How to Make a Digital Backup Copy of DVD & Blu-Ray Discs FAST Using MakeMKV HandBrake & GPU Encoding

Thanks for the great info!

If you're a home cinema enthusiast there's a lot of bad or missing advice in this video. You should ALWAYS set the frame rate to match the source frame rate, not transcode to 30. There is an option to change it to 'Source FPS'. Change that and save a new present. Also, you should setup the audio tracks for pass-thru so you retain the higher quality audio. Otherwise it'll transcode it as AAC. If you're backing up a film with Atmos or DTSX metadata, you'll need to output as an MKV file, not MP4. MP4 is more universal, but MKV can store more infomation such as subtitles and Atmos/DTSX height channel metadata. Transcoding the audio doesn't matter too much if you're just making a simple back up to watch on a laptop or through a TV's speakers, but if you have a surround sound cinema system and/or are backing up/digitising your library to use with your own media server (Plex/Emby/Jellyfin, etc.) then not passing through the native audio is somewhat destructive. Not everyone needs 7.1.4 Atmos encoded audio, but if you think you might have that kind of setup in the future, do more research and backup your content correctly... or just play the disc itself ;) This is a good 'beginners guide', but if you're setting up a dedicated server and/or have a high end setup, do some more research. You don't want to waste time backing up your library only to realise down the line you didn't include content you needed and have to do it all again. Once you work out the settings and passthrough options that work best for you, SAVE A NEW PRESET and use that.

This was an immensely useful TL;DR video. Thank you for taking the time to make it and for not dragging us through the entire history of optical storage first.

This did not help cause I us a Mac, that would be helpful! Thank you!

It's still working in Windows 11 ver. 24H2 as of Nov. 2024. You had me for a moment, thinking it wouldn't work, until I found the typo (in comments) that solved my problem.

Wouldn't it be easier to supreme about 50 bucks on software that does it all for you?
WinX, Tipard, Movavi and so on.

how do you find the .dll files on mac?

This video should be named 'How to make ripping a dvd as difficult as possible'!

I've been ripping my DVDs using only MakeMKV without issue. PLEX plays the files and so does VLC. I've ripped 180 DVDs so far and I've barely dented my 6TB HDDs storage capacity. Is there any reason to use Handbrake at all?

Great video! Helped me speed things up by choosing the right encoder for my GPU! I knew I was missing something from my previous handbreak transcodes!

If you are buying a graphics card specifically to help with encoding, any idea if intel, and, or nvidea is best for speed

Awesome. But note that in 2024 you need the old Handbrake v1.3.1, for it to work on windows at least. other than that, you da MAN!

2024 - I've now updated both Handbrake and MakeMKV, copied the file mentioned in this video, twice (and renaming as directed) and am using the same libdvdcss.dll file from the description's link. I did go through all of the folders and there was not dll file, just project files. I'm not sure if there's a way to generate it from those, but it doesn't matter, because it still worked.

MakeMKV would not update through the software, I had to download a new installer for it, which removed the old copy and installed the new. Handbrake updated through the existing software. I likely hadn't updated the software in a year or two, I'm guessing that since my last comment two years ago, I didn't try this.

I can confirm that I was able to open up a Blu-ray that I'd just received, that was giving me a DRM error before updating. I'm sure YMMV depending on the DVD/Blu-ray disc.

I guess I'm super awesome!
1st. Thanks. This had occur to me a while back but I couldn't get it to work. I wasn't doing the dll thing.
2nd. Your shirt. "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." XD

for people having problems with this method like I did, you can't use the current versions of handbrake and makemkv. you have to use handbrake version. 1.3.1 and makemkv version 1.15.1. you can download them off of their websites.

MakeMKV and Handbrake have released updates that may prevent this from working for you. If this is the case for you do this in MakeMKV.

In MakeMKV, in "View", "Preferences" and Integration you can enable builtin system dll integration.
If apps are not listed, just enable System32 (and SysWOW64 for 32bit app on 64bit system) it work.

Why would Make MKV have an error " Automatic SDF downloading is disabled or failed."?

Great tour in the program :-)

I believe the main track has 800 as the last 3 digits.

3 years later maybe this can get pinned. BDinfo specifically made for blu-rays will tell you which one is which. Personally I don't do any transcoding. I am not ashamed to admit that I am a quality snob. Plus, with HDD being still pretty cheap, at a 12TB HDD you can fit 200 4K movies at full quality. For 1080p movies at fully quality you are looking at 400.

Average 4k movie as is on disk (average is what I am talking about here) is about 60Gig and 1080p is about 30Gig.

ever run handbrake in an ubuntu VM and have encoding times that are acceptable and achieve 4k video and 7.1 HD surround sound?

I'm a little confused about MakeMKV. It looks like you only used the program for a file that HandBrake needed. Was that all the program was needed for or did I miss a step where the beta key was needed?

Unless you don’t care about quality, never use GPU encoding. Apparently that’s most everyone who’s commenting on this video.

Is there a reason for using handbreak over makemkv? I've just been using that and I haven't had any issues

I know this video is 3 years old, but just did this with my i-9-12900k and RTX 4090, it did the whole process for a 3 hour movie in 10 minutes.

Not valid anymore. Fatal errors stop the process!

Is this really a better option to do than the first? Seems like a lot more steps than using MKV and then handbrake to compress. So you’re pretty much just use Make mkv to get the DDL file into handbrake and that’s it. You don’t use it anymore? I’m running a Mac is there any difference? Thanks again for everything in advance and thanks for your hard work. It really helps.

i was at work, and i wanted to watch the martian. and i realized it was only on services i'm not currently subscribed to... so now i'm learning how to set up a plex server or whatever and just rip my blu-rays, because like a dolt i sold all my download codes when i opened the discs. lol your video was super easy to follow and concise. hopefully i can get this all figured out and be able to stream my blu-ray movie copies from work now :)

Thanks very much for your time and effort for this video.. still works today [june2023] as long as you have Handbrake v1.3.1, doesn't work with 1.6.1 for me anyway.. running some tests on the quality that it puts out compared to BD-Rebuilder, but they both use ffMpeg and NVEnc (Nvidia GFX card) so they should be the same... cheers [EDIT] only down side I can see is that the handbrake method needs to have the disc spinning continuously, whereas MakeMkv rip to a multistream .mkv file. no more use of the disc drive, as well as that .mkv can be played back at full quality, if required.

Thanks for the video, it's very helpful.
Though I'm coming up with an issue; Handbreak keeps crashing when it finishes scanning the source Blu-Ray.
I need help! I tried the mainstream and Nightly build of Handbreak and it still crashes while it's finishing the scan from blu-ray disk source. I've tested it with multiple movies..

It's strange because it was working fine for one Blu-Ray but then started acting up and now won't finish the initial scan for anything.

for watching to the end you could have at least shown some feet... kappa

English always has the "xxx800" number in the mpls

How far we've come...I have a 5950X and an RTX3090 and encoding a movie from BR to 1080p takes all of not even 25 minutes. Sorry, but as a nerd, this is cool af. 🤣 It always AMAZES me to see how much more powerful stuff gets over time. Maybe it's time to build a new 7950X or i9-13900 + 4090 machine! Hahaha

Hi! All my videos are coming out splotchy kinda like a checkered board. Any ideas? I wish it would let me upload a pic for an example.

I honestly can't believe I didn't know about copying the DLLs from MakeMKV! I don't currently want to keep full backups, so this saves me a step!

Man, you don't know what "backup copy" mens. "Copy" means to preserve whole disc without changes, not to reencoding. Stop fool people.

I coulda swore the first time I watched this video it was letting me use my gpu, and now for some reason the option is grayed out...weird.

For some odd reason I can do this on laptop but not my desktop

I need to upgrade my computer. The one I have is 10 years old and it takes 24 hours or more to backup a 4k disc with handbrake. Could you recommend what I need for efficient hardware to create in the time frame you stated in this video. Is their a computer that comes with everything in the cabinet? Please be specific for I am not computer literate.

If you are just ripping DVD should I still be using 1080p 30 surround?

Love this video and everything was working perfectly until a few days ago. When the latest update was pushed (1.6.1) I lost the ability to directly rip my DVDs. It appears that the update has somehow blocked the use of the .dll or altered how it utilizes them? Anyone else have this problem or found a solution? I tried reinstalling the .dlls but with no success. I am still able to rip with MakeMKV and then convert using Handbrake, but it sure was nice to be able to do both in one step!

Very fast hard to follow even slowed down.

Can anyone help explain this issue - I made a few YT videos and used a few clips from very well known films from another YT channel and got a copy right claim (not strike). Not from a film studio but from the channel itself, which posts individual movie scenes. I figured I would just buy the dvd of the film and upload my own clips. Then I thought, isn't that also copyright? I just want to make silly parody videos. So how can another YT channel claim a copyright if he/she is uploading copyright material to begin with? Hope that makes sense.

This video has helped me greatly. I moved into an RV fulltime. And with my home movie collection being so large that it doesnt fit in the RV, this is an awesome alternative. Watching this video, I did notice the only involvement MakeMKV has in your video is to copy .dll files to HandBrake .... is this correct, or am I missing something to use MakeMKV more effectively?

I need a quicker way to copy about 1200 dvds. Any suggestions?

What is the reason to use the mkvmaker rather than just using the handbreak only?
Is it because the source is blue-ray?
If it is just dvd, does it still requires the mkvmaker step?

Whenever I use the GPU encoding all of my monitors turn red or white and I have to repeatedly reload the GPU drivers in order to see my screens. The encoding process continues throughout this. I'm not sure if it's a driver issue or what is causing it. I have GTX 1080 on latest drivers that works perfectly for gaming.