Rip Blu-ray to Plex with 5.1 Surround Sound

Date September 14, 2016 Author Catherine Category Blu-ray Tips, Plex

Through searching "Plex/Blu-ray" in Reddit, you can see lots of needs of ripping Blu-ray to plex. Yes. Ripping Blu-ray to Plex enables you to stream Blu-ray via Plex on Apple TV 4/3, Kodi/XBMC, Xbox One S, PS3/PS4 without bothering Blu-ray Player and Blu-ray discs again. But here we would go on is how to rip Blu-ray to Plex with 5.1 surround sound.

Blu-ray to Plex with 5.1 sound

5.1 surround sound is the common name for six channel surround sound audio systems. 5.1 is the most commonly used layout in home cinema. In addition, some DVDs have DTS tracks with most being 5.1 channel mixes. Blu-ray and Digital cinema both have eight-channel capability which can be used to provide either 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound. Ripping Blu-ray to Plex keeping 5.1 sound gives you cinema-like video/audio enjoyment.

As we all know, if you want to decrypt Blu-ray to Plex, you need a Blu-ray Ripper. There are many software that can reach it. The one you are most familiar with must be Handbrake and MareMKV. Since Blu-ray has encryption and Handbrake can’t handle it. So you have to use MakeMKV to rip Blu-ray first. Here is something you should be notice in the ripping process.

Rip Blu-ray to Plex with 5.1 channel with Handbrake and MakeMKV

It’s a two step process, one that involves both MakeMKV and Handbrake. MakeMKV makes an unaltered MKV file of your bluray/dvd. Handbrake then converts that MKV file to a more usable format. First to clarify a few things.

MKV, like MP4, is a container, meaning it contains various video, audio, subtitle and/or chapter tracks. MP4/M4V files are more compatible with the devices most people use, not only for Plex, so they are prefered over MKV for that reason. But MKV is more versatile and less restrictive.

MakeMKV is what you use to remux the blu ray disc contents to a self contained digital file, in this case an MKV. This does not re-encode(convert) the video or audio. All it does it take the various audio, video, subtitle and chapter tracks and copies them into an MKV container, untouched. You can decide which tracks you want to be copied over, for instance you only include the english audio track, or chose between the dolby digital or DTS track if both on are the disc. Bluray disc can contain

H264 or VC1 video track
Dolby Digital and DTS audio tracks in various languages
Subtitle tracks in various languages
Chapter tracks.

Handbrake then converts that MKV to a more usable format, in this case a much smaller MP4/M4V file. Handbrake is what is used to re-encoding(converting) the video and audio. Once you have your MKV from MakeMKV, I would just select the ‘AppleTV 3’ preset in Handbrake to convert it. IMO this preset is ideal for not only Plex compatibility, but compatibility with all other devices as well. Here’s why

It’s uses H264 profile level 4.0 which meets Plex’s video requirements. It allows for high bitrate 1080p content.
It formats the audio properly so playback on stereo devices works, but it also preserves a Dolby Digital 5.1 track for use with surround sound systems and home theaters.

If you are asking why you need to convert the MKV with handbrake after after you rip the Bluray/DVD with MakeMKV. The main reasons are

Format: MP4/M4V just works with more devices natively
Video Codec/Profile: Most blurays actually use H264 video, but with a profile level too high to playback on many devices. So even though the MP4 file from handbrake also uses H264 video, it needs to be a lower profile. Some blurays have VC1 video, which always needs to be converted.
Size: Bluray discs are 25-50GB for a single movie. Converting the video to a lower profile and bit rate lowers the size dramatically. A 15GB MKV from MakeMKV can be converted down to a file that’s 3-8GB if need be.

It seems complicated for normal people. Now, let’s see a much easier way to rip Blu-ray to 5.1 sound video for Plex.

Easy Guide to Rip Blu-ray with 5.1 Surround Sound for Plex

Tools need:

Pavtube ByteCopy <review>

The reason I choose to use ByteCopy to rip Blu-ray to Plex is because it is professional, fast and easy to use for common people. It can rip all the newest and region-locked Blu-ray encoded with H.264 and VC1 to Plex supported format with original video quality. It can rip Blu-ray to lossless/uncompressed MKV for Plex as MakeMKV and also can extract Blu-ray to MP4 for Plex keeping Dolby Digital AC3 5.1 or DTS 5.1. With only one Blu-ray Ripping tool, you can get your wanted MP4 files for Plex. Learn its other features below:

– Easy-to-use: Finish Blu-ray to Plex with 5.1 audio ripping process with 3 clicks.

– Lossless/Multi-trac output: Rip Blu-ray to lossless MKV with all chapter markers and also convert Blu-ray to MP4/MOV/AVI with multiple subtitle and audio tracks.

– Wide range of output: Rip MP4, H.265, M3U8, WMV, AVI, 3GP, FLV, MPEG, TS, etc off Blu-ray discs and also can extract MP3, FLAC, WMA, etc audio from Blu-ray.

– Subtitle selection/extraction: Select subtitle streaming you want. Also can extract single SRT subtitle from Blu-ray.

– Fast: Offer 6x times Blu-ray ripping speed with NVIDIA CUDA and AMD APP acceleration technologies.

– Preserve Blu-ray Audio: Only if your Blu-ray has the audio, ByteCopy can keep them all: Dolby Digital / AC3, DTS, TrueHD and DTS-MA.

Start to rip Blu-ray to Plex with 5.1 channel audio

Launch ByteCopy on your computer then click “File” to load Blu-ray movie to the app. ByteCopy supports batch conversion so you can add multiple Blu-ray movies. Afterwards, hit “Format” to choose output format. If you want lossless MKV, please choose it from "Multi-track Video" catelog. If you want MP4, you can choose it from "Common Video", "HD Video" and "Multi-track Video". You even can choose Apple TV preset pass-through video from "Apple TV" category.

load Blu-ray

Audio settings

Click "Settings" to open a new window. If you choose SD/HD MP4, MKV, it will be a simple window. If you choose lossless MKV and multi-track MP4, the settings windows will contain three pages. Just choose Audio Settings, in the codec, you can choose AC3 and audio channel 5.1 (common/hd video settings). When it is a multiple settings windows, it shows you DTS 5.1, AC3 5.1, choose what you want (multi-track video settings). I think you should choose 5.1 digital surround in the forms of Dolby Digital AC3 or DTS according to your end devices.

Dolby Digital / AC3: The most common multi-channel format. It handles at most 6 channels (5.1) and is supported natively by almost anything. However, it’s relatively low bitrate so it might not give the best fidelity. Most TV shows have AC3 tracks.
DTS: Most common for movies, handles 6 channels at most, and is pretty universally supported in mid-range equipment and up. Low end equipment usually does not support DTS natively since there are licensing fees involved. The AppleTV, for example, supports AC3 but not DTS.

Click the button “Convert” on bottom right to get down to ripping Blu-ray to Plex with 5.1 audio. And after conversion, you’ll get the converted Blu-ray in output folder for Plex.

Now, you can transfer your Blu-ray to NAS or just store them on hard drive then stream the Blu-ray with 5.1 sound via Plex.

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