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If you know me, you know that I own multiple thousands of DVDs and Blurays. Since the early 2000s, I’ve been ripping my DVDs, as a form of backup… and also a way for me to easily access my films and television shows. In those early days, I did recommend a paid program called DVDFab … but, as the program shifted to a subscription model for Bluray, I couldn’t support the software anymore. You can buy a “lifetime” subscription for $200, but I chose not to.
Instead, I went with a free Bluray ripper called MakeMKV, which I really liked. It’s free as long as you get a new license from them every month. I did that for a while, until I got sick of the license expiring every month… so I did pay (or “donate”) for the software. I’ve no regret about the one-time payment, it’s probably the best purchase I’ve ever made, considering that I use it on all my Blurays.
Very recently, I bought True Romance on 4K from Arrow Films. It was very expensive, I thought it would just come with a Bluray for me to rip… but it did not. I own a lot of 4K discs, and all of them came with a Bluray, so naturally, I just thought this new release would automatically come with a BD. To add insult to injury, Arrow Films, charging as much as they do, they have never offered a free digital or streaming copy of their films.
Without a BD, I had to teach myself how to rip from a 4k UHD disc. This is how I did it:
#1 UHD 4K Blu-Ray Reader
I bought Archgon’s External USB 3.0 UHD 4K Blu-Ray Writer Super Drive for $125 from Amazon. The aluminum encased drive will read UHD, read/write Bluray, M-Disc BD-R, DVD, and CD… and will work for PC and Mac. It comes with a travel protective case and all the necessary cords to plug into your computer.
In order to get the drive to rip 4k, you need to flash the drive image to from BU40N to BU40N 1.03MK. You can download all the drivers and the “MartyMcNuts” Flasher on forum.makemkv.
#2 MakeMKV
Once you flash your UHD drive, MakeMKV will be able to read the disc. I normally rip all the English audio tracks (some are audio commentaries that I want to hear) and I rip the subtitles.
The 4K files are huge. True Romance was over 70GB. You have to remember that the size of DVDs are only 4.7GB.
#3 Handbrake
The raw file is too large, so you’ll need to shrink the film to a more manageable size using the free Handbrake. My personal preference is 720p, which is “good” quality and the file size is small enough that you can locally stream or put on a USB drive for travel. Unfortunately, re-sizing the 4k resolution to 720p, took my computer over 9 hours to encode. If you have a really fast computer, I’m sure you can make it go a little faster… but if you have a slower computer, I’ll bet it might take a day!
These are optional steps:
Optional: Subtitles
You can use Subtitle Editor to extract the subtitles to a text file called *.SRT. From there you can attached it to Handbrake to offer select-able subtitles.
Optional: Tagging
I use MetaX to tag all my files with artwork and metadata. The software used to be free, but they are now a paid software. I used it a lot, so I just paid $10 for it.
I hope this helps you. It was a learning experience for me, particularly about flashing the drive to the correct firmware. If you don’t want to go through the same problem I went through, they do sell “pre-flash” drives from resellers. I’m certain there’s an upcharge.
Between you and me, I probably won’t be buying too many 4K discs (especially if it doesn’t come with a Bluray), because it just simply takes too long to encode a 4k file.
Instead, I went with a free Bluray ripper called MakeMKV, which I really liked. It’s free as long as you get a new license from them every month. I did that for a while, until I got sick of the license expiring every month… so I did pay (or “donate”) for the software. I’ve no regret about the one-time payment, it’s probably the best purchase I’ve ever made, considering that I use it on all my Blurays.
Very recently, I bought True Romance on 4K from Arrow Films. It was very expensive, I thought it would just come with a Bluray for me to rip… but it did not. I own a lot of 4K discs, and all of them came with a Bluray, so naturally, I just thought this new release would automatically come with a BD. To add insult to injury, Arrow Films, charging as much as they do, they have never offered a free digital or streaming copy of their films.
Without a BD, I had to teach myself how to rip from a 4k UHD disc. This is how I did it:
I bought Archgon’s External USB 3.0 UHD 4K Blu-Ray Writer Super Drive for $125 from Amazon. The aluminum encased drive will read UHD, read/write Bluray, M-Disc BD-R, DVD, and CD… and will work for PC and Mac. It comes with a travel protective case and all the necessary cords to plug into your computer.
In order to get the drive to rip 4k, you need to flash the drive image to from BU40N to BU40N 1.03MK. You can download all the drivers and the “MartyMcNuts” Flasher on forum.makemkv.
Once you flash your UHD drive, MakeMKV will be able to read the disc. I normally rip all the English audio tracks (some are audio commentaries that I want to hear) and I rip the subtitles.
The 4K files are huge. True Romance was over 70GB. You have to remember that the size of DVDs are only 4.7GB.
The raw file is too large, so you’ll need to shrink the film to a more manageable size using the free Handbrake. My personal preference is 720p, which is “good” quality and the file size is small enough that you can locally stream or put on a USB drive for travel. Unfortunately, re-sizing the 4k resolution to 720p, took my computer over 9 hours to encode. If you have a really fast computer, I’m sure you can make it go a little faster… but if you have a slower computer, I’ll bet it might take a day!
These are optional steps:
You can use Subtitle Editor to extract the subtitles to a text file called *.SRT. From there you can attached it to Handbrake to offer select-able subtitles.
I use MetaX to tag all my files with artwork and metadata. The software used to be free, but they are now a paid software. I used it a lot, so I just paid $10 for it.
I hope this helps you. It was a learning experience for me, particularly about flashing the drive to the correct firmware. If you don’t want to go through the same problem I went through, they do sell “pre-flash” drives from resellers. I’m certain there’s an upcharge.
Between you and me, I probably won’t be buying too many 4K discs (especially if it doesn’t come with a Bluray), because it just simply takes too long to encode a 4k file.
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