Good Tips for Converting Protected Blu-ray Files

Music and movie lovers have an extensive collection of favorites which they play on their DVD player. Many of these are often in Blu-ray format because of the high quality and definition it provides. The problem arises when you want to listen or watch them on a computer without a special drive for playing this format. In most cases you will need to rip the files if you do not have a Blu-ray player application. You will need to have follow the correct procedure or face the possibility of losing the quality associated with the original files.

The first and most obvious prerequisite will be to have a blue ray drive installed onto the computer you are going to use for converting the files. Without such a drive, your PC will not be able to read the disk. The ripping software you choose will also have to be able to read the disk.

Then you will need to decide on the software to use for the process. There are quite of few options when it comes to choosing your software. The software you choose will depend on the procedure you want to follow. A good two step procedure that works well uses MakeMKV as ripper software to convert the Blu-ray into MKV format. This is then followed by the encoding process which can be done with a program like Handbrake.

An important addition which is also useful is a large capacity storage device. The initial ripping process produces a high quality MKV file at 1080p. These files can quite large so that you will definitely benefit in investing in a large capacity drive. The ripping process usually takes about 30 minutes.

During the encoding process you will be able to decide if you want to keep the default 1080p resolution of the original Blu-ray or not. If space is a problem, Handbrake is able to produce an HD quality output by deceasing the output to 720p. This is something you can experiment with and see which scenario suits your situation best. By decreasing the resolution for 1080p to 720p, the final size on the encoded file is reduced by half.

The Blu-ray format is renowned for its clarity and sound quality. Sometimes there is the need to take some of your favorites on the road with you where a Blu-ray player is not available. By making a few calculated decisions you can produce great quality ripped files with HD quality, without using enormous amounts of disk storage space.