Blu-Ray to DVR-MS

I don't like clutter and being a bit of a neat freak I don't want a shelf of DVD's getting dusty in my lounge. Not a problem because with a Media Centre I can Rip my DVD's onto either my Media Centre or Windows Home Server so I can simply browse them through the great Movies section in Media Centre on Windows 7 and play them natively. However in the age of HD Blu-ray films are the way to go. However this causes a couple of issues. Firstly even in Windows 7 Media Centre does not play Blu-Ray natively you have to install another application, some of which do plug into Media Centre but its still a bit clumsy. The second issue is you can't just copy them to your hard disk because of there large size (around 50GB per film), so can't fit many films onto your storage. So I just read the discs, however I find that Blu-Ray discs seem to take forever to spin up and start playing the film. So the Holy grail of Media Centre for me is to burn my Blu-Ray films to a file format that doesn't lose too much quality but takes up less space and plays natively in Media Centre. Well I think I have sussed it. Here is a guide on how to convert your Blu-Ray disc from their 50GB size to a 6GB DVRMS file.

Stage 1. - Convert your Blu-ay disc to MKV
MakeMKV is a great application that provides a one-click solution to convert video that you own into free and patents-unencumbered format that can be played everywhere. MakeMKV is a format converter, it converts the video clips from proprietary (and usually encrypted) disc into a set of MKV files, preserving most information but not changing it in any way. However we don't want a multiple file format and there aren't many media players that support .mkv out of the box. Media Centre certainly doesn't. However this application does provide us with a great file based platform to move on with. MakeMKV is really easy to use, simply open MakeMKV insert your disc and click the open disc button. This then presents you with a list of all the chapters. Select the Titles you want - I personally only want the film, I'm not worried about the extras so I select only Title 1. Though this helps reduce the file size we can bring it down more by expanding the title and only selecting the audio format you require and remove all the subtitles. Choose your output folder and click Make MKV. Once complete you will end up with a folder of the name of the film and a single .mkv file of the same name.
For more information on MakeMKV visit http://www.makemkv.com/.

Stage 2. - Convert MKV to DVRMS
Media Centre cannot play MKV files so we now need to convert the file to a format media centre likes. DVRMS is the standard format for video in Media Centre and is the file type that all recorded TV is created in. This format allows the media centre to easily jump x number of seconds back and forward throughout the show and also the ability to remember where you stopped your show so you can resume from that point days latter. For Media Centre this is my file format of choice.

To convert your .mkv files to a single DVRMS file I would recommend DVRMSToolBox which is available here http://babgvant.com/files/folders/dvrmstoolbox/category1340.aspx and it is ready to go out of the box.

Start by launching DVRMSToolboxSettings and find the Convert MKV to DVR-MS and put in Movie Folder profile, select it and hit and edit profile button at the bottom. If you aren't using Windows 7 and the Movie Library, then use the profile called Convert avi or mkv to DVR-MS.

Select the first step and hit Configure. Change the 'Replace Regex' box with your movie path, be sure to have it end with '\$1\' so something like 'C:\Users\username\Videos\$1\' or '\\whs1\Movies\$1\' so that the film is created within a folder with the name of the film. Before you exit and save, you can add your own steps if you want, say if you wanted to delete the source file or move it to another directory.

To start the conversion process launch DVRMSToolBox DVRMStoMPEGGUI. Double click on the input file box and navigate to your file (UNC paths are not supported here, so if the file is on the network, you need to map a drive). Double click on the output file box and navigate to your Movies folder where the film will be stored. From the drop down profile box select Convert MKV to DVR-MS and put in Movie Folder .

There is no status bar or anything and buffer errors can be ignored, but in about the same amount of time as it'll take you to watch the movie, the conversion will be complete.

Stage 3. - Display the film with cover art and synopsis in Windows 7 Media Centre
Windows 7 Media Centre has a great new feature called Movies where all your films are displayed with cover art and a synopsis of the film. This works well if you simply copy your dvd or blu-ray into the folder in their native formats, however with converting the file as we have done above Media Centre does not know what the film is. So we need to update the film with some meta information.

Yammm - Yet Another Media Meta Manager is a great utility that runs as a Windows Service and will download meta data, artwork, rename folders, rename files and\or create playlists. Metadata can be any combination of dvdid.xml, mymovies.xml and\or XBMC nfo file. All meta information and artwork is provided via either themoviedb.org or thetvdb.com. The reason why I recommend Yammm is because it runs headless without any user interaction and used folder.jpg instead of custom artwork locations. This is important to me as I use Windows 7 media centre and want all my films to appear in the Movies section. In fact Yammm has an option for Windows 7 media centre to ensure the correct meta information is presented in a format that the Movies section likes.

A key requirement for me is if my wife downloads a film it has to appear in the Movies section with the cover art and synopsis all without her having to do anything. Yammm provides this by simply allowing her to create a folder with the name of the film in the Movies directory and save the file in that folder. Yammm then renames both the folder and the file with the correct title and format e.g. if you name the folder star wars and file copied across was star.wars.xvid.hdtv then when Yamm has worked its magic both folder and file become Star Wars Episode One A New Hope (1977).

During the installation process of Yamm a configuration page will open. Here you need to specify the folder you want the service to watch, select the option to rename folders and movie files. I also select the IMDB rating and select the artwork download features I require. Most of the options you can tailor to your requirements but the ones you need to ensure are setup are in the Metadata section. For the movies to appear in the Movies section with artwork and synopsis in Media Centre you have to enable Windows 7 Media Centre for the meta data and select the user account that you run Media Centre under.

So there you have it, a fairly easy process to convert your Blu-Ray discs to a single playable file without loss of quality to the audio and video, and best of all its free. This process though is not without its issues. A special thanks goes to my good friend Steve Newman who has followed this process for me several times. However he has found that it does not work with HD-DVD or original DVD's. HD-DVD is not an issue for me as I don't have any but it appears that MakeMKV doesn't like the encryption used on the discs. Steve has a fair few of these as he was an early adopter (I held out until someone won the HD battle) and he has come up with a work around. Hopefully he will comment on his method for converting HD-DVD. As for good old standard DVD's well there are a multitude of applications that either backup the DVD to its original format like DVD Shrink http://dvdshrinksite.org/ or converters which rip the DVD to an AVI file. However the latter often do drop the quality a bit often in the audio going from DTS to MP3.

I would like to point out that all the tools used are freeware so they won't cost you a penny but please do not hesitate to leave a donation on their sites as these guys have put a lot of work into their apps and without them I know I would either have a shelf of Blu-Rays making the place untidy or spent a fortune on Terabytes of storage.

I would be keen on hearing your methods for converting DVD and Blu-Ray to a single file for media centre as I am sure there are probably better methods out there.