Merging two *.MKV files but retaining audio and subtitles

[EvNmadtown]

I routinely use MakeMKV to turn my DVDs and Blu Rays into streamable video files in my Plex library. This works great, and I have had much success with this.

I recently acquired the Lord Of The Rings trilogy (Extended Edition) on Blu Ray. I already had this in my library sourced from DVD. The DVD source was also the extended edition. For those who are unaware, each of the three movies in extended edition form are on 2 separate discs. I was able to use video editing software to merge the 2 ripped movies into 1 movie that has no gap or pause between the 2 parts.

Since I was upgrading my source from DVD to Blu Ray, I also wanted to upgrade how they were stored in the library from a *.mp4 container to *.mkv containers. The primary motivation for this was to retain the original DTS-HD surround sound. I use MakeMKV to rip each movie to the *mkv container, and then use Wondershare Filmoria to edit, splice, and export the final *.mkv product. The problem is that the Filmoria export process strips away the DTS-HD formatting and subtitles from the final output file. The video output is perfect at 1920x1080 20000 Kbps and 30 frames/second, but like I said, the DTS-HD and subtitles are gone. There is basic 5.1 surround sound, but the whole point was to retain the original formatting.

Has anyone dealt with a problem like this? Any ideas or suggestions would be very appreciated. I am still new to the MKV world, but I am gradually replacing Important movies that are currently in the Mp4 format with an MKV version.

Thanks!

[Yugatha]

As MakeMKV is used only for extracting the MKV from a disc, you wouldn't use it for merging the MKVs. What I'd recommend is using MKVMerge (MKV Toolnix) (Google search), which allows you to merge videos together, and export an MKV. Doing this, you'd merge the two MakeMKV dumps (to merge the two audio tracks), then use MKVMerge again to merge the audio from the previous instruction, with the video from your Video Pro 20000kbps edit, to get the best of both worlds.

[docbill]

What you want is MKVToolNix GUI... It works great with two part movies like the extended version of the LOTR.

One of the movies in my box set gave me warnings when merging the direct MakeMKV output. So I first converted the movies with Handbrake and then merged them. That worked as expected. The only caveat is Handbrake wanted to crop part 2 of one of the movies to a slightly different resolution. The must be the exact same resolution to merge, so I had to override the defaults.

One important limitation I've noticed is MKVToolNix seems to only allow 40 chapters total. So when you more LOTR some of the chapters markers are silently dropped from the final output. I do not use chapters that often, so it doesn't really bother me. If it does, I suppose you could avoid the issue by manually building a chapters file.

[Shamoo]

Hi everyone

i wanted to bump this post as i am having problems with this. i have LOTR extended, that i want to make into 1 single mkv file.
i used mkv to make 2 x single files then mkv toolnix to mege it.
the first half of the movie is fine, subs and audio working as it should, however when the 2nd half starts (2nd disc) the audio is out of sync. has anyone come accross this?

thanks