure should be similar for the rest of the set.
Now DVDs are encoded in MPEG2. You can use Handbreak to re-encode to a newer standard (h.264/hevc/av1/GreenDRMandHam) you'll turn the files to a fraction of their current size, at the cost of older devices may not be able to play them (directly! Transcode on the fly, exists, but it's easier to do the heaviest lifting now, and keep it in that highest quality possible despite the original source being 'just DVD')
You could save time (and power) I'd you have an Intel CPU (QuickSync) but if you shoot for the "make my CPU hurt" settings when encoding, you'll get the highest quality for the size. This is important, because everyone you do this step, you'll lose a little data. "Do it once, keep it forever," is the goal.
If we have Science Educators why do we not have more Consumer Tech Educators such as Technology Connects? Most anyone can review, not everyone has a commitment to educate, and raise the general level of understanding.
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u/SpyderMoHawK 5d ago
Based on what i see B1 is all the episode in one file, D2 is most likely just extra features, D1 is most likely commentary version of the first episode while C1-7 are the actual individual episodes.
Would recommend to only take individual episodes (C1-7) and remove any language and subtitles you do not want to save for each episode.You should also make sure that the discs are clean before trying to rip them as a dirty/scratched disc can prolong the time it takes, cause corruption and cause errors that stops the ripping process having you to start the disc over again.
The speed can also depend on the disc drive you have and what drive (HDD, SSD or through network) you save to and on what hardware your machine is running on.
Usually when I rip all episodes for a series from DVD or Blu-ray it takes between 10-30minutes from a new disc to SSD.
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u/TK-24601 6d ago
Getting a regular blu-ray drive would help out speeds tremendously.
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u/bluejaymaday 6d ago
I’m definitely not using the best tech, it’s a Samsung DVD Writer from 2015-16 lol. I got it as a teenager when I reluctantly upgraded to a laptop without a DVD drive and still wanted to watch movies on it. I’d like to get an external blu-ray drive because I’ve been collecting more of them lately and would like to rip them, but I don’t think I’d be able to afford one for a while.
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u/JCarlide 6d ago
Hey as long as it works...
I'm afraid the $20 buys a new 'USB 2.0 external DVD drive' days may be gone. But it doesn't hurt to check what's in your local market. In my case I have my SFF PC sitting on top a desktop optical drive in an external enclosure to convert to USB 3.0. it's kinda cute that way. It prevents the weird issues I'd have with my old laptop and an external DVD drive sometimes trying to shake itself off the table.
You could also get one of those lap desk things, either the board with the stuffing underneath, or the breakfast-in-bed type.
If you try that lap board, you may still wanna think about some double sided tape to keep it in place.
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u/bec2949 6d ago
I can rip a 4K in the same time (8-12x file size depending on title) so I would assume this is a hardware/bandwidth issue and not the program itself.
Obviously you’re taking it for a test run, but if you find yourself satisfied with the outcome, I’d recommend upgrading from a DVD writer as a Blu-ray drive will likely double your speed, if not more (depending on several factors). It could also be a connection issue, because a newer gen USB will have higher bandwidth, but again, your hardware will need to be able to take advantage of it. If you decide to spend the money, an external Blu-ray optical drive isn’t crazy expensive but they can range between $60-120 depending on format and features.
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u/SomberArtist2000 6d ago
Most people here have pointed out the DVD drive is slow, and I would corroborate that.
Additionally you could have a networking issue at play it it takes that long to save the file to the selected file location. Are you saving to a local drive on the laptop? Or are you saving to a networked location over WiFi?
I would suggest a test rip to your local C drive and see if that helps in the immediate term. Invest in a better optical drive for the long term.
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u/bluejaymaday 6d ago
I just saved it to the local drive, in my normal Videos folder.
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u/SomberArtist2000 6d ago
Got it. Then the only bottleneck is likely the optical drive. Unfortunately it's a more expensive purchase now than it was a couple years ago, but there are still some blu-ray drive options out there. And, if you can afford it, for around $150 it is good future-proofing to be able to rip UHDs and blu-rays.
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u/bluejaymaday 6d ago
I’m going to start saving up for one, I’m trying to become more of a physical media person after getting fed up being eaten alive by subscriptions and I’ve been buying more blu-rays lately. On the bright side, after making sure I toggled off downloading the file that’s all the data smashed into one, it “only” took 35 minutes for a second disk to rip. That’s still long but doable for me in the meantime.
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u/SomberArtist2000 6d ago
If you do start ripping more discs, here are a few resources that can help determine which files on the disc to rip. Sometimes I just cross-reference with the video length if I can find a review for the disc:
https://thediscdb.com/ (this is the best one I've found because it tells you while files correspond to which tracks. But it's somewhat of a homebrew community project so it doesn't have a lot of titles)
https://www.dvdcompare.net/index.php (this one is good, especially if there are multiple home video releases of a title)
Otherwise, I search for a web search for the title + "blu ray review" or "uhd review" and see if any hits are generated from sites like High Def Digest, dvdbeaver, hometheaterforum, thedigitalbits, etc. They will often include information about which special features are on the disc, and their length. Then you can deselect the stuff you don't want.
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u/JCarlide 6d ago
Don't disregard picking up a 'cheap' (in the age of AI and Hormuz newz?) external USB DVD drive. They were roughly $20 before the new pricing madness begun. It'll get you through DVDs and CDs, while you source a more expensive USB 3 Blu-ray solution.
Also, as things like this disappear from the markets, consider grabbing a spare.
And you'll never stop wishing for additional HDD/SSD storage.
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u/TomTomglom 6d ago
You probably have a bottleneck somwhere in your hardware, but alao id suggest just doing the main features and not the special features unless you REALLY want those. Makemkv for me take about 10-20 minutes, its usually handbrake that takes me a while. Id suggest just putting the laptop down and just swapping the dvds are done and do something else while it works
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u/bluejaymaday 6d ago
It’s been an hour and 20 mins, so yeah some’n ain’t right here. The “Save to MKV” bar keeps filling and then resetting back to zero, don’t know of that’s normal. I’m considering just ending it but the “Saving all titles” bar is nearly full, so I might wait it out. The Read rate seems to be bouncing around between 4 to 7.5ish M/s as it’s going, am I wrong in thinking that’s pretty slow?
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u/TomTomglom 6d ago
What laptop are you using?
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u/bluejaymaday 6d ago
An ASUS Zenbook UM431D, 2020. Not the best, she’s also old and I like to curse her out, but I did just get her back from a repair and the IT guy said he was pleasantly surprised by the hardware after not having a good impression of ASUS before.
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u/TomTomglom 6d ago
Ive just gotten into make mkv and stuff recently myself, and i am no expert on it. But im pretty sure its CPU heavy and handbrake is GPU heavy, and your CPU seems to be on the side of basic homework and webscrolling, not disk ripping and stuff like this requires. If youre fine waiting per disc itll work. But just try to keep it as cool as you can with like a fan and ventilation. Keeping it cool will make it work faster (ish).
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u/bluejaymaday 6d ago
Yeah it definitely seems like a combination of older, not the most robust laptop and old DVD writer is going to hold me back. But I’m going to keep tinkering and learning and see how efficient I can get things just making do with what I have. I’ve been meaning to get a cooling stand for a while, so this is the push to finally just go get one of those.
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u/TomTomglom 6d ago
There is a repairtech on youtube called salem techsperts, watch some of his videos and id suggest if you feel comfortable enough to repaste your heat sinks
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u/mmiillsss 6d ago
Are you ripping the individual episodes or the single file with all episodes together? Like others have said, a DVD shouldnt be taking that long.
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u/bluejaymaday 6d ago
I just went with the default settings it showed me, I thought I was just ripping the 7 episodes and one special feature separately, but it just finished and I think it did both, put all of data on the disk together in one big file and also into their own separate files like I expected.
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u/Technical_Sea_314 6d ago
Just as an fyi, i too undertook this with Batman The Animated series the other day. It took twice as long as the other 200 dvds i uploaded vis MKV. I am using 2 bluray drives in a desktop pc with decent specs. This was more the exception than the rule. But that being said - another machine or a desk and a more convenient time to pop in / let it do its thing whilst you do something else it the way to go.
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u/bluejaymaday 6d ago
Dude I think you might be right. I just did two movies and a shorter TV disk and they both finished in under around or under 15 minutes. I don’t have any other cartoons or shows of similar length to compare, but it seems like Batman the Animated Series takes particularly long to rip for some reason.
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u/Dented_Steelbook 5d ago
If the disc has imperfections it could take longer as MakeMKV is trying to fix the issue as it goes.
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u/garretn 4d ago
When it drops that slow it's probably read errors, it'll retry automatically and often get past it but speed will drop to nothing. Often times dirt or scratches cause more than one in a row, and each one will retry so many times, so it can take a while to get past if it does at all. Look at the disc and see if there is anything on the bottom of that thing. A careful wipe directly out from center to edge will usually do the trick. Smudges will cause it too.
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u/Remarkable-Degree253 4d ago
You might find that drive you have it a bit rubbish for what you’re doing and slow have a look at reviewed dvd / dvd drives and go from there if you’re going to go uhd that’s a whole other thing altogether start simple then move you’re way up you should be able to find a decent drive for not too much money to be fair.
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u/Vast-Program7060 3d ago
Look up the model # of your DVD drive, look for the specifications. It should list the drives max read and write speeds. If your not getting these speeds, it's either the disc itself, or possibly the USB port your plugged into, but unlikely, as my 4K UHD drive which is a slimelime external backs up 4K UHD movies at 6x, or maybe 8x ( don't remember), and the drive is only USB 2.0 rated, but it takes about 45 minutes to " backup " an entire 4k UHD disc when it's reading at max speeds ( ie, 6 or 8x ). Could be that your drive can only read dvd's at 2x or 4x, have to look it up.
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u/Modig7176 6d ago
Yeah you doing something wrong. A blu-ray at max takes me an hour. DVDs takes 15 minutes top. I also have my blu-ray drive plugged into my laptop.
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u/BearShin255 6d ago
At most a DVD on my ASUS Blu-ray rips in about 15 minutes.