Rip a Blu-ray disc to a lossless MKV with MakeMKV on Windows, Mac OSX or Linux

Discussion in 'Media Guides' started by InsaneNutter, Jan 6, 2013.

  1. InsaneNutter

    InsaneNutter Resident Nutter Staff Member

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    Copying (or ripping) a Blu-ray to a single mkv video file on your computer is actually extremely easy, with the correct tools! Using MakeMKV we can decrypt, rip and store the contents of a Blu-ray disc in an MKV container.

    The advantage of storing the movie or tv episodes in an mkv container is you have the ability to play the ripped file as soon as its finished copying, without having to convert it or do anything else if you don’t wish to. You will essentially have a lossless copy of your Blu-ray movie or tv show.

    The MKV container can also store multiple audio tracks, chapters and subtitles. So basically you can end up with the most important parts of a Blu-ray in one nice MKV file, which is playable on a variety of devices and operating systems.

    To get started you will need to download and install MakeMKV:

    Download MakeMKV for Windows
    Download MakeMKV for OSX
    Download MakeMKV for Linux

    MakeMKV is shareware and will allow you to use the full application for 30 days, however i've noticed my install has never counted down from 30 days...

    Once MakeMKV is installed, load it up and click the Blu-ray to hard disk button:

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    The Blu-ray will then be analysed:

    [​IMG]

    Next you will be presented with a screen asking which titles you want to rip, you can rip everything then work out what you want to keep if unsure. The largest titles will be the main movie or episodes in a tv series, as can be seen below:

    [​IMG]

    As an optional step you can choose not rip foreign languages by selecting View > Preferences > Language and selecting your preferred language:

    [​IMG]

    When you click MakeMKV the titles from the Blu-ray will be ripped and stored in an MKV container:

    [​IMG]

    This might take a bit of time as Blu-rays can hold up to 50gb of data, however you will be informed when the Blu-ray has been ripped to an MKV

    [​IMG]

    Your MKV files should play in XBMC, VLC, Media Player Classic and another other media player capable of playing MKV files, as you can see Media Player Classic is playing the menu animation from my ripped Blu-ray fine.

    [​IMG]

    That's it! you have created a lossless rip (meaning no quality has been lost) of your Blu-ray disc. This will play on Windows, OSX, Linux, Android and any other os with a video player capable of playing MKV video with no issues what so ever.

    [​IMG]

    As you can see above the file size for each episode is huge, so not ideal if you wish to archive lots of media, unless of course you want it to be lossless.

    I shall crate another tutorial soon that teaches you the best way to compress your rips and still retain the quality, and how to downscale from 1080p to 720p or even 480p.
    However the above should be fine if you just wish to play your Blu-ray on a device that is not capable e.g a Linux machine, or a device that even has no Blu-ray drive.
     

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    AntiNaz, Trebor, MasterChief and 3 others like this.

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