Free Blu-ray Ripper to MKV (Windows) - Aiseesoft - Today only

Quote from FrankTheCrank : I've been using this guide: http://lifehacker.com/5559007/the...collection Works like a charm. Uses both Handbrake and MakeMKV. I've done about 30 BD rips. They look great through my ATV2 via my 2TB LAN cloud.

I only break out MakeMKV when I have issues with DVDFab passkey (free version). It's usually Disney titles that will give me issues causing me to break out MakeMKV. Besides, doing it that way completely eliminates a step (you rip it/convert it straight from the disc rather than ripping it to the hard drive first). Many guides you find on the internet are dated since Handbrake recently upgraded to allow direct from disc conversions (maybe it was one or two patches ago). I actually found it out by accident one day when I tried it (I know that it never used to work in the past).

Edit: Just to confirm; that guide is slightly dated just by references to ripbot264 and some of the options they have in Hanbrake, but I do agree with what he was saying about 720vs1080 - there's not much difference in content but it makes a huge difference in file size. They use that RF slider in the guide (most people tend to), but I've always had much better results as far as image quality goes (and most importantly file size) with setting an average bitrate. I mentioned before that I use a setting of 4000 and seems to work well @ 1280x720 (you may want that setting higher if you're keeping the source maximum resolution). I also have a SD DVD profile (source maximum resolution) that I created and use 1700 for the average bitrate setting. I use auto passthrough for the audio (I usually select DTS if available, but some titles I like to keep DTS-HD) and have all the auto passthru check boxes selected. Lastly, I've found this default advanced setting to give me some trouble in the past so I always set it to off, "Pyramidal B-Frames".