Saturday, June 22, 2013

Ripping Blu-rays for Mac OSX, the WD TV Live and everything else

I rip my Blu-rays to play on our WD TV Live (firmware 1.06.43_V), Macs and mobile devices (iPad, iPod, Samsung Galaxy Note II). There have been many issues over the last few years, with subtitles being the last one to solve.

I keep uncompressed mkv files to play on the WD TV Live (and as master copies) and transcode to m4v for all the other devices.

  1. Rip with Makemkv. I use an external Blu-ray drive on a MacBook Pro. Make sure all english subtitle tracks (forced only) are selected. VLC (2.0.6) plays subtitles correctly but the WD TV Live doesn't.
  2. Remux the mkv with MKVToolNix using the default settings - fixes the WD TV Live subtitles issue. 
  3. Transcode with Handbrake (0.9.9 x86_64). Use the iPad profile and on the Subtitles tab select Foreign Audio Search, Forced Only, Burned In.
Working well so far. Can't wait for a decent broadband network and an up to date movie/tv content streaming service in Australia!