BluRay Player

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BluRay Player

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Synology DS920+
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I was thinking of putting my Movies from DVD's to my Synology, However some are Bluray and my current drive is not. Can anyone suggest a good one and are external drives any good for this. I tried an Asus BW-16D1HT but apparently it was defective, wouldn't play a bluray, Just dvd's. TIA
 
Fredbert. Would you say it's just as fast as an internal? Not that speed really matters. I just transferred Tomorrowland, (standard dvd,) in under 5 minutes
 
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Haven't had a working internal DVD drive in years, they all seem to break eventually. I have this Pioneer Blu-ray drive and an Apple Superdrive (DVD). Seem about as quick as each other on DVD and CD.

I'm either extracting to MKV, converting to M4V, or creating an image so not sure what of those, if any, you mean by transferring. Mostly the limiting factor is CPU oomph and not optical disk read.

I was just creating and iso image from a DVD. It took the Pioneer 17 minutes to do the 7.7GB disk connected via USB3 port + cable to a 2012 Mac Mini. While doing that it's also using around 80% CPU to convert a MKV to M4V
 
Haven't had a working internal DVD drive in years, they all seem to break eventually. I have this Pioneer Blu-ray drive and an Apple Superdrive (DVD). Seem about as quick as each other on DVD and CD.

I'm either extracting to MKV, converting to M4V, or creating an image so not sure what of those, if any, you mean by transferring. Mostly the limiting factor is CPU oomph and not optical disk read.

I was just creating and iso image from a DVD. It took the Pioneer 17 minutes to do the 7.7GB disk connected via USB3 port + cable to a 2012 Mac Mini. While doing that it's also using around 80% CPU to convert a MKV to M4V
Is there an advantage to converting to M4V? I've got some M4V in my iTunes library I'd like to convert to MKV but can't get Handbrake to do it. I'd like to be able to play all my movies from my DS918+ using either Plex or DS Video, but the M4V files won't play unless I play them from the iTunes library, which sucks because they are taking up needless space in my iCloud account.
 
Easy enough to do without loss...

Code:
ffmpeg -i "path/to/file.m4v" -c:v copy -c:a copy "path/to/file.mkv"

Or drag m4v files into MKVToolNix and "start" multiplexing.

Near "instant" conversion.
 
I've used several LG and other branded Blu ray internal writers installed into an external enclosure over the years and they work just fine. Blu ray players are backward compatible with DVD discs, so no problems there. The one thing to be aware of is they have two lenses, one that reads/writes blu and one that reads/writes dvd. They too will fail after a number of years of use, depending on wear and tear. In my experiences, blu writing fails, followed by blu reading, then dvd writing fails, then dvd reading. Good thing is they are fairly cheap.
 
Is there an advantage to converting to M4V?
Habit.

Have used Apple devices for so long that knowing a file will play natively is the default objective. Using MKV is usually when I want pull out specific audio tracks, which is what I was doing today. I used MKVToolNix to create MKA of a LPCM track and then Fission.

I'd like to be able to play all my movies from my DS918+ using either Plex or DS Video, but the M4V files won't play unless I play them from the iTunes library, which sucks because they are taking up needless space in my iCloud account.
This makes no sense to me. I clone my Mac's iTunes library plus other media folders to the NAS and these are then used (read-only) as library folders by Plex, Video Station, Audio Station, Media Server. It just works.

Of course, iTunes DRM media won't play in non-Apple players, but I don't have much of that stuff.
 
Haven't had a working internal DVD drive in years, they all seem to break eventually. I have this Pioneer Blu-ray drive and an Apple Superdrive (DVD). Seem about as quick as each other on DVD and CD.

I'm either extracting to MKV, converting to M4V, or creating an image so not sure what of those, if any, you mean by transferring. Mostly the limiting factor is CPU oomph and not optical disk read.

I was just creating and iso image from a DVD. It took the Pioneer 17 minutes to do the 7.7GB disk connected via USB3 port + cable to a 2012 Mac Mini. While doing that it's also using around 80% CPU to convert a MKV to M4V
Well, I tried your drive and another. Now I still can't play the Any BluRay disc. Standard dvds play fine but Blurays Nada. No idea and am about to give up unless someone can point me in the right direction! Am I missing a driver or something as the install disc just has apps for backing up to a bluray. No mention of drivers.:sick:
 
Well, I tried your drive and another. Now I still can't play the Any BluRay disc. Standard dvds play fine but Blurays Nada. No idea and am about to give up unless someone can point me in the right direction! Am I missing a driver or something as the install disc just has apps for backing up to a bluray. No mention of drivers.:sick:
Ok guys, my apologies. Figure out that I can't rip Blurays, only dvd's which is a bummer as most of the ones I have and like are in Bluray format. should of paid 5 bucks more for both:oops:
 
Not sure why you're having all these problems. Get an internal Blu-Ray burner drive and a good software program (eg DVD FAB, WIN-X DVD ripper, Wonderfox DVD ripper pro). I've never had any issues ripping Blu-Ray disks with this setup(?)

 
Ok guys, my apologies. Figure out that I can't rip Blurays, only dvd's which is a bummer as most of the ones I have and like are in Bluray format. should of paid 5 bucks more for both:oops:
Rip isn't the same as play. They require different software and this is generally not included in base OS installations.

Mac's have never natively played Blu-ray either, it needs a third party player. However, to create backup MKV files of your Blu-ray then there are tools to help you, such as makeMKV: since 'MakeMKV is free while in beta' you can get the temporary licence key from their forum. From there you need the Blu-ray drive and a disk, plus 30-50GB storage space per disk.

If you want to extract tracks or merge files then MKVToolNix will do that. Or there's ffmpeg.

If then you want to have a smaller file size/specific formats you can convert using HandBrake. This will probably take many hours to do so test on a chapter or two to be sure your settings are correct.
 
Sorry Frebert and others. I found this out last night which means the first drive I tried was actually good when I thought it wasn't. Hey, remember I'm the OLD guy!!!!;) playing catchup.

Anyway I used Makemkv to rip the movie and then Handbrake to convert it to MP4. The reason I converted was I'm playing them through my DVD played and it won't touch mkv and my flat screen isn't a smart tv, "yet."

Anyway, thank you for your help and sorry this got so involved. Fantastic forum members!
 
One quick question. So far I ripped 4 Blurays to the Synology. The first 3 were using the default in handbrake. The fourth I tried, "Super HQ 1080p30 surround. The first three played fine while the super tends to pause for a second to up to a minute. Is this normal and should I stay away from the superhq. I rewound to before the stutter and it played fine but stuttered again at a later spot. Thank you!!!
 
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Could be the player that is struggling to play but I think the differences between the same HQ and Super HQ (or others) will be the video quality settings to transfer, and higher means more time to do it. It could also be the source file, audio tracks or something else.

I use whatever is the Apple 1080p 30fps profile and then change the audio tracks to bump AAC stereo to 320kbps, then add pass-thru of originals, and so on. I'm mostly playing via Plex or DS video (Video Station) on an Apple TV HD/4K and connected to either a stereo or AV amp. The TV in my setup is purely a screen.
 
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Looks like I've got a lot to learn yet. Everyone has been a great help here though. As it goes now. I think the bottleneck is my old tv as I can't stream directly to it, that's why the dvd player. Research time!

P.S. found out why the last movie stuttered. the ds was running a extended smart test on the 2 16tb drives
 

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