I found a “work-around” solution to “DVDs” that fail when you try to rip…

[OldRecordPlayer]

I have spent far more than 100 hours trying to read the internet trying to find a real solution the the random rip failure by Make MKV.

First – Let me say that I flat LOVE!!! “Make MKV”!!!
If you don’t get this Do not read any further.

I have ripped over 10K disks of varied types with Make MKV. I am A Plex-Er. I run a very stable small system. Currently I only have about 5K movies and 7TB of music on my server. So I have a little experience and am not seen on the forums blathering my successes. Not My scene. I just try very hard to be self-sufficient.

This issue that Make MKV has as a “FREE” software, (THANK YOU!!!! TO EVERY SINGLE PERSON EVER INVOLVED!!!), falls under the life rule that no matter how good you are you will NEVER be all things to everyone. Totally acceptable.
So, when I found I had just over 100 disks. I figured out a solution to the problem. First I did the hours of research to try to find a solution to make Make MKV work. Then I did more hours of research to find a second software that successfully reads 99% of the failed disks and the other 1% just get replaced.

DONE!

I am grateful. Some would say blessed.

My 2nd software is Freemake Video Converter (Not nearly as good as Make, but fills the gap nicely.

As for replacing DVDs on the fly, I use "Swappadvd". Not the cheapest but the convenience is there.

I am putting another hundred files in my collection this weekend. It's almost like getting free movies.

Hope this helps other users move forward and maybe give the Make MKV people some insight from a user and fan.

[pneumatic]

Your post count being 1 and the fact you're doing this whole anticipation/buildup thing to finally steer the reader into the reveal of "this one app that works" leads me to believe I may be reading the result of a LLM prompt

[OldRecordPlayer]

I like that you think I'm GPT.

There's lots of people in real life that think I'm a fake person.

When in real life; I'm old. I get info. I make a decision. I run with it until I hit a wall. I get info. I make a decision. I run with it till I hit a wall...

K.I.S.S. = Keep It Stupid Simple

Be outwardly gratefull for other people.

[dcoke22]

The Wikipedia page for Freemake Video Converter is interesting. I enjoyed the FFmpeg 'hall of shame' anecdote for being in violation of FFmpeg's license.

In any case, having more than one optical drive has been handy with my usage of MakeMKV. I've found that some drives just don't like some discs. When I get a disc that doesn't work in my main drive, oftentimes I can put it in a different drive and MakeMKV will read it without complaint. Sometimes I have to actually gently clean a disc. Very rarely I have to get a disc a replaced.

[pneumatic]

Should have called it YAFG - Yet Another FFMpeg GUI

Another one is XMedia Recode, but I have lots of issues with it randomly crashing. If you can work around the crashes it's okay. But I'm getting better at ffmpeg command line so I just use that instead. Actually it's very easy using LLM to tell you the right commands, eg.



But I'm finding ffmpeg itself isn't all that reliable when it constructs files in terms of conforming to the relevant file specifications. Recently wasted an entire day trying to mux a .flac audio track into an x265 mkv. Whatever ffmpeg is doing, it's not doing it right and confuses media players. Using mkvtoolnix to mux the audio track works on all media players.

But for encoding video to x264/265 I think ffmpeg is still decent.

[pneumatic]

I like that you think I'm GPT.

There's lots of people in real life that think I'm a fake person.

When in real life; I'm old. I get info. I make a decision. I run with it until I hit a wall. I get info. I make a decision. I run with it till I hit a wall...

K.I.S.S. = Keep It Stupid Simple

Be outwardly gratefull for other people.

I'm still not convinced you are human. Can you answer this question: Ann believes that Bob assumes that Ann believes that Bob's assumption was wrong. Does Ann believe that Bob's assumption was wrong? Give me a short one-line answer.