DVD Ripping in the Sequoia Era

[armwt]

So I've been wanting to set up a DVD/BD/CD ripping station for quite some time now, just to import all remaining disks from my library into Plex.

Had some time this afternoon and started to play around and ran into a couple of issues.

1st... what makemkv can see a DVD in the optical drive, I do NOT have a drive appearing under /Volumes in the terminal if I check. So trying to figure out how to script this may be a little "interesting".

If there is anyone else out there who still has an optical drive connected to their Mac running Sequoia, can you confirm this?

I DO have some older machines laying around, but would have liked to do the whole process on my Mac mini. I'll definitely be running Handbrake on an Apple-Silicon machine, although something tells me the disk ripping itself may be the slowest part of the entire equation.

 

[KhaineBOT]

I have an optical drive hooked up to my Mac. I’m pretty sure the disc only shows up when you put it in the drive and I think the volume name is the name of the disc.

I’m not near my computer to confirm, but am 90 % confident. I can confirm when I’m in front of my Mac later this week

I haven’t tried scripting any of this, so can’t help you on that front

 

[armwt]

No worries. For what it is worth... I'm not seeing the disk even appear in the Finder. MakeMKV sees it, and Disk Utility sees it, but nothing in the Finder, VLC doesn't see it, and the DVD Player app doesn't see it.

Only way I can even eject the disk is opening up MakeMKV and ejecting from there.

This is a cheap LG USB external, but I don't think that matters. System Info shows it on the USB 3.0 bus as "Portable Super Multi Drive", and even recognizes the disk in the drive.

 

[armwt]

[edit]

Just realized - I CAN mount the disk via Disk Utility, but it does not mount automatically when I insert the disk, and even after mounting it, the DVD Player app doesn't seem to recognize it to play. This is a commercially-produced disk, not anything I burned at home (Dead Poet's society for testing).

Just trying to determine if there is something broken in Sequoia re: optical drives, or something broken on my machine. I'll move the drive over to another box and test a bit more - I've got another Sequoia machine here, and one on... Sonoma I think (have to check).

 

[armwt]

FYI - appears to do the same on my iMac (same external drive), only on the iMac, once I mounted the drive (using Disk Utility) it automatically launched DVD Player. The iMac is a relatively fresh build.

 

[Captain Riker]

I have a Samsung Blu-ray drive attached to my M1 MBP with Sequoia and it mounted a DVD in the finder. I don't have the DVD app but it's seen by MakeMKV and VLC.

 

[dal20402]

My optical drive (also a cheap LG) is attached to my Intel iMac Pro, but at least on that machine a DVD mounts the way I've always expected it to. Handbrake + libdvdcss (via Homebrew) rips it fine.

I suppose I should try hooking the drive to my AS MBP for completeness.

 

[cateye]

This is a total shot in the dark and I suspect you're well beyond this level of troubleshooting, but, how are you connecting your drive to your AS Mac?

I too have an ancient external LG "Superdrive" and I've found it to be ultra finicky about what adapters I use to connect its Micro USB port (ugh) to the USB-C/Thunderbolt ports of my Apple Silicon Macs. Only certain combinations appear to deliver the correct signaling (?) or power levels needed for it to work. It's not that it won't work if I don't get it right, it's that it works unreliably. Not mounting the disk, or mounting the disk but not playing it. Playing the disk, then suddenly ejecting it, and so on. All of these problems vanish the moment I use breakout box that supplies additional power to the chain.

I had none of these issues with my previous Intel Macs, so maybe there's some inherent difference to how AS Macs handle USB peripherals and their power requirements?

 

[Captain Riker]

I recall having an older USB DVD drive that had a split connector that broke out into two USB ports to get the extra power needed to run the drive. It's one of the reasons why I upgraded to the drive I have now.

 

[armwt]

FWIW, LG optical drive with a mini-USB (ugh) connection. Again, works fine once I mount the drive on the iMac (Intel) but isn't mounting automatically.

Not a show-stopper, this isn't exactly something I do on a daily basis, but annoying.

 

[algebraist]

Settings > Privacy & Security > App Management.

Make sure MakeMKV or similar is in there and enabled.

 

[algebraist]

Also the integration between MakeMKV and VLC can be flaky but it'll work. Handbrake i've never got to work. Always ripped then processed.

However with a Pioneer BDR-212U stuffed into a usb enclosure, it's working for me.

 

[iljitsch]

In the Finder preferences settings, there is a checkbox for displaying CDs/DVDs on the desktop. Probably not it but checking can't hurt.

 

[armwt]

Yup. Finder prefs "normal". Issue isn't with MakeMKV or anything like that, it is just a disk mounting issue.

This machine has some... "quirks" - it is the box I usually run dev. betas on, etc. so it may just need a rebuild even though the iMac had similar reaction.

In the end, suspect I will offload this task (at least the ripping) to my server instead of trying to do it on the Mac, but haven't decided for certain.

 

[gregatron5]

Can I hijack this thread with a request for recommendations for 4K-UHD BluRay players that the Mac can use for this purpose?

 

[cmannes]

Can I hijack this thread with a request for recommendations for 4K-UHD BluRay players that the Mac can use for this purpose?

https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=19634
Personally I have the ASUS BW-16D1HT, which works great with my mac.

 

[iljitsch]

I have a Hitachi-LG BP55EB40 USB optical drive that I like. Not tried watching 4K UHD blu-rays with it, though. (But that might be possible. Check the MakeMKV forums.) The file sizes are insane and my Sony UHD blu-ray player hooked up to my LG OLED TV handles that quite well.

(Especially as being someone grown up in a region without 3/2 pulldown Stockholm syndrome, I need motion smoothing.)