Best Way to Back-Up Dragon Boxes?

[Rukura]

Hmm, why not get a media player like the WDTV Live/Boxee Box or something similar and play the R1 ISO's off a portable HD. It will be better than re-burning everything and less time consuming. I've recently began doing this with my R2 DBox discs. I connect the portal drive to the Boxee Box and watch the individual ISO's. This is really a very ideal solution, all my custom subtitled discs are now on this 1TB drive.

That sounds like a great idea. Much more practical than what I was think. Thanks!

[BlazingFiddlesticks]

Wonder how the Blu-Ray reburns would work. Do Blu-Rays have the "recommended time limits" for SD Video? Could you burn the entire menu structure of multiple DVDs and use another menu to move between them?

From what I understand, as long as it compliant with BD standards, you should be set.

But what encompasses the Blu-Ray standard, video formats player accept?

[BluezaBladeNZ]

Make a backup of the backup. I'm not kidding.
I've always been frighten of losing valuable data, reason why I usually end up spending more money just to keep my mind at ease.

Already planned to do that. I have to get another 2-2.5TB HDD anyway since I plan to backup all my FUNi Dragon Boxes, Z & GT volumes, movie singles, any other older releases I have, soundtracks etc too.

Also, I don't know if anyone answered the question on putting SD material onto Blu-ray. Yes it is possible, Blu-ray is mainly designed to handle HD material, but it can still hold DVD material without having the need to re-encode them first. I tested it with the first 16 or so GT DBOX episodes on a BD25 and it worked just the same as a DVD, just more space to use.

[BlazingFiddlesticks]

Also, I don't know if anyone answered the question on putting SD material onto Blu-ray. Yes it is possible, Blu-ray is mainly designed to handle HD material, but it can still hold DVD material without having the need to re-encode them first. I tested it with the first 16 or so GT DBOX episodes on a BD25 and it worked just the same as a DVD, just more space to use.

I know SD material works on Blu-Ray, I was trying to clarify if I you could boot entire DVD ISOs off a Blu-Ray (To keep both audio tracks for the episodes without having two copies of each episode file per disc, really) and if Blu-Ray had a cap of how much SD content you could burn before the video quality suffered. Since Blu-Ray's an HD format I'd imagine it doesn't have cap or at least one that would let you use most of the disc space, but I've never seen anyone bring it up.

[MarcFBR]

I know SD material works on Blu-Ray, I was trying to clarify if I you could boot entire DVD ISOs off a Blu-Ray (To keep both audio tracks for the episodes without having two copies of each episode file per disc, really) and if Blu-Ray had a cap of how much SD content you could burn before the video quality suffered. Since Blu-Ray's an HD format I'd imagine it doesn't have cap or at least one that would let you use most of the disc space, but I've never seen anyone bring it up.

The 'time' cap that people often give for DVD is generally just an estimate of what people believe to be a 'safe' bitrate to use compared to the maximum size of the disk.

In short, DVD and Blu-ray both follow this rule:

What you can fit, will work.

It's purely a matter of quality.

And no, just burning multiple DVDs to Blu-ray's doesn't get some magical multidisk. The disk structure would have to be rebuilt for BD's structure.

[BluezaBladeNZ]

I'm a bit bummed how by adding in the episodes straight from DVD added another 100-200mb for each episode due to the .m2ts packaging, so you're cut around 2-3 episodes if you put around 15 on one BD25.

Though if only I could set up a chapter branching mode similar to the R2 Boxes so I could save space by only having one opening get replayed for each episode. I already know how to do it for DVD as I've done it for the DBZ Abridged Season 2 set I'm working on now but I have no idea how to do it for Blu-ray just yet.

[BlazingFiddlesticks]

The 'time' cap that people often give for DVD is generally just an estimate of what people believe to be a 'safe' bitrate to use compared to the maximum size of the disk.

And no, just burning multiple DVDs to Blu-ray's doesn't get some magical multidisk. The disk structure would have to be rebuilt for BD's structure.

I figured this was the case. I knew the cap was only a guideline, just wondering if Blu-Ray was ever given one. And now I'm hitting the wall of not understanding how to do multiple language tracks on discs.

[Krycek7o2]

I'm a bit bummed how by adding in the episodes straight from DVD added another 100-200mb for each episode due to the .m2ts packaging, so you're cut around 2-3 episodes if you put around 15 on one BD25.

Though if only I could set up a chapter branching mode similar to the R2 Boxes so I could save space by only having one opening get replayed for each episode. I already know how to do it for DVD as I've done it for the DBZ Abridged Season 2 set I'm working on now but I have no idea how to do it for Blu-ray just yet.

When it comes to subtitles, is one still stuck using the DVD structure subtitling fonts or can you use the high res subtitles BD offers?
That's something I've been curious about.

[BluezaBladeNZ]

When it comes to subtitles, is one still stuck using the DVD structure subtitling fonts or can you use the high res subtitles BD offers?
That's something I've been curious about.

I think you're stuck with using the subtitles formatted for DVD but what's different is that there's no IFO colour table used, so you're using the colours in the .sup file.

[ricecake]

This topic (as well as this thread) are a little confusing for me. Basically, I own all 7 R1 Funimation Dragon Boxes and a Roku player. My friend at work also informed me that Plex is now officially supported on the Roku. I have never ripped nor authored a DVD before, but I am very well versed in ripping audio CDs. I have no experience with Plex, but my friend said it was good.

What would be the best way to backup my Dragon Boxes as well as be able to watch it through the Roku? Would it be better to make a lossless (if possible) backup of the discs, and separately encode them for Plex? Ideally, I would like to be able to watch it on the Roku (through Plex) as if I were playing it straight from the disc (with menus and everything). If that is not possible, then I would still like the option of choosing the language/subtitles at playtime, but then I assume I would have to manually split out each episode.

Is there a beginner tutorial anybody can point me to, or any advice you can give?

[MarcFBR]

This topic (as well as this thread) are a little confusing for me. Basically, I own all 7 R1 Funimation Dragon Boxes and a Roku player. My friend at work also informed me that Plex is now officially supported on the Roku. I have never ripped nor authored a DVD before, but I am very well versed in ripping audio CDs. I have no experience with Plex, but my friend said it was good.

What would be the best way to backup my Dragon Boxes as well as be able to watch it through the Roku? Would it be better to make a lossless (if possible) backup of the discs, and separately encode them for Plex? Ideally, I would like to be able to watch it on the Roku (through Plex) as if I were playing it straight from the disc (with menus and everything). If that is not possible, then I would still like the option of choosing the language/subtitles at playtime, but then I assume I would have to manually split out each episode.

Is there a beginner tutorial anybody can point me to, or any advice you can give?

Plex doesn't support DVD menus and that sort of thing.

If you want to encode losslessly, use MakeMKV and split them apart using MKVmerge to split them by the chapters. If you store that Plex can deal with those fine. It may be worth it take the vobsubs and splt them into SubRip and turn them into SRT subs.

If you need additional help I can walk you through it.

[ricecake]

Thanks, I will start investigating MakeMKV and MKVmerge. What do I use to get the DVD on my hard drive? Can I just copy the files off, or do I need to use something like DVD Fab (I've seen that name tossed around before) to rip it?

Also, it looks like my hard drive doesn't have as much space on it as I thought, but I do have an external USB hard drive that I use strictly for backups. Therefore, I'm thinking the best course of action would be to store the ISOs (or whatever is the recommended format) for the disks on the external drive, and then reencode them to be smaller and do the MakeMKV/MKVmerge thing for streaming to the player. Does this sound reasonable?

Thanks for helping a newbie out.

[MarcFBR]

Thanks, I will start investigating MakeMKV and MKVmerge. What do I use to get the DVD on my hard drive? Can I just copy the files off, or do I need to use something like DVD Fab (I've seen that name tossed around before) to rip it?

Also, it looks like my hard drive doesn't have as much space on it as I thought, but I do have an external USB hard drive that I use strictly for backups. Therefore, I'm thinking the best course of action would be to store the ISOs (or whatever is the recommended format) for the disks on the external drive, and then reencode them to be smaller and do the MakeMKV/MKVmerge thing for streaming to the player. Does this sound reasonable?

Thanks for helping a newbie out.

MakeMKV can take the MPEG2 streams right off the disk, so you can skip ISOing it.

[ricecake]

OK, so I got the disc ripped with MakeMKV and then used Handbrake to extract out one episode (chapters 1-5 of the title) and reencode it (ended up a little under 600 MB) using the "Regular - Normal" profile and all defaults except I changed the output container to MKV and added all audio and subtitle tracks. I then installed the Plex server and added the channel to my Roku. I can play the episode and choose from either of the audio tracks, but it will only play a few seconds, then stop to reload, then play the same few seconds again, over and over. Also, the subtitles don't work properly and only show some random weird characters, but I didn't know how to do that thing you mentioned about splitting them out into SRT subs.

[MarcFBR]

OK, so I got the disc ripped with MakeMKV and then used Handbrake to extract out one episode (chapters 1-5 of the title) and reencode it (ended up a little under 600 MB) using the "Regular - Normal" profile and all defaults except I changed the output container to MKV and added all audio and subtitle tracks. I then installed the Plex server and added the channel to my Roku. I can play the episode and choose from either of the audio tracks, but it will only play a few seconds, then stop to reload, then play the same few seconds again, over and over. Also, the subtitles don't work properly and only show some random weird characters, but I didn't know how to do that thing you mentioned about splitting them out into SRT subs.

Check what you've set for the server settings, you've likely set it to high for your network.

As for the subs... I don't recall at the moment Vobsub support for the Roku.

Converting to SRTs would likely be the best idea.

[ricecake]

Thanks. Apparently MKV support on the Roku is still a little flaky, so Plex was transcoding it. I reencoded an episode to MP4 so that it can direct play it and it seems to be working better.

I am still having issues with the subtitles. I downloaded SubRip but I couldn't figure out how to use it. Do I need to reinsert the DVD in the drive and have it read from that, or is there a way to get the subtitles from the MKV file?

[MarcFBR]

Thanks. Apparently MKV support on the Roku is still a little flaky, so Plex was transcoding it. I reencoded an episode to MP4 so that it can direct play it and it seems to be working better.

I am still having issues with the subtitles. I downloaded SubRip but I couldn't figure out how to use it. Do I need to reinsert the DVD in the drive and have it read from that, or is there a way to get the subtitles from the MKV file?

This would likely be better to discuss over AIM, as there will be some back and forth as you have questions about it, and it'll be easier to use if I can explain things as you are doing it.

[coola]

Hello
Sorry for revive old topic, but, i have a small problem, i planned to make MKV out of my Funi Dragon Boxes, and while Makemkv install and work without problem, when i try to install Handbrake, it wants to install Net Framework 4.0, i don`t want this to happen, because i heard, that this program slow down your PC, is there another program i can use to make smaller MKV?

[BluezaBladeNZ]

Hello
Sorry for revive old topic, but, i have a small problem, i planned to make MKV out of my Funi Dragon Boxes, and while Makemkv install and work without problem, when i try to install Handbrake, it wants to install Net Framework 4.0, i don`t want this to happen, because i heard, that this program slow down your PC, is there another program i can use to make smaller MKV?

Another good program I know of is MeGUI, which has a lot of useful tools in it, including encoding to MKV. But I've never heard of Net Framework 4.0 slowing down the system before, well for me it hasn't.

[MarcFBR]

Hello
Sorry for revive old topic, but, i have a small problem, i planned to make MKV out of my Funi Dragon Boxes, and while Makemkv install and work without problem, when i try to install Handbrake, it wants to install Net Framework 4.0, i don`t want this to happen, because i heard, that this program slow down your PC, is there another program i can use to make smaller MKV?

Another good program I know of is MeGUI, which has a lot of useful tools in it, including encoding to MKV. But I've never heard of Net Framework 4.0 slowing down the system before, well for me it hasn't.

Net Framework is fine.