Consumer Tips: Getting the Best Out of Your Blu-rays

Many consumers tend to prefer instantly accessible versions of movies (such as those on Netflix / Vudu / iTunes / local copies / etc.) compared to Blu-rays because of the following reasons:

However, Blu-rays aren't going away any time soon even for consumers who have lot of bandwidth to spare. The main reason is the audio and video quality. Vudu comes close to matching Blu-ray quality with their 9 Mbps HDX stream and Dolby Digital Plus soundtracks, but the Blu-ray versions have a much higher bitrate ceiling and support for lossless audio, making them capable of delivering quality which is not going to be matched by streaming services any time in the near future.

Is it possible to combine the great quality of Blu-rays with instant and reliable access? The answer is a cautious affirmative. According to the current U.S. laws, it is illegal to circumvent copy protection on DVDs and Blu-rays. Unfortunately, the instant / reliable access part is not possible without stripping the content protection. That said, it is difficult to imagine a situation where the fact that a consumer has stripped the DRM from a purchased disc is known to the outside world (as long as it is not being distributed in a public manner). Given this situation, it is highly unlikely that backing up your discs is going to earn you a visit from the FBI, but AnandTech is not a site for legal advice. So, if you decide to act on the tips below, note that you are on your own.

There are three different types of Blu-ray backups which don't involve re-encoding the audio and video tracks, and you should choose one of the formats that meets your requirements:

• ISO: An ISO file is a disc image that retains almost all the contents of the disc in a sector-by-sector copy format. It also retains the file system of the disc. Most tools that back up to this format strip out the AACS folder.
• Folder structure: This is similar to an ISO backup in the sense that all the contents of the disc are retained. However, the file system on the disc is not carried over. This means that some file system level tricks to save upon space (such as the 3D video SSIF folders in MVC encoded Blu-rays) can't be retained.
• MKV: This is undoubtedly the most popular format for storing HD movies. In this backup mode, a playlist title is chosen (a collection of M2TS files on the disc in a particular sequence). The M2TS files are concatenated in the right order and the unnecessary audio and video tracks are taken out as dictated by the user. The tracks are then remuxed into an MKV container.

There are a number of tools out there that help strip the DRM off Blu-rays and DVDs. The ones with the best track record for support and updates are AnyDVD HD from SlySoft, MakeMKV, and DVDFab. I have used all three tools, and my recommendations for 'lossless' Blu-ray backups lie with AnyDVD HD and MakeMKV. I do find DVDFab to be a more all-round solution, thanks to inbuilt re-encoding capabilities, but this can always be done offline (after the ripping process) using better tools like the x264-based Handbrake and the like. However, ISOs created with DVDFab have sometimes failed to play back properly on multiple media streamers. AnyDVD HD's ISOs have had a perfect track record in my experience.

AnyDVD HD

AnyDVD is a product from SlySoft, aimed at real time (on-the-fly) DRM stripping. It runs on a Windows PC and remains active in the background. Any access to the optical drive automatically sees an unprotected disc. This means that playback tools don't need to see an HDCP-capable display while playing back the content. Also, files can be copied from the drive without any issues.

SlySoft, based in Antigua, has been around since 2002. In addition to AnyDVD, they also provide a line of other software tools and drivers for multimedia applications and hardware. The other popular tool from SlySoft that I frequently recommend is the freeware Virtual CloneDrive that can be used to provide a number of virtual optical drives on Windows. Disc images can be mounted on these drives and applications (software Blu-ray players, say) can access them as if they were real optical discs.

Initially, AnyDVD was used to circumvent copy protection on DVDs. In February 2007, AnyDVD was updated with support for HD DVD and AACS. In March 2007, the first version of AnyDVD HD with full Blu-ray support was released. However, the Blu-ray industry came up with BD+ in late 2007. AnyDVD HD started handling BD+ protected discs in March 2008. Starting in December 2009, some Blu-ray titles started coming with Sony Screen Pass, but this was successfully cracked by SlySoft within a few hours. We discussed details of the Blu-ray Screen Pass DRM in an earlier section. ARccOS, used in DVDs has also been re-branded as Screen Pass for DVDs. However, this has been handled by AnyDVD for quite some time. BD+ and Screen Pass are designed to evolve, but SlySoft has always been successful in being able to overcome and adapt to these copy protection mechanisms.

While AnyDVD HD's on-the-fly decryption can be used during playback of the disc, the most common usage scenario is to tie it in along with the 'Rip to disk image' functionality. The MyCE forum post here shows the steps necessary to create an ISO image of a Blu-ray disc.

The usage of AnyDVD HD in the USA is not legal for reasons mentioned earlier in this section. Antigua has remained a safe haven for SlySoft till now. However, the AACS-LA has been putting a lot of pressure on SlySoft. Recently, they even managed to sue SlySoft in Antigua. While SlySoft was not ready to comment about this particular case, they went to great lengths to stress the fact that their mission was not to circumvent copy protection for piracy purposes. Instead, they just want to make sure that their customers can watch the movies they paid for without any annoying restrictions. Given the Blu-ray industry's utter disregard for the end consumer, we can only root silently for SlySoft in this case.

MakeMKV

MakeMKV is a product from GuinpinSoft, aimed at backing up Blu-rays and DVDs into either an MKV or folder structure. It is a comparatively recent competitor to SlySoft's products, but I prefer to view it as being more of a complement to SlySoft's product suite. Mike Chen, the developer of MakeMKV, clearly states that his aim is to enable people to move Blu-ray movies from patent-encumbered formats (such as BD-J / HDMV / etc.) to something truly open (MKV). The first version of MakeMKV was released in early 2009.

Damian at MediaSmartServer has a couple of excellent writeups documenting the usage of MakeMKV for movie discs and TV box sets. In addition to being able to save MKVs and folder structures of Blu-rays and DVDs, MakeMKV can also be used for real-time DRM stripping and streaming over uPnP. The icing on the cake is multi-OS support. MakeMKV even has a version for Linux!

The protection handling mechanisms are updated as and when required. Mike Chen pointed out that the longest it took to update MakeMKV for a new protection scheme variant (AACS / BD+ / bus-encryption) was less than 2 weeks. MakeMKV started handling BD+ on October 7 2009. New BD+ protection schemes normally take a few days to counter. As of today, MakeMKV handles AACS v30 and the latest BD+ update from Irdeto.

From a consumer perspective, it is good to have multiple teams working separately to handle DRM circumvention. Competition is also good for the consumer, pushing innovation and ultimately the vendors too. For example, SlySoft came up with a Speedmenu feature recently. This effectively provided a BD-Lite feature for playback on the PC.

By getting rid of the unwanted BD-Live features and providing users with a no-nonsense menu, SlySoft is raising the bar for DRM stripping tools. MakeMKV has loads of interesting features lined up over the next few quarters, including audio and subtitle format transcoding (LPCM->FLAC, DTS-HD->LPCM, PGS->VOBSUB etc.)

Given the above options, what is the best way to backup your Blu-ray collection? If you don't have any space constraints, I strongly suggest backing up in the ISO format. This will enable you to take advantage of future improvements in MakeMKV (the MKV format is the best if you want a 'lossless' backup while also saving on space). MakeMKV still doesn't handle stuff such as multi-angle and PiP streams properly. An ISO backup gives you a copy of the disc on a hard drive and can always be processed by MakeMKV later. If you don't want to spend money on two tools and prefer the MKV format, a folder backup with MakeMKV is one possible alternative, but it is not really space-efficient for MVC encoded 3D Blu-rays.

In order to give readers an idea of the advantages of using Blu-ray backups, we took a Blu-ray disc of the movie 'Waltz with Bashir' and backed it up to ISO, folder structure, and MKV formats. We are giving some leeway to the studios here because the movie, being one belonging to the arthouse category, was thankfully devoid of unskippable trailers. The tables below show the time taken to reach various points in the movie experience using a software player (PowerDVD 12 running on ASRock's Vision3D 252B) as well as a Blu-ray disc player (Netgear NTV550 using an Asus 8x BC-08B1ST over USB 2.0).

As evident from the load times in the table above, it takes more than 2 minutes to start the main movie with the original disc, but takes less than 5 seconds with an MKV version. Purchasers of original Blu-rays usually view the movie multiple times, and it is really incomprehensible why the studios and the law don't allow them to start the movie on the disc immediately.

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