Ripping/Converting to MKV

I’ve become a fan of the Matroska video container. This is basically a video file that contains (usually) HD video content in a highly compressed size. The MKV files contain a HD video (in H.264 format), audio (in AAC or AC3 format) and optionally subtitles. The latter two can have multiple instances allowing for multi-language audio or subtitles.

I’ve been converting my DVDs and TV shows (from Divx AVIs) to MKVs that last few days after purchasing the WDTV. Based on some experimentation, I’ve figured out that HD content of about 1 hour can be easily stored in a MKV file of 300MB without any visible loss of quality! Conversions do take a while on my Core2Duo machine – approximately 30-45 minutes/hour of HD content.

I used to like a free tool called SUPER for performing this task. However, I found another tool that has a couple of additional options. This tool, AutoMKV, is yet another free software that lets you convert from any format to MKV (as well as others).

The best part about this is that there is an option where you can specify what the desired size is of the converted file and the software will get it as close as possible to that size. Another option is to upscale the content as well as convert it from letterbox to widescreen. You can also queue multiple jobs and let them all process sequentially. Take a look at the screenshots for some more tips.

a1
1. Select the AUDIO code
2. Select the desired file size
3. Select the Container and VIDEO codec
4. Add to queue or Start Encoding 

a2
You can also convert from letterbox to widescreen format 

All in all, AutoMKV is a great tool for both watching video and for archiving them. Make sure that the player connected to your TV recognizes this format though.


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Categories: Tips | Movies | Rave

Posted by vinod on March 23, 2009 20:28 3 Comments
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Comments

The Matroska container actually has nothing to do with your file size or video quality. It's that H.264/MPEG-4 codec doing the magic. Matroska is just an open-standard way of combining audio and video into one file. You could put it into an MP4 file instead and you'd have the same filesize and quality.

But yes, 264 is definitely the way to go for movie rips. You are re-encoding from the original DVDs, right? :-p

March 24. 2009 04:25 | Daniel Laughland United States |

Heh, Yeah, I know that the compression is due to the H264 and not MKV and yup, I'm converting a huge bunch of my kid's DVDs to MKV to store on a hard disk and load whichever one he wants without needing to switch DVDs.

I also had a bunch of VCDs in letterbox format of older shows (Tom and Jerry, Mr. Bean, etc.) that I converted to Widescreen quite nicely.

March 24. 2009 07:50 | vinod |

It's that H.264/MPEG-4 codec doing the magic. Matroska is just an open-standard way of combining audio and video into one file. You could put it into an MP4 file instead and you'd have the same filesize and quality.

June 1. 2009 06:31 | club penguin United States |

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