Hi everyone, I'm new to the forum. Although I've been reading a lot of very interesting posts here in the past couple of weeks. I don't own a Zidoo device yet, but I'm planning to buy one in the near future. Currently, I'm planning to rip my Blu-ray collection to my NAS and I wanted to decide on a media player before I started the work. The problem is I keep thinking in circles as to the format and structure of the collection. Especially since I'm not sure how the Zidoo posterwall/library will handle certain situations. Hopefully some of you can weigh in and help me bite some bullets. First it might be important to mention, I work as a professional colorist. Generally, there's always a substantial difference between watching the original footage during a color-session, on the Hero monitor in my colorsuite, and when I next see the image. Either during a filmfestival, commercial broadcast or even a blu-ray or DVD. Watching a film on a 4K Blu-ray on my calibrated OLED TV is the closest I've ever come to that color-suite experience. And wacthing cinematic masterpieces this way gives me a lot of pleasure and makes me feel connected with the filmmaker in a way I haven't felt before. Like being there in the room when they finish their films. All this to say, I'm looking to preserve absolutely 100% of the image quality. Even the bit's that "really don't make that big of a difference". I'm inclined to choose ISO files over ripping to MKV's for a couple of reasons: Easy "never look back" copies. By default all of the assets on the disc are preserved. 1:1 quality be default. Option to burn a physical copy of the disc. Just one file to manage per disc. Filesize and storage are not that important to me. Obviously playing back ISO files is less straightforward than MKV files. That's what let me to Zidoo. I've read carefully how the current generation of Zidoo players handle DV FEL files and I think this is enough to justify an ISO copy. Playing back the files as good as possible with the available hardware, while future hardware might be able to do more with the same file. My main concern is with TV shows and 3D Blu-rays. The latter I would love to playback on my VR headset but I haven't found any players that support ISO files so far. TV shows are also somewhat of a different story. Of course I would prefer to maintain the original ISO with all the menu's, extra's and the original image quality. But here flexibility sometimes outweighs image quality. Sometimes I'd like to quickly continue an episode that I cut off early. The Zidoo player will be attached to my main media center, but sometimes I prefer to watch an episode on my tablet in the bedroom, or even keep a couple of them available offline for when I'm on the road. I believe PLEX is the better alternative for this method of media consumption. But how to manage this in my movie library? Do I keep an ISO file for the original disc and add a MKV for the 3D version of the film in the same folder? I've seen how naming different versions of the movie allows you to keep them all in the same entry on the posterwall, does this also work with ISO files? If not, how would you solve this? How do "ISO people" manage TV shows ? I'm sorry for this incredible long first post. It's difficult to discuss these matters with other people, most don't understand why you would like to watch 4k Blu-ray, let alone why you would need a dedicated media-player. What I've read so far on this forum, you have a nice group of knowledgeable people. It's nice to meet you! Kind regards, Remco
Hello Remco - nice to meet you too! The main problem with ISO (and BDMV structures) is that the Zidoos aren't great at BD Menus - I'd probably say they are 90% of the way there. I have a limited library of BDMV files and ISOs for testing and in my experience. most BD Menus seem to have one issue or another ranging from mildly annoying to just won't work! Although they do seem to have a lot less trouble with standard BluRay than UHD BluRay. Personally I got into media players to be rid off menus because they're just (and I've used this term many times on this forum) time vampires and drive me mad so all my content is MKV. If you rip to MKV using MakeMKV you can chose which soundtrack(s) you want, which subtitle(s) you want and you'll get a bit perfect 1:1 copy of the content without having to trawl through a mind numbing set of menus and studio animations to get there. As for Profile 7 FEL - this process keeps the layers intact and produces a single track dual layer Dolby Vision MKV file so it's future proof for potential new players that may process the FEL.
Thanks Mark. Although I understand your aversion towards menus, especially the time they take, I must say most of the time I quit like them. They help into the mood of the movie. I'm open to trying MKV's. I just looked at the MakeMKV forum, there's a lot there! Do you know of a good starting point to familiarize myself with a "all assets, 1:1 quality" workflow? edit: especially any information on naming conventions (of special features) for Zidoo would be usefull. Thanks!
No harm in trying ISOs if you want to, especially if you like the menus, as long as you're aware it's not the Zidoo's forte! As far as MakeMKV goes - download it, apply the free key (updated regularly), and give it a go - it's pretty self explanatory once you've opened a disc with it. https://www.makemkv.com/download/history.html Key here: https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1053 It doesn't encode at all, so all copies are 1:1 Another incredibly handy program, if you've not come across it, is MKVToolnix for muxing duties: https://mkvtoolnix.download/ Again, all operations are lossless. The file suffixes PDF attached to the post below will help with naming conventions, particularly in terms of extra features etc, but for the base name for the file, always just use the movie name as closely as possible - if there are illegal characters, for example "Mission: Impossible" just miss them out eg. Mission Impossible.mkv. For TV series use SeriesName-S**E**.mkv eg Is it Cake - S01E01.mkv (great program!). http://forum.zidoo.tv/index.php?thr...619-players-naming-file-updated-jan-22.82695/
Sorry, one more question. I hear you and a lot of people talking about MakeMKV. Is there a fundamental problem with an alternative like DVDfab? (in passthrough mode) I understand the cost aspect. However, I like how DVDfab will find the metadata of the disc and all its titles online and automatically names the files correctly. Is this a simple matter of good, cheap, fast where MakeMKV is both good and cheap and DVDfab is good and fast? Or is it not good? On a different note, is there a specific moment when we expect Zidoo to anounce their 2022 players? Or is it anyone's guess? I'll stop asking questions now. You've already helped me a lot.
By all accounts, DVDFab works absolutely fine - I prefer MakeMKV because of the support community, it's free, and it's designed to one thing and it does it well. I used to use DVDFab in the early days of DVD ripping but found it got progressively more bloated. Make MKV is fast - the last disc I ripped (yesterday) took 13 minutes. But if you've paid for DVDFab then there's no reason at all not to use it. As for 2022 players... nothing yet I'm afraid...
