A few weeks ago I showed you how to backup your Blu-rays using BD Rebuilder. This week, I’ll show you how to do it with an alternative program, AVCHDCoder.
AVCHDCoder is a decidedly different program than BD Rebuilder. It’s feature set is much larger for one thing. For another, it can produce Blu-rays from non-Blu-ray sources. This is highly useful in the creation of AVCHD disks from home videos and the like. But that is for another tutorial. Today we are just going to be backing up our precious store-bought Blu-rays.
Let’s get started.
Step 1)
Make sure that you have Java installed and the usual suspects (Avisynth, Haali Media Splitter, etc…)
Step 2)
Make sure that AVCHDCoder is in BDMV-mode.
Step 3)
Load your source and select the main movie playlist using the Playlist to convert drop-down menu. Press the Set button. Press Next if necessary.
Step 4)
You should now be on the Select Streams tab. Edit your streams until they represent your desired output. In this case I want to do a full resolution backup (1920 x 1080p), using just the first audio track and the first subtitle track. You can adjust your own settings or use similar versions of mine. Press the Add button when you are finished to add your Blu-ray to the final composition.
Step 5)
You should now be on the Output tab. Select your destination size (a single-layer DVD in this case, because I’m cheap). Remember, a greater destination size allows for a higher bitrate and thus higher quality backup. However, make sure that you can properly handle your output size. For instance, if you were to select the BD-25 option, make sure that you have a Blu-ray burner and a spare BD-25 disk lying around, otherwise you will have to do your backup all over again.
Go ahead and title your disk if you want to (it’s good practice, but I didn’t show it in the screenshot below), then select your output settings. I’m going to burn this disk using IMGBurn when I’m done, so I went ahead and selected the ISO option to keep things easy for me. Select your destination folder and check the Delete temp folder after conversion option if you don’t won’t to keep your temporary files (most people won’t).
Lastly, click the Add to Queue button to finalize your settings and add the project to the encoding queue.
Step 6)
Now, before you go ahead and start the encoding process, you may want to adjust the encoder’s priority. You can do this by going up to Options->CPU Priority. Under normal circumstances when I am encoding something, I want to set the priority to Normal (like you can see in the screenshot). However, if you wanted to continue to use the computer while the encode process was going on, you may want to set it to something a little lower like Below Normal or Low. The reason you may want to use Normal is that it can result in a faster encoding process. It’s your choice.
Step 7)
Last but certainly not least, press the big, colorful Convert button. Then sit back and enjoy the ride while your computer does all the dirty work!
Conclusion
Once your encode has finished, you can burn your ISO (or files) to a DVD or Blu-ray disk of your choice. There are a variety of programs out there such as the (FREE!) IMGBurn or Nero that will be able to burn your shiny new ISO file for you. Enjoy your very own Blu-ray backup!
Related posts:
- Backing up Blu-rays with BD Rebuilder
- Convert Blu-rays to iPad with BD Rebuilder
- Burn AVCHDs and Blu-rays with IMGBurn
Esata is just as fast as SATA, which means that it WON’T kill the throughput speeds.
You laptop has some impressive specs! I’m a little surprised that it does take as long to encode. This may be due to an inefficiency in PowerDVD’s decoders though.
i’ll try uninstalling everything and starting fresh with the latest version of AVCHD
There is a new version of AVCHDCoder, so some of your problems may clear up. Usually the problem is with VC-1 decoding, so make sure that you have a proper decoder installed (like FFDShow set to WMV9 in it’s codec setup).
I’m trying out the latest AVCHDCoder on my iMac running WinXP under VMWARE Fusion. It seems to be running fine except slow (to be expected).
I’m trying a Bluray 6.7 GB mkv 1080p file I got from a torrent. Roxio Toast wanted to make a 16 GB ISO.
Is there a way to get full quality video and sound from a single HD movie onto multiple DVDs? I assume what I will be getting from this run is a single ISO file. What If I were willing to put 1 to 1.25 hour of video per disk for a 2.5 hour movie. I should get two ISOs. Would AVCHDCoder be able to do that? Would the improvement in quality be worth the trouble?
First, lets get a couple of things clear.
You CANNOT improve the quality of a video encode. Further encoding will only reduce the quality. Even if it is normally imperceptible, it still occurs.
You have not stated what format your want your DVD’s to be. Do you want them to be AVCHD’s, MPEG2, or other wise?
If you had a SOURCE Blu-ray (which you don’t) you could split the video up onto several DVD’s and not see a reduction in quality. This is simply a multiplexing trick using a splitting size. But since you don’t, there is really little point in splitting this file across multiple disks. The quality will not improve.
Hi. Does the result (DVD-5) is in 1080p? Does it play in a DVD player?
Yes the result can be in 1080p (as long as you specify it to be so).
But no, the resulting DVD will not play in a DVD player. Standard DVD players only support MPEG2 at SD (480p) resolution. Sorry.
This tool sucks big time, better use bdrebuilder for bluray backup.
AVCHDCoder cannot output to 2 discs. If you do want to achieve that you should split the source into 2 files. Then add 2 discs to the queue. Each disc containing 1 part of of your source. Now you ask why not 2 disc support? Answer is easy: You can add 32 items to a disc. Why splitting the output of you can make 2 discs of 16 items each. But I am looking for a easy to use way to achieve 2 disc output without adding complex menu’s etc.
@bestcoder, why does is sucks bigtime? Why do you prefer BDRebuilder?
(Remember AVCHDCoder originally wasn’t designed for Blu-ray input. While BDRebuilder only takes Blu-ray input)
@ Bestcoder, being a user like yourself I’d have to say that AVCHCODER is a great program. I had my issues with it initially but after configuring everything appropriately it’s been awesome.
In order to use AVCHDCoder, must you rip the blu-ray movie using AnyDVD HD, before beginning.
Hit my first snag with AVCHDcoder. I ripped the blu ray using AnyDVD as usual then used the BDMV file for AVCHcoder but it failed to extract the data this time. Any thoughts?
Hmm… first, make sure you have the latest version of AVCHDCoder (10.02.01).
Next, what is the exact error? You say it “failed to extract the data” but I’m not entirely clear what that means. Do you have a log file or screenshot?
Does this method give rebuild the whole disk, ie does it keep the menus? Or is the resulting disk movie only?
No, it does not keep the menu’s. If you want to keep the menu structure, use BD Rebuilder in Full Backup mode.
Or you can try multiAVCHD’s re-author feature.
Q: Which format has the higher compression? Blu-ray or AVCHD? Which will allow a higher bit-rate for the same size of content? I ask because I have a BD burner (capable of playing AVCHD) and was wondering would I get a better picture with AVCHD or with Blu-ray. You may not be able to tell the differnce visually, but if AVCHD allows more compression, then I might be able to include a better audio track. Does this make sense? See, I have a true 7.1 audio set up and if I can elect to have the uncompressed version (PCM) of BD discs that have true 7.1 channel audio ( I know there’s not many currently but that will change with time), I’d prefer to select that rather than AC-3 5.1 channel sound.
The compression quality is the same, byte for byte. AVCHD is a standard that is used when dealing with DVD-5/9s as your output, while “Blu-ray” was for Blu-ray disks.
In all honesty, AVCHD is just a substandard of Blu-ray, with an outlook towards smaller media (it has a limit on a few things, like audio tracks and subtitles, etc).
Both use the same compressor, however, so the quality will be the same. However, remember that you can only use AVCHD for DVD-5/9s and Blu-ray for Blu-ray disks. Some set-top boxes may be confused if your try and put a Blu-ray structure on a DVD-5 disk for example.
I wanted to made a DVD-R DL, chose all the right options and even selected a menu. Unfortunataly the result was to big to fit on a DVD-R DL and ImgBurn came up with an error. Now, what to do? I thought like in BDRB the size fits automatically on a disc if you choose the DVD-R DL option. Is that something you have to expect?
I get some more reports lately about this problem. I only switched to a newer x264 and suddenly some outputs are slightly to big. Too bad nobody is actively helping me in tracking down the real problem. So please contact me on my email and please give me the following information:
Copy of the log (Just add the movie to the queue again with EXACTLY the same settings and then copy the log) and how many MB’s the iso is too big.