Best Program to Rip DVDs for Use With Plex Media Server

[madmac]

I've setup my FreeNAS box and I'm really quite pleased with it. bhyve virtualization was my first "extra", and it's working nicely.

I've setup the Plex Media Server, and it's pretty slick, and was automagically "found" by my Denon receiver. I got the "storage" and "jail" thing worked out, and it's serving music wonderfully.

Now Videos. The Library is setup. Putting "natively ripped" DVDs (created via DVDFab) in there yielded no love. Found a suggestion and instructions to use Brorsoft to rip the DVD, and followed the instructions and ripped to an H.264 Hgh Profile Video MP4 file. This put 9 different files in the output folder, and Plex didn't really know what to do with it. It would play the file, but not like serving a DVD . .

I'm re-ripping with the "Merge into one file" option set. We'll see about that.

What tool do people use for ripping DVDs (and/or BluRay Discs, and Ultra High-Def BluRay (4K) ). I can go either Linux or Windows 10 . . . or FreeBSD if I have to.

This is really a pretty nice system. I have been getting 90 - 110 MB/sec transfers from my Windows 10 box to a share on my FreeNAS. On a 1 gbps network. That's about 80% wirespeed . . . .

Thanks all in advance . .

Doug

 

[fracai]

I've always had good experiences with Handbrake

 

[Jailer]

Rip with makemkv and encode with handbrake.

You'll find lots of info on this in the Plex forums.

 

[JohnDigital]

Agree Handbrake is great.

 

[fracai]

It would play the file, but not like serving a DVD

I just noticed this part. If you're looking for a DVD menu style interface, you won't find that with Plex. I rip the movie to a single file, maybe add the commentary as another audio track. Maybe rip the extras as separate files. But, Plex won't present those with a DVD menu to select what you want.

 

[scrappy]

MakeMKV will rip DVD, BluRay, and UHD4K (I believe). You will still need something like Handbrake to compress the video into a more reasonable file size.

 

[Ericloewe]

and UHD4K (I believe)

I was wondering the other day, looking at the 4K Blu Rays at a store, since I have a 4K TV and some Blu Ray drives, but no standalone Blu Ray player in the house (neither 4K nor HD). Turns out it's still a very ad-hoc thing of limited usefulness.

 

[Jailer]

And there's only certain drives with the right firmware that will rip 4k content.

 

[nightshade00013]

Personally i like being able to rip and encode with one step. To do this I use DVDfab Passkey and Handbrake. Passkey does the heavy lifting on the rip portion and allows Handbrake to do it's job. Makes a simple one step solution. You can try Passkey out and after a certain amount of time it will drop to the lite version which doesn't work as well. But since you can try it for free it's worth checking out. I do however suggest getting the "Lifetime" license so you get updates for a long while. I personally don't see BluRay going anywhere for a few years right now. Anyway until the 9th you can use EST35 and get it for about $71. But IMHO being able to do it all in one step makes it worth it. I bought the lifetime of PlexPass as well to just have it done in one shot.

 

[Spearfoot]

I've used the Automatic Ripping Machine with good results:

Automatic Ripping Machine | Headless | Blu-Ray/DVD/CD

The A.R.M. (Automatic Ripping Machine) detects the insertion of an optical disc, identifies the type of media, and autonomously performs the appropriate action: It runs on Linux, it’s completely headless and fully automatic requiring no interaction or manual input to complete its tasks (other...

b3n.org

Not sure how well it would work in a jail -- I use Linux VMs on my All-In-One servers.

 

[kherr]

It costs a couple of $$$$ ..... but I'm a DVDfab kinda person. Everything in one package and will use hardware acceleration if you have the right hardware. I have a 5 drive rig, set it all up and walk away. You can copy/rip DVD/BR/UHD/4k all in one package/interface.

 

[CyberdineX]

It costs a couple of $$$$ ..... but I'm a DVDfab kinda person. Everything in one package and will use hardware acceleration if you have the right hardware. I have a 5 drive rig, set it all up and walk away. You can copy/rip DVD/BR/UHD/4k all in one package/interface.

Are you running this on a PC or server?
I've done a bunch on my PC, and now want a server side solution. So it can just work on this while the rest of the house carries on.

 

[sretalla]

now want a server side solution. So it can just work on this while the rest of the house carries on.

Back to the recommendation of Handbrake then... it can run in a jail on TrueNAS and with X11, you can run the GUI on your PC to control it.

SOLVED - How to install Handbrake Step by step on FreeNAS 11

Hello Smarty pants! I successfully built my first ever FreeNAS box (https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/b/NbpG3C) I have just one jail running Plex Media Server. As the built has a good processor, I want to install Handbrake to re-encode my media (Family holidays vids etc.) to reduce size! But i have...

www.truenas.com

 

[Vertigo 7]

Agree whole heartedly with sretalla. The FreeBSD install guide on the handbreak website is a good starting point, but I'll add you should also install bash ahead of the steps in their guide and run all of their commands through bash. They'll have you install it as a prereq, anyway. But once you have handbrake installed, just need to mount the folder that contains the files you're going to convert to the jail and then ssh in and do your thing and you should be all set.