www.makemkv.com

I have been intensively looking for a viable container for preserving interactive DVD menus (while transcoding the video content to H264). I thought MKV would be this container. After all, that has been Matroska's stated goal for quite some time:

http://www.matroska.org/technical/menu/index.html wrote: Matroska Menu Specifications
[...]
What we'll try to have is a system that can do almost everything done on a DVD, or more, or better"

I was very excited when I heard about MakeMKV, thinking that this would finally achieve my dream, as numerous indications in the "about MakeMKV" section seem to suggest that MakeMKV is capable of containing a DVD preserving all original information (incl. interactive menus) and that MakeMKV's output could be then used for transcoding to H264:

http://www.makemkv.com/aboutmkv/ wrote: "Practically this means that it is possible to put entire movie […] into a single [mkv] file.

You can copy them to your laptop and watch anytime, even if your laptop lacks DVD or Blu-ray drive.

Thought about converting MPEG-2 video into H264 to make the file 5 times smaller? All of it can be easily done.

MKV files are compact. For exactly the same content MKV files are about 10% smaller than DVD files.

Since all meta information is preserved in MKV and compressed media data (video, audio, subtitles) is not changed in any way it is always possible to transcode MKV files into original format. For example, MKV files produced from a Blu-ray disc may be transcoded back to a Bly-ray image or set of M2TS files without any losses."

However my tests with MakeMKV did nothing of the quotes above. I ended up with a set of single, independent MKV files. No interactive DVD menu. In fact no DVD menu at all. The files were also not linke to each other (via segment UID).

So my question is, how can I achieve what MakeMKV says it can achieve as quoted above?
Thank you.

Have a look at this thread: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=149773

Basically at this point in time Matroska container does not support menus. No container supports menus. Even if it did there is no software that supports playing back menus in mkv.

The only way is to simply dump the decrypted disk to an iso file.

thank you both for your clear statements

setarip_old wrote: It seems you already knew the answers to the questions you've posted here at the MakeMKV forum, since you, starting on August 2nd, have been an active participant in the Doom9 Forum thread that "skittle" has directed you to...

The thread you linked to is really polemic and not fact-based. I have asked on multiple forums how and if interactive DVD menus can be preserved (while transcoding to H264). I have either received no answer at all or the answer was "not possible", but when pressed how they would know, you got a sense that they didn't really know how they came to this conclusion or where they got their facts from. And that included the thread you mentioned. You'd wonder how often I've seen people on forums say clueless things like "you cannot convert from wav to mp3" (ok, or at least almost as clueless) and you'd wonder how often something turned out to be doable if you were ready to invest some time in research.

Anyway,
the OP here is slightly different and in a different context, and has been answered only partially so far.

Why is the MakeMKV about section http://www.makemkv.com/aboutmkv/ filled with things MakeMKV actually can't do? Look at the quote in my OP. And look at the emphasis I added. If I didn't interpret that correctly, as you seem to suggest, then can you please tell me what in the world the bold blue text is supposed mean? Or is it just a placeholder text awaiting implementation of future features? Much like the quote from matroska.org above? Speaking of which ... why do the Matroska Menu specifications suggest mkv supports DVD menus ... for like 5-10 years already ??

It's just something that is misleading users in the wrong direction, if you ask me. But I'm willing to stand corrected.

http://www.makemkv.com/aboutmkv/ wrote: "Practically this means that it is possible to put entire movie […] into a single [mkv] file.

100% true. I think you are confusing "movie" with "disc". No where does it say you can put menus into an mkv. You can put the entire movie into one file. If matroska.org says it supports menus, then maybe you should complain to matroska.org.

You can copy them to your laptop and watch anytime, even if your laptop lacks DVD or Blu-ray drive.

Not sure what your complaint is there. You don't need an optical drive to play an mkv.

Thought about converting MPEG-2 video into H264 to make the file 5 times smaller? All of it can be easily done.

I noticed you conveniently left something out there. The page actually says "All of it can be easily done with free software." So, that too is 100% true.

MKV files are compact. For exactly the same content MKV files are about 10% smaller than DVD files.

Also 100% true. MKV files are indeed smaller than DVD (vob) files.

Since all meta information is preserved in MKV and compressed media data (video, audio, subtitles) is not changed in any way it is always possible to transcode MKV files into original format. For example, MKV files produced from a Blu-ray disc may be transcoded back to a Bly-ray image or set of M2TS files without any losses."

That's true as well. The resulting mkv can be converted back into a BluRay structure and burned to a disc, with no loss of quality.

So my question is, how can I achieve what MakeMKV says it can achieve as quoted above?
Thank you.

Easy. Just use MakeMKV, and it does everything is says it can achieve. Just don't make assumptions based on other things you wish it could achieve.

lovelove wrote:The thread you linked to is really polemic and not fact-based. I have asked on multiple forums how and if interactive DVD menus can be preserved (while transcoding to H264). I have either received no answer at all or the answer was "not possible", but when pressed how they would know, you got a sense that they didn't really know how they came to this conclusion or where they got their facts from. And that included the thread you mentioned. You'd wonder how often I've seen people on forums say clueless things like "you cannot convert from wav to mp3" (ok, or at least almost as clueless) and you'd wonder how often something turned out to be doable if you were ready to invest some time in research.

I'm surprised that no one has pointed you to Matroska's menu specification:

http://matroska.org/technical/menu/index.html

As you can see, the spec is simply not finished. They have outlined some principles of how menus are supposed to work, and they have some ideas of how to store the menus inside the mkv-file, but there's absolutely nothing decided on how to define or describe the menus.

So, to conclude: It's not possible to have menus in MKV-files yet, because there's no specification for menus yet.

It is possible to include many movies (i.e. movie and bonus materials) in a single file, though. Have a look at the example at Matroska: http://matroska.org/technical/specs/tag ... html#whole

I doubt you'll find any program that'll rip to this kind of file, so you'll most likely have to rip to separate files first, then handcraft a tag-file yourself and mux with mkvmerge. Finding a player that'll actually play the file correctly will probably also be a challenge.