Backing Up Your Blu-Ray Movies

Code:

Software Needed

MeGUI
tsMuxerGUI
AnyDVD HD
Blu-Ray playback software (bundled with drive software is ok)
Media Player Classic
MKV2VOB (Optional)

Hardware Needed

PC with some grunt preferably a C2D minimum
Windows XP / Vista / W7
A Blu-Ray drive

Preparation

1. Install AnyDVD HD reboot as necessary for the install
2. Adjust AnyDHD HD if needed to playback a) region, b) screen resolution
3. Load the Blu-Ray movie into the Blu-Ray player (Duh!)
4. Test the Blu-Ray plays back on the machine
5. Close the Blu-Ray playback software

Ripping to HDD

NOTE: AnyDVD HD calls ALL video discs DVD's, even Blu-Ray's, so don't freak out that it doesn't say Blu-Ray!

6. Right click on the AnyDVD HD icon in the system tray and then left click "Rip Video DVD to Harddisk"
7. Choose your Blu-Ray drive in the top box and then choose your destination directory in the bottom box (make sure theres enough space)
8. Click copy DVD, this will take a little while so go do something else for a while (DON'T USE THE PC! Not even Solitaire)
9. When its finished copying the Blu-Ray to the hard disk close the dialog box.

NOTE: What you have done so far is more than copy the files to HDD, you have actually removed the copy protection as well.

10. Open explorer and navigate to the folder you put the copied Blu-Ray to.
11. Navigate to the \moviename\BDMV\STREAM directory

Thats it you're done, you can move/copy the large m2ts file to your library and it will play in MC/PS3/Xbox360/Media Player/VLC/Media Player Classic etc etc. However, if you would like to convert the file into a 720p MKV or MP4 to save some (read a lot of) space but retain most ( almost all of it to the naked eye) of the quality then read on.

Going Further

This next bit describes how to convert the movie into a much smaller file size mkv and preserve the Dolby Digital or DTS audio tracks.

Extracting the Audio

13. Run tsMuxer
14. In tsMuxer on the Input tab click add and navigate to the HDD directory where you ripped the Blu-Ray to and open the largest .m2ts file
15. Once the file is opened in the middle section titled Track untick everything except the DTS-HD or TrueHD track
If its a DTS-HD track check the box marked Downconvert DTS-HD to DTS and choose the appropriate language
If its a TrueHD track check the box marked Downconvert TrueHD to AC3 and choose the appropriate language
16. Now click the Start Muxing button and go away for another little while as the audio track is extracted into a seperate file. (NO SOLITAIRE!)

NOTE: The extracted audio file will be in the same directory as the original .m2ts file, you can if you want to delete every other file except the main m2ts file and the extracted audio track you just created.

Converting the Video to 720p

17. Close tsMuxer, you're done with the audio for now.
18. Open MeGUI
19. In Me3GUI click on the Tools - AVS Script Creator menu item.
20. In the AVS Script creator click the button with three dots on the Video Input dialog, navigate to and choose the large m2ts file in the directory you ripped the Blu-Ray to.
21. MeGUI will pause for a little bit as it loads the m2ts after which it will pop up with a preview windows showing a still from the middle fo the movie
22. Check the box next to Clever (TM) anamorphic encoding and choose "Overcrop to achieve mod16" from the dropdown box.
23. If the movie has black bars on the top and bottom click the Auto Crop button and wait a little while until the preview window show the black bars have been removed.
23. You can now click the save button at the bottom of the window.
24. Back in the main MeGUI program you will see the AviSynth Script and the Video Output fields have been filled in.
25. Choose your prefered Encoder method, my prefered methods is "x264: Standalone-PS3-Xbox360"
26. Click on the config button next to the Encoder settings dropdown.
27. In the new dialog box make sure you check the Turbo checkbox, the bitrate is set to 2500, and the AVC level is set to "unrestricted/Autoguess" and then click OK at the bottom of the dialog box.
28. Click the Enqueue button and go to the Queue tab.
29. If everything is right you should have a job waiting in the queue so click the Start button ..... and wait for between 5 and 10 hours for the video processing to finish ..... no joke it takes a looooooooong time on a C2D 3.0GHz.

Muxing the Video and Audio Together

30. Click on Tools - Muxer - MKV Muxer
31. In the Muxer dialog box navigate and choose the video and audio files you created in the steps above, then click the Queue button.
32. Go back to the Queue tab and click Start, this will combine the Video and Audio files into a single high quality 720p MKV.

NOTE: If you intend to put this file into your TVsersity library for the PS3 use MKV2VOB to convert the MKV into an MP4 file.

That's it you're done, Enjoy!