DVD Shrink for Blu Ray?

[jamd1]

I have backed up many standard Dvd's using DVD Shrink, Dvd decrypter and DVD fab and anyDVD. I am just starting to try backing up Blu-ray movies. Having read through this informative forum I have not found any simple compression tools. Using AnyDVD HD 6.4.0.4 to rip the movie image - is there then a simple way to compress the movie to fit on say a DVD 9 disc.? I guess a useful tool would be Dvd shrink for Blu -ray. Does such a thing exist ? If not is there an easy way to compress a Blu-ray movie either in Blu-ray image format or to an mkv/avi file - whilst maintaining the HD content?
Thx for any help.

[setarip_old]

Hi!

Using this Forum's "Search" function for "Compress" and "Bluray" (all as one entry) yields:

http://forum.doom9.org/search.php?searchid=3444186

[Furiousflea]

....uhhhh, nothing?

[~bT~]

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=134402

[Sharc]

@jamd1
The recoding procedure depends on how you want to playback your compressed DVD5/9, like on a standard DVD player or on a BD player.

You find related discussions here:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=135335

[jamd1]

Thx for the links - Have looked through some of them before. The answer seems to be that there is no simple (one product) solution to compressing a Blu-Ray movie- either whole disc or movie only. I have tried compressing .mkv or HD .avi/wmv files using ConvertXtoDvd (latest version ) this was suggested in some threads here - but this clearly removes the HD content and the resulting movie is only 480 standard definition. Naturally you first need to get to the stage where you can make the .mkv or HD avi files first.( I have just experimented with samples I have managed to download- Lol I see some people download whole 10gb movies - morality and legality aside , even if I wanted to download such files I couldn't affort to pay for the bandwidth.)
I am just suprised that there is nothing as simple as Dvd shrink available yet - i guess this will come in time.

@Sharc - My main objective is to backup my Blu-ray movies onto a DVD9 so that they can be played in HD on a PS3- THANKS.

[frank]

You must reencode to 720p for DVD-9. That is not a backup, that is lower quality! A prozess that needs 14-24 hours and more!
But if you don't have a HD flat screen you will never see the difference. Then better stay on dvd.

[Rogi]

Try RipBot264 (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=127611)

[donburkard@temple]

so ahhh... can i just rip a blue ray disk to my hard drive and turn it into an .iso file like i do with all my other dvds? i dont need to shrink it or anything, im simple.

[SamuriHL]

If you're using AnyDVD HD, you can rip directly to an ISO with AnyDVD enabled and you'll be able to mount it and play it back. No need to rip to folders first and then try to create a working ISO. It can be done that way, but, you have to remember to select UDF 2.5 when creating the ISO from folders. I would just use something like ImgBurn or CloneCD to create an ISO directly from the disc with AnyDVD running. All the protection will be removed as the ISO is being created. :) Then you can mount it with the latest Virtual CloneDrive or Daemon Tools and play it back. Just remember that some of the discs tend to be rather large and take up a lot of room. That's where the shrinking concept would be handy. But none of the current shrinking methods allow you to retain extras or menus. I'm hopeful that some day we'll see a program that allows us to remove trailers and certain streams to reduce the size while retaining the menus and special features. Having that program create a compliant ISO would also be quite nice. I think we're quite a ways away from that, though.

[jamd1]

If you're using AnyDVD HD, you can rip directly to an ISO with AnyDVD enabled and you'll be able to mount it and play it back. No need to rip to folders first and then try to create a working ISO. It can be done that way, but, you have to remember to select UDF 2.5 when creating the ISO from folders. I would just use something like ImgBurn or CloneCD to create an ISO directly from the disc with AnyDVD running. All the protection will be removed as the ISO is being created. :) Then you can mount it with the latest Virtual CloneDrive or Daemon Tools and play it back. Just remember that some of the discs tend to be rather large and take up a lot of room. That's where the shrinking concept would be handy. But none of the current shrinking methods allow you to retain extras or menus. I'm hopeful that some day we'll see a program that allows us to remove trailers and certain streams to reduce the size while retaining the menus and special features. Having that program create a compliant ISO would also be quite nice. I think we're quite a ways away from that, though.

AnyDVD sound good but still only useful if you only want to play the ISO image on your PC - It would be nice for a simple solution to make the image playable on a PS3 or Blu ray DVD player though.

[SamuriHL]

AnyDVD sound good but still only useful if you only want to play the ISO image on your PC - It would be nice for a simple solution to make the image playable on a PS3 or Blu ray DVD player though.

Eh? Just burn the ISO to a blank disc if you want to play it in a stand alone. Of course you need a burner and blank media, but, many people are doing that with no problem.

[captain_video]

Eh? Just burn the ISO to a blank disc if you want to play it in a stand alone. Of course you need a burner and blank media, but, many people are doing that with no problem.

That's fine if the original BD disc is a single layer disc (i.e., < 25GB). Most blank BD discs I've seen are only 25GB and won't work for burning isos of anything larger than that, which pretty much includes anything released on Blu-Ray these days. If blank BD discs are available as DL discs then it should work fine, except that it would probably be more cost effective just to buy another commercial disc.

[SamuriHL]

That's fine if the original BD disc is a single layer disc (i.e., < 25GB). Most blank BD discs I've seen are only 25GB and won't work for burning isos of anything larger than that, which pretty much includes anything released on Blu-Ray these days. If blank BD discs are available as DL discs then it should work fine, except that it would probably be more cost effective just to buy another commercial disc.

Hence why I don't burn them. :) I back them up as ISO images on my hard drive for that very reason. Some day when the media is cheap enough, I can burn all the ISO's I've made. Until then, I can mount them. The post I was replying to was saying my method wasn't useful for playback on a PS3 or stand alone. But, if you have the media, there's no reason it can't be burned. As for dual layer, BD-RE dual layer media exists. It's certainly not cheap, but, at least it's rewritable and works on (most/some?) stand alones and PS3's. (Whether the stand alone plays BD-R/E or not is dependent on whether the firmware supports it I believe)

But I'd still like a way to remove content while retaining the special features and menus. THAT would be sweet. It's starting to become rather trivial to do a movie only backup as tools like TSRemuxer evolve, but, that's not quite everything I'd want in a backup.

[Turtleggjp]

Does anyone know how long it took between when the first DVDs were decrypted and when tools such as DVD shrink came out? I wasn't doing this sort of stuff back then, but I'd imagine that it took quite a while.

Now with Blu Ray you have 3 video codecs to deal with, lots of audio codecs, not to mention the complex BD-J menu system. I'm sure the right people are working on such tools, but considering most of this stuff will probably have to be reverse engineered since they will not likely be granted a liscense by the BDA, I would expect it to take a while for a one-click solution to appear.

[setarip_old]

Hi!Does anyone know how long it took between when the first DVDs were decrypted and when tools such as DVD shrink came out?"DeCSS", the first decrypting program, initially became available in October 1999.

"DVDShrink" initially became available in either February or March of 2003 (V.1.03 4/10/03).

[evdberg]

I always thought DoD SpeedRipper was the first decrypter? I had it one month before DeCSS.

And just for the record, DVD2one came out on the 23th of january 2003, the worlds first '1-click-DVD-copy-tool' ...

[Turtleggjp]

Hi!"DeCSS", the first decrypting program, initially became available in October 1999.

"DVDShrink" initially became available in either February or March of 2003 (V.1.03 4/10/03).

Wow, so at least 3 years. So considering BackupHDDVD came out in December 2006 (keys first released shortly after in January 2007), we shouldn't expect 1 click solutions until 2010. And that's assuming they can figure everything out as fast as they did for DVDs. Granted, there probably wasn't the demand for them back when DeCSS was first released, since no one hardly knew about decrypting DVDs. Now that we are used to it, the demand for shrinking Blu Rays is quite high (which is evident based on how many questions I see like this one).

Personally, I prefer to get my hands dirty playing with all the tools. It's much more fun (for me anyway) that way, and I feel like I actually learn something. That's why I've never touched any of the 1-click backup solutions for DVDs.

[MrBDRipper]

Hello, I would like to recommend a free tool that can easily backup Blu-ray Disc/HD-DVD/DVD to various video formats. It's name is AVGo Media Recorder, using this software you don't need to care about how to decrypting the encrypted disc. What you need to do is just Playing video and Recording it.
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=137132

[blutach]

MrBDRipper

Please do not cross post. You have already opened a thread letting us know about your product.

Regards

[slaxer07]

Not sure if you have a Xbox 360 but what Ive been doing is ripping the movie with eac3to. I convert the video to mkv and audio to ac3. Once this is done you can convert it into pretty much whatever you want. I've mostly used windows media encoder and convert to wmv (vc1 and wma pro) the problem with that is on my PS3 it wont read the wma pro so its just video also the video seems to be soft, you lose detail no matter what bitrate. I've also converted to mp4 with megui the problem with this is niether the 360 or the PS3 wil play mp4's larger than 4GB but the video looks quite well.

[dat720]

I've mostly used windows media encoder and convert to wmv

You dont have to convert to WMV for XBOX360 to be able to playback HD/BR, XVID/DIVX with MP3/AC3 audio is fine also.

[slaxer07]

You dont have to convert to WMV for XBOX360 to be able to playback HD/BR, XVID/DIVX with MP3/AC3 audio is fine also.

Right, but the 360 or PS3 wont read a xvid file over 4GB and gets a little choppy at high bitrates also sometimes when playing a xvid file with the PS3 about 10 mins into it pops up a error saying unsupported format (which it used to not do with older firmware, about the same time mp4's that were playable became unplayable). Although, the few time I did convert to xvid IMO it looked better than a wmv with higher bitrates. I just haven't really found a way to convert to wmv with high quality and I wish the consoles would support xvid and divx better.

[dat720]

Thats not overly correct, it does have a stupid moment every now and again and goes choppy maybe 2-3 times in the movie but it certainly will play files larger than 4gb, i have multiple hd/br rips ranging between 4gb and 11gb majority of them are around 7-9gb and all of them play perfectly (except the previously mentioned glitch)

[slaxer07]

Thats good to know I was going off of xbox's website on the file size so never actually tried a larger file than 4Gb. The stutter youre talking about is the same thing I've been chasing for a while now. I've tried differant encoders, media, streaming programs, bitrates, encoding methods, and they just wont go away. If only it didn't take days to encode mp4 and the xbox supported 5.1 aac.:thanks:

[dat720]

I agree the stutter is friggen anoying, but i've come to accept it, i really wish microsoft would open up the codec support tho, offer more codecs mpg aac dts it all should be supported and its just crap that ms don't want to supply codecs for them!

[rernst]

Thx for the links - Have looked through some of them before. The answer seems to be that there is no simple (one product) solution to compressing a Blu-Ray movie- either whole disc or movie only. /snip/

@Sharc - My main objective is to backup my Blu-ray movies onto a DVD9 so that they can be played in HD on a PS3- THANKS.

It's pretty straightforward: Rip using any tools such as AnyDVDHD (if you don't like a commercial one, use the DVDFab one) to hard disk. Use TSRemux to create a ts file with your movie and audio in it. Install Community Codec Pack (need Haali splitter). Use Avisynth with Directshowsource() to feed AVS file into mencoder. Rescale in mencoder from 1920x1080 to 1280x720. Done.

If you just want to back up - you really cannot compress the original title much more, it is already VC1 or AVC, this isn't MPEG2 to start with so the only way to lower the size is to rescale.

I don't know, the process is pretty straightforward, if you want I can write a guide but I thought the whole thing was already much known.

I only could use mencoder, Staxrip doesn't seem to want to do the right thing with VC1. Commercial encoders can read the stuff but crapped out on me eventually. Nero did *not* work for me at the latest level but kept crashing. Tried on Vista and XP.

Mencoder without Directshowsource() starts complaining about missing codec and there are rather complicated ways that don't work under Vista.

But be prepared for some heavy crunching: My quadcore was kept pretty busy for a night for a 2 pass encode.

[dat720]

You don't need AVS scripts for mencoder, my approach is simple, rip with eac3to, pack audio into mkv with video, compress mkv with mencoder..... no need for 3rd party codec's or even avs, it's very easy.

It goes something like this:

d:\vidtools\eac3to\eac3to.exe g: 1) 3: BluRay.mkv 4: BluRay.ac3 -libav

d:\vidtools\mkvtoolnix\mkvmerge.exe -o BluRaywithAudio.mkv --display-dimensions 1:1920x1080 -d 1 -A -S BluRay.mkv -a 0 -D -S BluRay.ac3 --track-order 0:1,1:0

d:\vidtools\mplayer\mencoder.exe -vf harddup -ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=9000:threads=2:max_bframes=0:vhq=0:me_quality=6:hq_ac:trellis -channels 6 -oac copy -o Out.avi BluRaywithAudio.mkv

^^ there would also be cropping involved if the movie was a 2.39 ratio movie ^^

The first 2 steps take around 30-60mins depending on the size of the video track, and unfortunetly cos of my crappy Pentium D the mencoder encode takes around 6-8 hours (for a 1920x800 movie), upto 12 if i do a 2 pass encode.

[rernst]

Indeed, this works for H264 encoded Blurays. For VC1 ones it keeps asking for wvc1dmod.dll (search threads here) and it is somewhat of a pain to install. I found no way to do so under Vista.

You need to rip the the disk first, of course. Did you mean to omit that step?

Finally, there are very few players (and no standalones that I am aware of) that will play MP4 in an MKV container. I found that you needed MP4BCREATOR to dump audio and video and then remix with with mkvmerge again you YMMV.

[dat720]

Indeed, this works for H264 encoded Blurays. For VC1 ones it keeps asking for wvc1dmod.dll (search threads here) and it is somewhat of a pain to install. I found no way to do so under Vista.

It must be your build of mencoder, the build i am using works flawlessly for VC1/AVC, i have yet to find a HD/BR that it won't work with, and i have ripped abotu 30 of them with this process.


You need to rip the the disk first, of course. Did you mean to omit that step?

d:\vidtools\eac3to\eac3to.exe g: 1) 3: BluRay.mkv 4: BluRay.ac3 -libav <<<< this is ripping the disc, if you notice the G: for the drive letter, eac3to can rip the video/audio track's directly off the disc, it muxes the video track into a mkv container and unfortunetly just decodes the audio stream and dumps (i don't know how/if eac3to could mux the audio into the mkv) it to the chosen format.

[dat720]

MEncoder Sherpya-SVN-r26446-4.2.3 (C) 2000-2008 MPlayer Team
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 3.20GHz (Family: 15, Model: 6, Stepping: 5)
CPUflags: Type: 15 MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 1 SSE2: 1
Compiled with runtime CPU detection.
success: format: 0 data: 0x0 - 0x4544a157
[mkv] Track ID 1: video (V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC), -vid 0
[mkv] Track ID 2: audio (A_AC3), -aid 0, -alang und
[mkv] Will play video track 1.
Matroska file format detected.
VIDEO: [avc1] 1920x1080 24bpp 23.976 fps 0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s)
[V] filefmt:31 fourcc:0x31637661 size:1920x1080 fps:23.98 ftime:=0.0417
==========================================================================

[rernst]

It must be your build of mencoder, the build i am using works flawlessly for VC1/AVC, i have yet to find a HD/BR that it won't work with, and i have ripped abotu 30 of them with this process.



d:\vidtools\eac3to\eac3to.exe g: 1) 3: BluRay.mkv 4: BluRay.ac3 -libav <<<< this is ripping the disc, if you notice the G: for the drive letter, eac3to can rip the video/audio track's directly off the disc, it muxes the video track into a mkv container and unfortunetly just decodes the audio stream and dumps (i don't know how/if eac3to could mux the audio into the mkv) it to the chosen format.

Hmm, must get a new build of mencoder, maybe. Do you have the mentioned DLL in your driver directory?

I was not aware that eac3to could rip without any other tools. Are you sure you are not using AnydvdHD?

This here indicates that you need Nero+the HD plugin: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=125966

My solution was essentially free.

The thread also indicates that you need Haali.

Granted, I may be all wrong about it. But I go by the author's info.

[rernst]

MEncoder Sherpya-SVN-r26446-4.2.3 (C) 2000-2008 MPlayer Team
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 3.20GHz (Family: 15, Model: 6, Stepping: 5)
CPUflags: Type: 15 MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 1 SSE2: 1
Compiled with runtime CPU detection.
success: format: 0 data: 0x0 - 0x4544a157
[mkv] Track ID 1: video (V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC), -vid 0
[mkv] Track ID 2: audio (A_AC3), -aid 0, -alang und
[mkv] Will play video track 1.
Matroska file format detected.
VIDEO: [avc1] 1920x1080 24bpp 23.976 fps 0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s)
[V] filefmt:31 fourcc:0x31637661 size:1920x1080 fps:23.98 ftime:=0.0417
==========================================================================

Note that you are working with AVC, not VC1.

[dat720]

In my Mplayer directory all i have are 2 files, mplayer.exe and mencoder.exe.

I have AnyDVD installed, but only to bypass the security on the disc, i can assure you that eac3to can rip directly from the disc, try it.....

No, it reccomends you use the Nero HD plugin, it works just fine without it, i use this command 4: BluRay.ac3 -libav which uses the libav codec which is a free open source codec.

I'm not sure if you absolutely need haali, but i do have it installed. I will uninstall it and try ripping a HD.

Edit: Just Uninstalled Haali and it failed to rip the video track stating that it could not find haali..... so that pretty much sums that up.

[dat720]

That MKV file is actually a AVC1 video stream.

Not sure what the deal is there, but all my BR/HD's show as either AVC1 or WVC1.

[rernst]

That MKV file is actually a AVC1 video stream.

That's what I was trying to say. I'd like to see a solution for a *VC1* Bluray.

So you *do* need AnyDVDHD. What I was trying to show that you can Rip (decrypt) with the free DVDFab decrypter.

On another note: Does your process preserve subtitles? And how do you specify which stream to transcode (say you want to go from DD to AAC)? I used TSRemux to get an idea what is on the disk.

I would not recode to xvid - unless you have absolutely no other way for playback. This is a huge step down in quality. I found that recoding to 6000 at a smaller picture size in H.264 pretty much preserves the quality (glancing at it).

If you recode to xvid I also understand that your recoding time is so short (I presume you use a dual core?).

[SamuriHL]

So you *do* need AnyDVDHD. What I was trying to show that you can Rip (decrypt) with the free DVDFab decrypter.


Have you tried that on anything recent? Last I knew it didn't handle mkb v4 much less v7 and certainly not anything BD+ protected. It's not a bad solution for older titles but doesn't do much for anything released in the last 10-12 months as far as I know.

[dat720]

Meh not sure, i have yet to come across a BR/HD that mencoder can't do.

I realise you can do it with DVDFab, but for the way i do things AnyDVD suits my needs better.

You can preserve subtitles if you want, but i usually don't only movie i have wass for Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift as it has parts not spoken in english, in which case i ripped the required sub stream converted it to a srt file, manually removed all the english spoken parts (that sucked) then hard subbed the video track with a avs script.

If you use eac3to like this: eac3to.exe g: it will spit out a list of tracks on teh disc after scanning it....
Then you set the command up like so: eac3to.exe g: 1) 3: BluRay.mkv 4: BluRay.ac3 -libav which will rip track 3 to the mkv file, and track 4 to a ac3 file.

There is a reason for XVID, those stupid gay Xbox 360's (that i just had to have... now i want a PS3) only supports very limited codec's xvid being one of them.

Originally Posted by dat720
MEncoder Sherpya-SVN-r26446-4.2.3 (C) 2000-2008 MPlayer Team
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 3.20GHz (Family: 15, Model: 6, Stepping: 5)

Pentium D's are basicly 2 Pentium 4's on the same die, so dual core yes, but a screamer it ain't, unfortunetly it is the fastest cpu this mb supports, i am currently purchasing parts to build a Core2 E8500 based system, i don't really need a quad yet, i'd rather have more outright processing power than 4 cores, as xvid does not multithread very well, so most of the time my system see's no more than 50% cpu load unless i'm encoding 2 movies at once.

Have a look at the guide listed in my signature, i have a pretty good run down of how i utilise eac3to there.

[SamuriHL]

I know AnyDVD handles all those! :) I meant DVDFab HD Decrypter. As far as I know it doesn't handle anything recent and certainly nothing with BD+ on it (I am Legend, for example). AnyDVD is the way to go for this process IMO cause you can work directly off the disc and only rip the parts you need rather than ripping the entire disc to HDD first. That was my point. :)

[dat720]

Oh :) gotcha i might just delete that post seen's it's not required!

I know AnyDVD handles all those! :) I meant DVDFab HD Decrypter. As far as I know it doesn't handle anything recent and certainly nothing with BD+ on it (I am Legend, for example). AnyDVD is the way to go for this process IMO cause you can work directly off the disc and only rip the parts you need rather than ripping the entire disc to HDD first. That was my point. :)

That is why i chose that method, why rip it to the HDD then demux it? Just consumes more space and slow's down the process.

[SamuriHL]

No problem. My process for shrinking BD's is a bit more involved than what you're doing. I use eac3to to identify the playlist file I want (good for those irritating seamless branching titles) and then I use TSMuxer to rip out the video file. (I suppose I could just do it with eac3to now that I see what you're doing there) Then I use ripbot to shrink the video down a bit. One question I have is whether ripbot supports converting VC1 to AVC. I honestly don't know the answer to that one but that might be a solution as well. One caveat is that ripbot is NOT a qiuck process. :D My poor little X2 4200+ takes a beating on that process. Once it's done, I open up the original playlist in TSmuxer, add the video I just processed with ripbot, and create a new blu-ray folder structure using the audio and subtitles from the original stream and the injected video I created with ripbot. After that I just make an ISO out of it with my makeISO.bat script that drives ImgBurn and I'm good to go. Quality is still excellent and the ISO is much smaller than just ripping the movie in many cases.

[rernst]

Note that you are working with AVC, not VC1.

You are correct. I see you use the version from SVN. I should give the new build a try. I have an older one.

[dat720]

I might just have to save that little snippet into google docs for future reference :) thanks!

I do everything in this house via samba/upnp so i have not yet had the need to do any BRShrinks.....

[dat720]

You are correct. I see you use the version from SVN. I should give the new build a try. I have an older one.

I only use the SVN builds for mencoder, it has been quite a long time since they released a official build.

[rernst]

No problem. My process for shrinking BD's is a bit more involved than what you're doing. I use eac3to to identify the playlist file I want (good for those irritating seamless branching titles) and then I use TSMuxer to rip out the video file. (I suppose I could just do it with eac3to now that I see what you're doing there) Then I use ripbot to shrink the video down a bit. One question I have is whether ripbot supports converting VC1 to AVC. I honestly don't know the answer to that one but that might be a solution as well. One caveat is that ripbot is NOT a qiuck process. :D My poor little X2 4200+ takes a beating on that process. Once it's done, I open up the original playlist in TSmuxer, add the video I just processed with ripbot, and create a new blu-ray folder structure using the audio and subtitles from the original stream and the injected video I created with ripbot. After that I just make an ISO out of it with my makeISO.bat script that drives ImgBurn and I'm good to go. Quality is still excellent and the ISO is much smaller than just ripping the movie in many cases.

That sounds interesting. Worthwhile researching. Yes, all this stuff is pretty challenging for the processor. I also wind up with a file that could easily be burned to DVD.

[dat720]

My poor little X2 4200+ takes a beating on that process.

Sound's like you need a upgrade jsut as much as i do!!!

[rernst]

You wouldn't happen to have a binary Windows build? I can let you ftp it to my site.

The svn checkout looks like an awful lot of compiles and the Makefile is for Linux.

[SamuriHL]

Your mencoder idea can replace Ripbot in my little method. I've done both with good results. One of the really sweet things I did recently was use mencoder on some HD mpeg2 videos I recorded from tv and converted it to AVC so that I could burn each episode on a DVD-5 as an AVCHD for playback on my PS3. It came out REALLY well. Just convert the video (no audio) with mencoder and then use TSMuxer to create a new blu-ray structure using the original AC3 from the mpeg2 and the new video you created with mencoder. Burn it to a DVD-5 and you're good.

[SamuriHL]

Sound's like you need a upgrade jsut as much as i do!!!

At some point my HTPC out in the living room is moving to my bedroom and getting replaced with a quad core monster. So yea, I need another upgrade but depending on some financial things I may not get to do it as soon as I'd like. I can let it run for as long as needed. Not really a big deal.

[moviefan]

I have also thought about a way to only (let's say) "reencode a Blu-ray", but also keep menu etc. to a size of BD-25 or even DVD-9 (or BD9... if it's called like that). I have come up with the question: Would a Blu-ray movie be played back without problems, if I extracted the movie m2ts file, reencoded the video with e.g. x264 Blu-ray compliant, kept all audio and subpicture tracks, remuxed it with TSMuxer in exactly the same structure like the original one and replaced the original m2ts by the new one? So I put strong emphasis on "keeping the same structure etc." which means also using AVC if original stream was AVC etc., only a compliant reencode of the movie.
In good old DVD times, there were information about the sectors of the VOB data stored, but as much as I understand Blu-ray structure, there is nothing like that.

So could anybody try out or confirm my idea?