How should I backup and store my Blu-ray movies for playback in XBMC?

[Brother1]

All, I want to start adding Blu-Ray movies to my XBMC library. However, I don't know how. Also, how much space will I need for a Blu-Ray movie? It's important for me to have high quality sound as well. So, what I am looking for is high-def video and sound that doesn't occupy a lot of space.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[rcoops]

Looking at (oh bad little me) The Pirate Bay website I see most HD movies are 720p and some are 1080p all of them seem to use the H.264 codec, when they are "small" in size and what ever it is that is used on the blu-ray disk it self when they are big in size.

Since you want small you will be using video's encoded with the H.264 codec, which provides very good quality video playback (certainly on the 1080p encoding). Then the only question is how large can a video be, most of the 720p video's are about 4 to 6GB in size. The 1080 once come in roughly between 8 and 13GB in size.
Most of them have a DTS or similair sound track so that should be fine as ar as sound quality goes unless you have specific demands of course.

Then there is the strait rip from the blu-ray disc, these are usualy roughly 25 to 50GB, these you can play in your blu-ray player software, and should provide you the exact same quality as the data on the disk does, with subtitles and extras and so on. Of course they take up lots and lots of diskspace, even a 2TB disk will not hold more then ~80 of these. Which is something that could get quite anoying when like me you tend to buy a new movie at least once a week...

Then the only problem you migth face is how to get the movie from the Blu-ray disk to the harddrive. That is a completely different story and I am not to sure that this is the right location to go into the process behind that rather simple trick. Though I am sure that yo will be able to find a lot of info about how to do that with your favorite search engine.

[mindweaver]

How to backup and convert Blu-ray to MP4 HD or MKV HD (http://forum.videohelp.com/topic358185.html)

maybe something for you.

[Gamester17]

I believe that the current norm is do 720p backup in MKV format ~4GB using a H264 video codec (to fit on a single-layer DVD-R disc), and 1080p backups in MKV format ~8GB using a H264 video codec (to fit on a dual-layer DVD-R disc), and one audio stream is kept without transcoding/reencoding it and the other audio streams (other languages and commentary tracks) are stripped away.

You are much better of asking over at doom9.net, avsforum.com, or videohelp.com as that is almost all they talk about in those forums.

Note! For XBMC on Windows you are going to need a very powerful dual-core processor for 1080p decoding as other than VDPAU support for NVIDIA under Linux, there is no support for GPU off-loading (hardware acceleration) of video decoding in XBMC at this time. Consequently, a fairly powerful system is required for high resolution and/or high bitrate content.

[sion28]

Keep in mind that if you do go to doom9 for advice, you'd best not use any reference to places like piratebay or usenet, or any other method of obtaining pirated media. They'll boot you in an instant.

But of course you were asking about your OWN blu-ray discs, so not a problem...

just sayin'.