Episode: 4527
Title: Overly Complicated Media Ripping setup
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4527/hpr4527.mp3
Transcribed: 2026-07-31 16:13:19 (official HPR transcript)

---

This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4527, for 2025-12-09
Today's show is entitled, "Overly Complicated Media Ripping setup"
The host is Archer72 and the duration is 00:06:27
The flag is Clean, and the license is CC-BY-SA
The summary is "Archer72 shares a somewhat complicated version of a DVD/Blu-ray ripping setup"
Hello, this is your host, Archer72, for Hacker Public Radio.
In this episode, I share my overly complicated media ripping setup and hope it helps someone.
First of all, I have revised my media ripping setup since HPR 3294.
I've changed my mind about only using a terminal for ripping media, and it was time to make a change.
Now I both start, make MKV and handbrake from a remote GUI, either on my laptop or phone.
I'm using an Intel Mini PC to install my VNC server on, and it's running Debian 12,
so it's only a sudo apt install tigervnc-common from getting the VNC server.
And then to start it, it's VNC server, and I space an ampersand, and then it runs it in the background,
so I can close the terminal from there.
And then for the remote VNC viewer, I used Remina, R-E-M-M-I-N-A, VNC viewer,
and it has tab viewing, which is a nice feature.
And I use it on my Debian 13 desktop on my laptop.
And I've also installed VNC client for Android, which is a VNC, and I'll show the FDroid link in the show notes.
Where I keep the Rift files is on an NFS server on a Raspberry Pi,
because that's where I originally had them, and I didn't want to change anything over.
The NFS server is so that I can have the Intel machine write the files that I ripped to the Raspberry Pi
with a hard drive attached to it.
And that is only a sudo apt install nfs-kernel-server away from installing that.
Then I added symbolic links to the slash srv directory,
and so that points to my mount point for USB drive 12 terabytes for DVD rips and to where I can move movies from there.
On the Intel side, I actually have to use the full path.
I thought I was going to make it easier by using symbolic links in the srv directory on the Raspberry Pi,
but instead I have to write it out as, for example,
192.168.50.20 colon slash mnt slash usb drive dash 12tb dash dvdrip space mnt slash dvdrip.
And then I'll follow the rest of that in the show notes for where you would mount it in your FS tab.
From here, I have a Blu-ray writer and Blu-ray reader
that was meant to go inside a PC.
Instead, I have a SATA adapter going to USB.
And on the Make MKV portion,
I was having trouble having it read the disk completely into Make MKV.
And I found out from one of the forums
that other people had the same problem
and they had to downgrade to a different version.
And that solved the problem.
After I ripped the disk,
then I can graphically add the files to Handbrake.
And I select the Make MKV output format
and output the compressed file into 1080p.
And it still makes a file for a movie under 2GB.
And that's only if I'm starting with a Blu-ray.
Otherwise, the movie is under 1GB once it's compressed with Handbrake.
From here, I scanned the library for both Plex and Jellyfin
because I've been trying out both lately.
And Plex turned out to be a little more useful
on the Roku side
with the Roku app
to be able to play anything
because I had trouble with Jellyfin connecting to Roku.
The last moving part to this setup
is using TailScale
which I'll leave the link to in the show notes
on how to set it up on Debbie and Trixie.
And also, I'll leave a note about
where the app is in the F-Droid store.
TailScale is what I use to remotely access VNC
and it treats the connection like a local connection.
That's all I have.
This has been Archer72.
If you have anything that's of interest to hackers
that you do that's cool
that nobody else gets in the household,
feel free to record a show of your own
or leave a comment on this show.
Thanks.
Goodbye.
You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio.org.
Today's show was contributed by a HPR listener like yourself.
If you ever thought of recording podcast, click on our upload link
to find out how easy it is.
Hosting for HPR has been kindly provided by an AnHonestHost.com, the Internet Archive,
rsync.net, and our mirror network.
Unless otherwise stated, today's show is released under a Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license.