www.makemkv.com

I like the simplicity of MakeMKV, it does exactly what I'm looking for, except one step - I'd like to end up with the video track encoded with H.264.

Yes, I know I could extract the video track, transcode it, and merge it back in again. But a large part of MakeMKV's appeal is that it's really easy to use and pretty much turnkey (apart from making me guess which checkboxes I should leave checked, but that's the topic of another thread

It'd suit me fine to have MakeMKV invoke a command line tool to actually do the transcode - in fact I'd prefer to have some control over the parameters used for the transcode.

-- Paul

Why not just use Handbrake and skip using MakeMKV as a middle-man?

There are a few reasons.

1. handbrake does not "decrypt" the DVDs (anymore)/Blurays
2. Speed, it's faster to rip a movie then re-encode it.
2.b. It's also alot faster in the case if episodes on a DVD. As you can rip them all first and batch encode them.
3. Better quality. Now this one is kinda subjective to your equipment. As the issue with re-coding straight form the DVD/bluray is the prolonged time the drive is active and reading the disk. this increases the chances for jitter,read errors, and "hiccups".
4. such prolonged and continued drive accessing will reduce the life of any drive considerably.


Side note : personally I would recommend xvid4psp for recoding. It's alot more user friendly and tends to keep the K.I.S.S. method of gui design.