PS3: Rip your DVDs with full surround sound

A good 5 months ago, I showed you how to rip DVDs and play them with 5.1 surround sound via a simple vobcopy command on Linux.

Although the method was quick, I didn’t realize that this was not easily possible on Windows or on the Mac. Eventually I found a different mechanism, which supports full chapter splitting as well as 5.1 surround sound on the PS3. The ingredients are simple: Get Handbrake and mkv2vob.

The trick is to use Handbrake to rip the DVD to MKV with AC3 passthrough first and then use mkv2vob to remux the AC3 stream. The ripping takes considerably long, as I use the highest encoding setting (if you are running Handbrake for Windows copy the following into your user-presets.xml in the Handbrake install directory):

 <ArrayOfPreset xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <Preset> <Level>1</Level> <Category>PS3</Category> <Name>Animation</Name> <Query> -f mkv -p -e x264 -b 1500 -2 -T --denoise="weak" -a 1 -E ac3 -B 160 -R 0 -6 dpl1 -D 1 -m -x ref=6:mixed-refs=1:bframes=9:weightb=1:direct=auto:b-pyramid=1:me=umh:subq=8:analyse=all:8x8dct=1:trellis=2:no-fast-pskip=1:psy-rd=1,1:merange=32:deblock=1,1 -v </Query> </Preset> <Preset> <Level>1</Level> <Category>PS3</Category> <Name>DVD</Name> <Query> -f mkv -p -e x264 -b 2500 -2 -T -a 1 -E ac3 -B 320 -R 0 -6 6ch -D 1 -m -x ref=3:mixed-refs=1:bframes=3:weightb=1:direct=auto:b-pyramid=1:me=umh:subq=8:analyse=all:8x8dct=1:trellis=1:psy-rd=1,1:merange=16 -v </Query> </Preset> <Preset> <Level>1</Level> <Category>PS3</Category> <Name>High Quality</Name> <Query> -f mkv -p -e x264 -b 2300 -2 -T -a 1 -E ac3 -B 320 -R 0 -6 6ch -D 1 -m -x ref=6:mixed-refs=1:bframes=4:weightb=1:direct=auto:b-pyramid=1:me=umh:subq=8:analyse=all:8x8dct=1:trellis=2:no-fast-pskip=1:psy-rd=1,1:merange=32 -v </Query> </Preset> <Preset> <Level>1</Level> <Category>PS3</Category> <Name>Low Rate</Name> <Query> -f mkv -p -e x264 -b 1500 -2 -T -a 1 -E ac3 -B 320 -R 0 -6 6ch -D 1 -m -x ref=6:mixed-refs=1:bframes=4:weightb=1:direct=auto:b-pyramid=1:me=umh:subq=8:analyse=all:8x8dct=1:trellis=2:no-fast-pskip=1:psy-rd=1,1:merange=32 -v </Query> </Preset> <Preset> <Level>1</Level> <Category>PS3</Category> <Name>Extreme</Name> <Query> -f mkv -p -e x264 -b 2300 -2 -T --denoise="weak" -a 1 -E ac3 -B 320 -R 0 -6 6ch -D 1 -m -x ref=12:mixed-refs=1:bframes=16:weightb=1:direct=auto:b-pyramid=1:me=esa:subq=9:analyse=all:8x8dct=1:trellis=2:no-fast-pskip=1:psy-rd=1,1:merange=64:deblock=0,0 -v </Query> </Preset> </ArrayOfPreset> 

 

Place the above XML in the Handbrake user-preset.xml (located in the installation directory of Handbrake).

I typically use the DVD-preset, but try the other options and see what works for you. Once you ripped the movie into a MKV container, you just need to fire up mkv2vob and then output the remuxed file into a VOB-file and you are good to go. (Ripping and re-encoding any movie with the above settings will take between 2-3 hours, but the quality does not differ from a DVD)