Finally – How to Copy a Blu-ray to Ordinary DVD for Mere Mortals

Ripping blu-rays and transcoding them to DVD is perhaps the most convoluted task on modern day computer.  Finding out how to do this on Google is like yelling to the crowd at a U2 concert if anyone’s seen your keys -  plenty of acknowledgment, but no real substantive answers.

In a nutshell, follow these steps to rip the main movie from a blu-ray disc and transcode to conventional DVD format, and burn the movie to an ordinary DVD disc.

Note that I don’t exclusively recommend freeware tools in this guide. There are plenty of good open source and freeware tools out there – they just require too many steps and give you much more granular control than we’re really interested in for this exercise.  So if you’re not willing to shell out some duckets for decent software, even after you spend that much on your fancy blu-ray player in your PC, then go back to yelling at Google. The purpose here is to tell you the SIMPLEST (not the cheapest) way to get your movie from blu-ray to DVD and in the fewest steps as humanly possible. If it helps, you’re probably going to do this more than once too, so whatever money you spend here will be worth it in the long run.  That’s how I justify it at least.  So for starters…

Hardware I assume you have:

1. PC fast enough to handle video transcoding efficiently – dual or quad cores or higher recommended, although any PC will technically work.
2. Blu-Ray reader/writer that can read/write 50GB blu-ray discs.
3. DVD burner (capable of burning dual layer discs, preferably) – if you’re blu-ray reader qualifies as a DVD writer, you’re all set.
4. A blank double layer DVD (aka “DVD-DL 50GB” if you’re hunting on Amazon)

Software you’re gonna need:

1. ANYDVD HD ($108 for 2 years)
2. BD Rebuilder (Freeware)
3. AVS Video Converter ($59 unlimited subscription)
4. ImgBurn (Freeware)
5. Optional (for Troubleshooting): RipBot264 (Freeware – has other prerequisites, it’ll tell you when you run it)

Simple Steps

1. ANYDVD HD Steps

   1. Install “ANYDVD HD” and get it running.
   2. Pop your blu-ray disc into your blu-ray drive.  AnyDVD will scan it and tell you all the bad things those nice people at the MPAA did to your disc, and subsequently undo them. You don’t have to do anything else here with this software, really. Just let it run and be free.
   1. OPTIONAL STEP: Open “My Computer” in Windows and right click the blu-ray drive to “copy” it, and then “paste” it somewhere on your desktop.  I do this because working off a hard drive copy of the blu-ray is so much quickly than working off a the disc itself.  You can skip this step, but I’m not, and you’re reading my blog.  Get with the program.

2. BD Rebuilder Steps

   1. Open “BD Rebuilder”
   2. In the “Mode” menu, check “Movie Only Backup”. None of the other settings matter.
   3. In “Source Path” navigate to your blu-ray folder (it’s either your disc drive if you skipped step 3, or it’s a folder on your desktop if you followed instructions).
   4. Change “Working Path” to some new folder on your desktop that doesn’t matter (we’re not actually going to use this tool to burn anything, so this path is irrelevant)
   5. After the software “scans” your blu-ray folder for a while, a navigation tree will pop up.  There will be one or many video files at the top of the tree.  In my screen shot below, there’s just one video file – it’s “00024″ – this is the most critical piece of information from this section. Write it down!!  If you have a dozen files in this list, write them down too – the numbering may not even make sense and skip entire sections of numbers (like 1, 2, 3, 14, 27, 39, 40, 41).  Write the main movie file name(s)/number(s), down.
   6. NOTE: Pay attention to the audio track format – if it says TRUE_HD (as in the example above) see the troubleshooting section at the bottom of this guide.  You’re going to have a problem with the audio – trust me.  I’ve been through this   If the primary audio track says AC3, you’re in business.  Keep reading.
   7. Quit BD Rebuilder, or leave it open if you don’t trust your notes, but you don’t need it any longer.

3. AVS Video Converter Steps

   1. Open AVS Vieo Converter.
   2. Open the blu-ray folder (either the disc itself or the copied folder on your hard drive if you followed my “optional” instruction) and navigate to \BDMV\STREAM
   3. Find the video file(s) identified above.  In my example, the file was “000024″.  Drag that file from the blu-ray folder into the AVS Video Converter “Input File Name” window.  AVS will automatically detect the source file format.
   4. In “Output File Name”, provide a path to your DVD-to-be (like “\desktop\MvA” in my example).
   5. Confirm that the “Profile” field is set to the highest quality available – e.g. “DVD NTSC High Quality” or “PAL High Quality” if you live overseas.
   6. Click “Convert Now!”
   7. If prompted to choose a DVD type, choose “Double-layer DVD disc”.  If you didn’t follow my hardware prerequisites and all you have are single layer discs, then choose “Standard DVD” but you’ll probably have to split the movie to two discs.  This is why I recommended not dealing with single layer discs, although this process will still work.
   8. Click OK. Go watch TV.  This will take a couple of hours. The end result will be a folder on your desktop that’s basically a virtual DVD you’re going to burn in the next step.

4. ImgBurn Steps

   1. Put your blank DVD-DL into the drive.
   2. Start up ImgBurn
   3. Choose “Write files/folders to disc”

      

   4. Drag the “”AUDIO_TS” and “VIDEO_TS” subfolders from that newly created DVD folder on your desktop (from the AVS Video Conversion step) into the “Source” window here.

   5. Change the “Destination ” drop down to the drive letter where your DVD-DL is waiting patiently.
   6. Click the “Folder –> Disc” icon on the bottom and go.
   7. ImgBurn will probably present you with a couple of pop-ups to correct some other settings we glossed over here.  When ImgBurn makes a recommendation, click “yes”.  If they warn you about something else, heed the warning and don’t do what you thought you were about to.
   8. After you’ve gotten past these dialogs, click OK on the final screen and your disc will start burning. This may take a while so walk the dog for an hour and come back.

You’re done!  Wasn’t that simple?  It gets easier and easier as you go through more and more blu-rays.  Good luck and happy ripping!

Leave comments and feedback below!!

Troubleshooting

1. Your final DVD has the wrong audio track (e.g. it’s Spanish, French, not the language you wanted).  It’s possible that the blu-ray you’re ripping has a main audio track in TrueHD format.  AVS Video Converter doesn’t support TrueHD (just AC3 for this process).  You may need to download RipBot264.  This little program will extract the AC3 substream from the TrueHD audio stream and create a .MKV file of your blu-ray.  In plain English, this program will create your main movie with an audio track that AVS Video Converter will understand.  So in a nutshell, use RipBot264 after you copy the blu-ray to your hard drive, create the .MKV file with the correct audio track, and then drag the .MKV into AVS Video Converter and go ahead with the steps above to create your final DVD output.
   1. Use the menus to select the primary audio track (which is TrueHD in this case).
   2. Select .MKV as the output format.
   3. Drag the .MKV final final into AVS Video Converter to create your final DVD.
2. An alternative to the RipBot process for fixing TrueHD audio streams is to actually create a blu-ray alternative image using BD Rebuilder.  In the step above where I told you to just use the information on the BD Rebuilder screen, you might actually want to click the “backup” button in that application and create a new blu-ray image on your hard drive to transcode again using AVS Video Converter.  The goal here is to create a movie file that has an AC3 audio track, NOT a TrueHD audio track.  Only newer, more sophisticated blu-ray players even support TrueHD.  Older regular DVD players all support AC3.  Follow?
   1. In BD Rebuilder, click Settings –> Output Options –> Custom Target Size.  This will maximize the final blu-ray image so you get minimal re-compression.  This will ultimately improve the image you get out of AVS Video Converter when you transcode your new blu-ray image to DVD.
   2. Follow the exact same AVS Video Converter steps above using this new image.  That’s it.