www.makemkv.com

I'm new to the application, but my Samsung TV won't play the finished MKV or MP4 file with MPEG2. Is there anyway to get it to use h.264 instead?

Will

You'll have to re-encode it to h264, AFTER MakeMKV is finished.

@cornfedcub

Hi!

Is there anyway to get it to use h.264 instead?

No - MakeMKV does not convert videostreams (nor most audiostreams) to different formats. Therefore, if you use MakeMKV to process a standard DVD, the videostream in the created .MKV will remain MPEG-2...

I have the samsung hdtv high res 23in one. and mkv works fine on mine. i connect with vga and a 2.1 sound through my pc if that helps?

mikeinessex wrote:I have the samsung hdtv high res 23in one. and mkv works fine on mine. i connect with vga and a 2.1 sound through my pc if that helps?

I believe his TV natively plays video files (via USB or card interface), rather than being connected to an external source.

Not an expert here, but isnt' MPEG2 a very common format thats been around for a long time, compared h.264 a realtively new format?

Would it be unusual for any mainstream product to play h.264 and not play MPEG2?

TODDMKV wrote:Not an expert here, but isnt' MPEG2 a very common format thats been around for a long time, compared h.264 a realtively new format?

Would it be unusual for any mainstream product to play h.264 and not play MPEG2?

There are licensing fee's attached to MPEG2 so maybe that's why it's not in much hardware.

However, I think a more reasonable explanation is that most players aren't expecting to see MPEG2 video inside an MKV file.

crowfax wrote:

mikeinessex wrote:I have the samsung hdtv high res 23in one. and mkv works fine on mine. i connect with vga and a 2.1 sound through my pc if that helps?

I believe his TV natively plays video files (via USB or card interface), rather than being connected to an external source.

Indeed my Samsung TV plays video files natively via USB and via DLNA. It is expecting H.264, Divx, XviD, or MPEG4 in the MKV container, but not MPEG2. I love MakeMKV, because it works the same across Mac and PC platforms, it is fast, and it correctly rips the content I want, unlike Handbrake. However re-encoding every files is time consuming. I wish there was a way to chose the video encoding type.

cornfedcub wrote:I wish there was a way to chose the video encoding type.

But, there's nothing to choose. MakeMKV doesn't encode video at all. It extracts it and puts it in a new container.

Just to combat confusion, hopefully... cornfedcub: the mkv files show an encoding type of mpeg2 because that's what the enclosed video *is*. You can't just change the metadata to say the enclosed video stream is h.264 and leave the mpeg2 video stream in there. Your tv won't appreciate being lied to in this fashion!

All of which is to confirm what you probably suspected: that, for you, there is no alternative to those lengthy re-encodes. Just use handbrake (you can feed it the files made by makemkv if you're having trouble identifying the right titles and tracks from a DVD in it's own gui - no shame there, sometimes it's problematic) and cultivate patience like the rest of us. It won't lead you wrong. Alternatively instead of relying on your tv's own playback feature, connect a pc running xbmc or similar. That will happily play back mpeg2-containing mkvs as directly produced from DVDs using makemkv. Have been doing this more myself lately since my last raid upgrade, although I expect to encode them down later during the period of denial before my next such upgrade. :-}