makemkv vs. eac3to -- different sized video streams?

[woody777]

To make a long story short... my AnyDVD subscription is up and I'm trying to decide whether to renew it or buy MakeMKV... basically MakeMKV vs. AnyDVD/eac3to/MKVMerge. Anyway... I've been doing some experimenting.

If I rip using MakeMKV and then demux with MKVExtract, the video stream is always smaller than with eac3to.

If I rip using eac3to (ClownBD gui, but only demuxing with eac3to), the video stream is always bigger than with MakeMKV.

All other streams (audio & subs) are the exact same size. Now, I'm only talking a few hundred bytes here, but why are they different at all? Shouldn't the elementary streams be identical?

[woody777]

Also, thinking it was maybe something to do with the header, I even set header compression to "none" in MKVMerge with no effect on any streams after I extracted them again using MKVExtract.

[woody777]

Nothing? I wonder if this is an issue on my end. Has nobody noticed this before?

[mike admin]

Most video-streams are zero-padded for bit rate control. MakeMKV removes zero-padding, eac3to (as many tools) doesn't.

[woody777]

Thanks Mike. I'm far from an expert on zero-padding, but the way I understand it, shouldn't the size of the file remain identical?

[nfusion]

zero padded means
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

All those zeros still take up KB, if makeMKV strips those 000000000000000000000000000000 then you save KB.

[Romansh]

Thanks Mike. I'm far from an expert on zero-padding, but the way I understand it, shouldn't the size of the file remain identical?

As nfusion pointed out: no. Padding -> additional data, additional data -> increased file size.

[woody777]

^ ^ ^

Thanks guys! That explains it!