Which NAS do list members prefer?

[HomerJAU]

The thing is you don't know if the BD uses multiple .m2ts until you notice something is missing when you watch the movie, but MakeMKV will show you if there are multiples (and many, movies do have internal 'playlists' pointing to different parts of .m2ts and multiple files. Its part of the 'copy protection' method to scramble the scenes and make it unwatchable after copying the disc.

MakeMKV handles all this when creating an MKV as it 'assembles' them in correct order into one file. Do not just copy individual .m2ts files and play one. It reads the disc playlist the same as a BD player does. For a human it trial and error. You won't outsmart this all of the time.

You can keep and playback the entire disc folder structure and playback ok if you play the 'disk' in a player (hardware or software that plays 'discs').

BUT YOU CAN'T copy a single .m2ts file and play back and guarantee it contains the whole movie. This idea is DOOMED. Yes it may work ok sometimes BUT NOT ALL the time. Why complicate your workflow, just convert everything to MKV.

 

[timothyemerson]

The thing is you don't know if the BD uses multiple .m2ts until you notice something is missing when you watch the movie, but MakeMKV will show you if there are multiples (and many, movies do have internal 'playlists' pointing to different parts of .m2ts and multiple files. Its part of the 'copy protection' method to scramble the scenes and make it unwatchable after copying the disc.

MakeMKV handles all this when creating an MKV as it 'assembles' them in correct order into one file. Do not just copy individual .m2ts files and play one. It reads the disc playlist the same as a BD player does. For a human it trial and error. You won't outsmart this all of the time.

You can keep and playback the entire disc folder structure and playback ok if you play the 'disk' in a player (hardware or software that plays 'discs').

BUT YOU CAN'T copy a single .m2ts file and play back and guarantee it contains the whole movie. This idea is DOOMED. Yes it may work ok sometimes BUT NOT ALL the time. Why complicate your workflow, just convert everything to MKV.

Oh right, I didn't know this about M2TS's. The testing I've done based on skipping through the movie/displayed duration/other M2TS's in the STREAM folder all appeared complete so thanks for letting me know. You've probably just saved me hours of aggravation! MKV sounds like the way to go then for most backups. I can try M2TS's for the fiddly ones.

QQ to the rescue yet again - thank you!

 

[fcormier]

1. I just have them formatted as GPT/exFat. I think they may actually come that way. No problem reading the 4TB size. Also because there are only around 60 x 4k movies on a 4TB drive is isn't much trouble navigating the drive either. I just buy two 4TB drives every time I have to expand. So the cost is not all at once. If one does crash I only have 4TB's to restore onto a new drive although this has not happened as yet. I can't imagine having to restore a 12TB drive. I think the 4TB size is perfect.
2. No stuttering or missing frames. It's just like playing the original disc. The reason I keep the file as M2TS is because the X800 has issues with subtitles on mkv files. The subtitles work on M2TS files. There are no chapter marks on either format when played back on the X800. I have had a drive freeze periodically, however, that freezing also happens periodically when also playing original discs so I don't think it has anything to do with using a hard drive. You just have to reboot the X800 and fast forward to where it crashed and continue the movie. Here is an example of the spreadsheet. The beginning few lines.

Movie	Playback Drive	Size (GB)	File Type	Back-Up Drive #
13 Hours - The Secret Soldiers Of Benghazi	1	80.6	M2TS	3

It's because the chapters marks are in the mpls files, not in the m2ts files. I think playing only the m2ts files without the mpls files can cause subtitle sync issues on some movies, but I couldn't confirm, it's just a thing I have noticed when ripping Blu-ray movies and including subtitles.

 

[fcormier]

Thanks for the speedy reply!

Hmmm, yeah, I forgot about the racket HDD's can make, especially if you get a bunch of them all buzzing along together like a swarm of bees. I could either put the NAS in the large cabinet (there'd be enough airflow) that the TV is on or in another room. If it goes in another room, I'm guessing a long ethernet cable would be the way to go so that it's connected to my hypothetical Raspberry Pi running Kodi that would sit under the TV?

That's why one of the reasons I use a PC within a Fractal Design Define case for my NAS: I barely hear the four drives under my desk.

 

[fcormier]

From the M2TS and MKV testing I've done with the 2 players I have, it seems that M2TS is the way to go to ensure subtitles can be displayed and to ensure Dolby Atmos-only audio tracks can be played back as Dolby TrueHD on my 5.1 set-up.

As I've only just started using MakeMKV to back up to M2TS, I wanted to ask if there was any benefit to keeping the entire file structure of the M2TS backup as it appears, or is copying and renaming the M2TS files that appear in the STREAM folder OK to do (e.g., "Movie Name.m2ts" for the renamed movie, "Interview with the Director.m2ts" for one of the extras, etc) ? I've tried copying and renaming the M2TS's in this way and they play fine from HDD via the Sony X800 but just wanted to ask what you do with your backups.

I thought about it while reading the thread. Subtitles on DVDs and Blu-rays are in image format. When playing the original format, subtitles work. However, when converting to mkv, subtitles have to be in text format (srt format to be more specific) for most players to recognize them. I use Subtitle Edit to convert them from image to text format.

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

However, when converting to mkv, subtitles have to be in text format (srt format to be more specific) for most players to recognize them.

Actually no... DVD VobSub/idx and Blu-ray disc PGS 'image based' subtitles can be muxed into the .mkv container without having to be converted to 'text based' SRT subtitles. And most stand-alone hardware players can support them.

Sadly, many TV brands (like my LG television) only likes 'text based' subtitles!

[Edited: For better accuracy]

 

[cdheer]

Actually no... DVD VobSub/idx and Blu-ray disc PGS 'image based' subtitles can be muxed into the .mkv container without having to be converted to 'text based' SRT subtitles

I think the key point @fcormier was making:

However, when converting to mkv, subtitles have to be in text format (srt format to be more specific) for most players to recognize them.

Emphasis mine.

 

[timothyemerson]

I thought about it while reading the thread. Subtitles on DVDs and Blu-rays are in image format. When playing the original format, subtitles work. However, when converting to mkv, subtitles have to be in text format (srt format to be more specific) for most players to recognize them. I use Subtitle Edit to convert them from image to text format.

Thanks for the reply and good to know about Subtitle Edit. I'm currently in the early stages of the back-up project and doing my concert BDs at the moment, and finding little quirks with MKV's between my 2 players as I go. This will come in handy when I get to the movie back-up stage. Thanks again.

 

[fcormier]

Thanks for the reply and good to know about Subtitle Edit. I'm currently in the early stages of the back-up project and doing my concert BDs at the moment, and finding little quirks with MKV's between my 2 players as I go. This will come in handy when I get to the movie back-up stage. Thanks again.

I'm in the process of converting everything to mkv and it takes time, especially if you're a little OCD and you redo some stuff because you learned things since (and if you do two languages instead of just one, English and French in my case). Everything for me is done considering it will be served from Plex to several devices (Chromecast, Roku, Android devices), so I have to take into account each device's capabilities. If I had an nVidia Shield or Kodi, it would probably be different audio wise because they support more codecs.

 

[timothyemerson]

I'm in the process of converting everything to mkv and it takes time, especially if you're a little OCD and you redo some stuff because you learned things since (and if you do two languages instead of just one, English and French in my case). Everything for me is done considering it will be served from Plex to several devices (Chromecast, Roku, Android devices), so I have to take into account each device's capabilities. If I had an nVidia Shield or Kodi, it would probably be different audio wise because they support more codecs.

Always good to hear how others do things. For now, I'm MKVing everything and not stripping out any additional audio tracks/subtitles/etc. It'll use more HDD space but that's cool. I'm not doing it to save drive space but to preserve what I got in the case of any future BD misbehaviour!

 

[HomerJAU]

Using MakeMKV you can set the default audio stream to the surround one you want (lossless DTS-HDMA or Atmos) so when you play the MKV you wont have to change the audio track.

You can also ensure that unwanted subtitles aren’t set to default.

 

[timothyemerson]

Using MakeMKV you can set the default audio stream to the surround one you want (lossless DTS-HDMA or Atmos) so when you play the MKV you wont have to change the audio track.

You can also ensure that unwanted subtitles aren’t set to default.

More good info - thank you!

 

[barfle]

I have a drobo 5N, which has five drives in it and an Ethernet cinnection. The drives are a mix of 2, 3, and 4 TB capacity, updated as needs and budget require. It can accept any two drive failures.

It serves as a media player through both my Rokus, my OPPO 105, and my Marantz pre-pro, although I primarily use the OPPO for local streaming.

I have no idea how to incorporate Roon into that system, although I’m pretty good at putting diaplayable info into the metadata of the individual audio files.

 

[Guy Robinson]

Oh right, I didn't know this about M2TS's. The testing I've done based on skipping through the movie/displayed duration/other M2TS's in the STREAM folder all appeared complete so thanks for letting me know. You've probably just saved me hours of aggravation! MKV sounds like the way to go then for most backups. I can try M2TS's for the fiddly ones.

QQ to the rescue yet again - thank you!

DVDFab will also put the multiple m2ts files into a single m2ts file if more than one file makes up the movie on the disc.

 

[timothyemerson]

DVDFab will also put the multiple m2ts files into a single m2ts file if more than one file makes up the movie on the disc.

Thanks Guy, more good info!

 

[timothyemerson]

I have another question that those who have backed-up several movies might be able to answer.

When MKVing an English-speaking movie with scenes in another language and where a non-English language appears as subtitles on screen without having to select subtitles at the beginning of the movie (e.g., Alejandro switching to Spanish in Sicario, Klingons speaking Klingon in Star Trek The Motion Picture), are these ALWAYS noted as "Forced Subtitles" in MakeMKV's analysis of what's on the disc?

The reason I ask is that I wanted to see if anyone's found any anomalies where something is actually a forced subtitle but isn't marked as such in MakeMKV.

 

[cdheer]

I haven't encountered that personally, but I've heard of it happening. Fortunately it's very easy to change the subtitles to forced using MKVToolnix.

 

[timothyemerson]

I haven't encountered that personally, but I've heard of it happening. Fortunately it's very easy to change the subtitles to forced using MKVToolnix.

Thanks cdheer, also good to know.

 

[fcormier]

I have another question that those who have backed-up several movies might be able to answer.

When MKVing an English-speaking movie with scenes in another language and where a non-English language appears as subtitles on screen without having to select subtitles at the beginning of the movie (e.g., Alejandro switching to Spanish in Sicario, Klingons speaking Klingon in Star Trek The Motion Picture), are these ALWAYS noted as "Forced Subtitles" in MakeMKV's analysis of what's on the disc?

The reason I ask is that I wanted to see if anyone's found any anomalies where something is actually a forced subtitle but isn't marked as such in MakeMKV.

I manage all the subtitles independently. However, most playback software doesn't have the logic for language dependent forced subtitles (that I know of).

 

[timothyemerson]

I manage all the subtitles independently. However, most playback software doesn't have the logic for language dependent forced subtitles (that I know of).

Thanks fcormier. Yes, it's how I'm playing the back-ups (via a Sony X800 and super-cheap-but-best-bang-for-buck-hardware-I've-ever-purchased Laser BD player) that's determining what file type to use. I'm going for MKV as the default and M2TS for anything with a subtitle/Atmos-only audio. I figure if I rip the entire M2TS file structure, I can MKV it later should the playback need arise. It's early days yet though so my approach may change.