Washable Dry Ink

A couple of weeks back I came across a thread on the AnyDVD HD forum at Slysoft.com wherein a forum member suggested using Pinnacle Studio 11 as an easier and faster way to convert blu-ray discs to MP4/MKV, so I decided to investigate.

First of all it should be noted that Pinnacle’s Studio 11 software is an editing platform, therefore, when you launch the application you’ll find an editors interface.

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RipBot264 is a conversion utility that does almost all of what MeGUI does, but in a much simpler and easier fashion.

Here’s a quick run through of some of the positives and negatives of using RipBot264

PROS:

• Easy to use (really, this can’t be overstated)
• Has a decent number of options
• Has DGindex built in (which helps with some tricky files)

CONS:

• Not as flexible as MeGUI
• Multiple audio tracks unavailable

Alright, so lets give this app a spin.

When you launch Rip Bot 264 you get a window that looks something like this:

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In my never ending quest to discover the fastest and easiest way to convert Blu-ray material to MP4 or MKV I have tested 2 new techniques. The first method was suggested by a member of the slysoft forums and makes use of Pinnacle Studio 11 software. The second method uses a free-ware utility called Ripbot.

I’ve been snowed under with work recently, hence the lack of updates, but hopefully I’ll be able to post a full review as well as a couple of new guides this week-end.

So here’s the scenario… You’ve made a film/home movie/whatever and paid to have it authored in full high definition on Blu-ray disc, but you’ve lost the orginal files and now you desperately need to get that movie off of the Blu-ray disc and on your HTPC, Apple TV, PS3 or whatever. So what can you do? Rip it and convert it!

For the sake of convenience this guide will suppose that you want to convert your Blu-Ray discs that you own to MP4 or MKV so that you can play on a Mac Mini HTPC or Apple TV.

Ok, so on to the good stuff.

This is going to be a 4 step process.

1. rip disc with AnyDVD HD

2. demux audio and video (subtitles optional)

3. encode audio and video to mp4

4. mux audio and video into final mp4/mkv

Before we start here’s what your going to need. Most of its free, some of its not.

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The company Psystar has announced a new computer they call the “OpenMac.” It claims to be a Leopard compatible Mac comprised of off the shelf PC-parts and selling for only $399. The faux Mac is cased in a white tower and comes with the following base configuration:

• 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 Processor
• 2GB of DDR2 667 memory
• Integrated Intel GMA 950 Graphics
• 20x DVD+/-R SATA drive that is Lightscribe-capable
• 4 rear USB Ports
• 250GB 7200RPM Drive

Why should we care?

This could be important to the Mac HTPC community because this would offer the buyer a cheaper and more importantly an upgradeable Mac HTPC.

Think for a moment if you could simply buy a new video card for your Mac Mini… How would it increase the performance if you could drop a $50 512mb Nvidia 8500GT into a PCIe slot? What about the possibility to add an internal 500GB hard drive for $100? Not to mention processor and RAM upgrades.

But perhaps the most important upgrade is that when Apple decides to support Blu-ray you could simply swap out the DVD drive for a Blu-ray drive and you suddenly have a Mac HTPC + Blu-ray player!

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20th Century Fox has announced that it will release Point Break on Blu-ray on July 1, 2008. This is the classic action film from 1991 being released in glorious high definition. The film stars Patrick Swayze, Keanu Reeves, Gary Busey. Pre-orders are available now, and if you order now you’ll save 30%.