Which format for movies for Plex?

ensyed

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I have a mac mini as an htpc. I use it for iTunes tv shows but it's a real pain to convert DVDs to iTunes format with handbrake. It takes forever.
I have been reading how everyone loves Plex. I am willing to give it a whirl especially since it can play multiple formats

1) after I open my legally owned DvDs with mactheripper into a video-ts file What is the fastest and best format to conver the movie for maximum PQ. I only have a few dozen movies so not concerned with storage

2) what do I need to backup my 10 blurays? I have a Sony vaio with a bluray writer or an iMac but I would need to buy some kind of external bluray drive.
It needs to be an easy to use method like handbrake.

Thank you for your help.
 
plex will play the rips straight from mac the ripper so no need to do any further processing. For the blu rays most people use makemkv with an external blu ray drive, but if you have the sony already you can just use something like anydvd or dvdfab which I'm sure can output something compatible with plex (plex plays just about anything)
 
I tried the mac the ripper output file with VLC and it hiccuped quite a bit. Are you sure there is nothing simple I could do to make the file easier to play?

I read about iso files. What are those and will they be easier to play?

I just want a short conversion time.

Thanks for your help
 
Just download MakeMKV and use that. It's so easy to use and you lose no quality.
 
MakeMKV just rips the BluRay disc and changes the container from m2ts to mkv. Plex plays either fine but mkv is generally better supported on other platforms so a bonus to use. It also allows you go remove additional languages and subtitles in the process and hives you a single file movie only mkv at the end.

I always advise to downconvert all HD Audio to standard DD or DTS as Plex can't handle it or output yo your AVR anyway, and it usually saves a few GB too!
 

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