iPhone Accessories - [Sharing]4 Solutions for watching Blu-ray movie on Mac OS X tutubebe99 - Tue Jan 11, 2011 6:08 pm Post subject: [Sharing]4 Solutions for watching Blu-ray movie on Mac OS X
[Sharing]4 Solutions for watching Blu-ray movie on Mac OS X
“Why is there still no support for commercial Blu-ray playback in Mac OS X? Is this something we can ever expect to see?” When complaining and waiting for natural Blu-ray support on Mac, Apple fans managed figuring out ways enjoying BD movies on Mac. Let’s take a brief view at them.
Solution 1. Boot into Windows OS on a Mac computer.
Obviously, using Windows to accomplish anything on a Mac is not an ideal situation, but it's currently the only option you have when playing a Blu-ray Disc through a Mac computer, as there is not yet a Mac player that works with Blu-ray Disc. You need the PC-only Cyberlink PowerDVD software and an HDMI compliant monitor in addition to a compatible Intel Mac with Windows. And we have mentioned, it’s not an ideal solution. Besides, Blu-ray is quite demanding. This solution works for Mac computers that meet the demands of Blu-ray playback only.
Solution 2. Make use of the included digital copy in BD pack.
When a digital copy is included with the disc, you can view the digital copy with iTunes, and even transfer this to a supported iPod. Some Blu-ray movies can be purchased with an included DVD.
Although Blu-ray digital copies are not in breathtaking 1080p, the 480p DVD quality still looks fine on Mac laptop.
Solution 3. Decrypt and copy BDMV directory to Mac for HTPC media center.
With an external BD drive and Blu-ray decrypting software like AnyDVD HD or Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper for Mac, you can copy the entire Blu-ray disc to Mac HDD and play the BD movie from BDMV directory with media center software like PLEX. Or you might copy the M2TS streams to Mac HDD and play the high-def M2TS streams with VLC player. Just mind one thing- you must have a powerful Mac that meet the demands of Blu-ray playback.
Solution 4. Copy and down convert Blu-ray Disc to Mac HDD for playback.
Again you’ll need an external Blu-ray Disc drive and BD decrypting software that cracks the AACS and BD+ copy-protections, like Solution 3. But here we proceed one more step- down converting the Blu-ray M2TS streams to 1080p MP4/MOV/M4V videos that plays well in iTunes. This would greatly reduce the file size and meanwhile suffer little quality loss. When a 90min Blu-ray movie of 20GB is converted into H.264 encoded 1080p MP4/MOV/M4V (around 12GB) with Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper for Mac, it is hard to tell the difference with original BD with when watching on a 48’ HDTV over HDMI cable.
Both Pavtube Mac Blu-ray Playbacksoftware and AnyDVD HD + Handbrake can be used for copying and converting BD to Mac HDD. This method works for those who purchase commercial Blu-ray Discs but don't own powerful Mac computer that meets the demands of Blu-ray playback.
About Pavtube Blu-ray Playback for Mactool
The Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper Mac tool is designed to help backup commercially produced Blu-ray (BD-ROM) and DVD movies on Mac OS. The app comes with flexible and adjustable presets for iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, PSP, PS3, etc., and creates 480p, 720p, and 1080p MP4, MOV, M4V, AVI, MKV, TS videos for iTunes, QuickTime and other Mac media player software. Full Disc Copy option allows users to copy the whole BDMV directory for burning to BD-R or BD-RE disc. You may download a free trial of Pavtube Blu-ray Playback for Mac and follow Solution 4 to play Blu-ray movie on Mac.Hope this guide 4 Solutions for watching Blu-ray movie on Mac OS X can help you.
Movie lovers rip Blu-ray movie from BD to HDD for various reasons: to protect original BD from scratches, to copy the BD movies to home server, to compress Blu-ray to iPad for travel or whatever. The biggest problem comes up with Blu-ray ripping must be the BD copy-protection. Long processing time seconds it. Yet there is a fastest way for backing up Blu-ray movie to PC without quality degradation—simply decrypt and copy the BD movie to HDD without transcoding. This takes less than an hour on an average computer. However, most media players prefer common video formats and will not play Blu-ray .m2ts streams properly. That’s why most users create BD backup by converting BD to HD MP4/MKV/AVI/WMV videos. The problem is BD transcoding process is time-consuming. Considering the file size of Blu-ray movie (20GB- 50GB), it is reasonable for a high horsepower computer with Intel CORE i5/i7 processor and 6GB of RAM to complete Blu-ray ripping in 1-2 hours. For an average computer, the ripping time could be 3-9 hours when an effective Blu-ray ripping/converting tool is run exclusively. Suppose it takes 10+ hours to rip a 90min movie to 1080p video, you are encouraged to use a faster computer for faster BD ripping speed instead. Anyway, that’s not the focus of this post. Let’s get down to our point- how to fast rip Blu-ray Disc to H.264 HD video on a slow computer by taking advantage of NVIDIA GPU acceleration. In order to use the CUDA implementation, a NVIDIA CUDA enabled graphics card is required.
The computer info I use for BD ripping:
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium (R) Dual CPU E2140 @1.60GHz
Memory: 1022MB RAM
Drive: External Sony BD drive with USB 2.0 USB cable
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460, latest NVIDIA CUDA drivers installed
Operation System: Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Make sure you have basic tools for BD ripping: your desktop or laptop running Windows XP and above OS with NVIDIA CUDA enabled graphics card; an Internal or external Blu-ray Disc drive; source Blu-ray Disc, here I use Alice In Wonderland Blu-ray which is 1 hour and 48 minutes in length; and Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper v3.7.1.2290 trial version.
Step 1. Connect the external BD drive to PC, place in source Blu-ray Disc Alice In Wonderland . Ensure the desktop is networked. Install and launch the Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper v3.7 software (trial), click the BD icon to load Blu-ray Alice In Wonderland from BD drive. Make sure “CUDA” icon is turned on (highlighted) for CUDA implementation (Click the icon to disable/enable CUDA acceleration implementation)
Step 2. Select the main movie, click on the dropdown list of "Format", follow “HD Video” and select “MP4 HD Video (*.mp4)” as output format. Click “Browse” to set a folder for saving converted H.264 MP4 files.
Step 3. Click "Convert" button to start ripping Alice In Wonderland to hard drive, and take down the test data when conversion completes.
See how much CUDA has fasten Blu-ray ripping speed on my slow desktop:
1. Ripping Blu-ray Alice In Wonderland with CUDA ON:
Ripping time- 3 hours and 8 minutes
Generated file size- 7.07GB
2. Ripping Blu-ray Alice In Wonderland with CUDA OFF:
Ripping time- 12 hours and 5 minutes
Generated file size- 7.05GB
By implying CUDA acceleration the Blu-ray ripping speed is 3.87 times faster than that CUDA is disabled.
To properly play M2TS streams back will require both a high horsepower computer and high speed disk drive array to support the data rate involved in that format, while play 1080p H.264 MP4 you just need an average computer like the one I user for ripping Alice In Wonderland to H.264 HD video. Here’s a compressed screenshot of converted Blu-ray movie by Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper v3.7:
