Recommendations to convert MKV for a smaller file size?

[Hell0Newman]

What are your recommendations to convert MKV files for a smaller file size? Ideally, I don't want to loose quality, but around 30GB per Blu-ray movie is rather large.

I rip the movies to play back mostly on a desktop computer connected to a 55inch TV in my living room.

Thanks!

[Woodstock]

handbrake.fr

[Hell0Newman]

Thank you! I'll give it a try.

[OldTimerToo]

Keep in mind that reducing the size will also reduce the quality. While handbrake does a good job, the output of MakeMKV is lossless. That is, it maintains the original screen information to the fullest extent.

I have used handbrake, but have not always been happy with the results. Fortunately, it is freeware and so you can experiment with it and see if it does what you want. With as big a playback screen as you have, you may notice a difference in quality.

[Woodstock]

MakeMKV is a loss-less transcription of a lossy compression... The original BD video is already compressed.

But yes, transcoding it to another compression method is not loss-less. You can adjust the default compression done by Handbrake for different sources. Lots of information on that on forums.handbrake.fr for those interested in playing.

[OldTimerToo]

I should have said, it maintains the original screen information of the file you are processing. It also comes with a price -- file size. The more information you retain, the larger the resulting file. Thus, if you want the highest resolution (of the original material), the resulting file will be close to the original size. These is some savings, since file overhead is reduced, but not much.

[darkrats]

I just started to try MakeMKV and was surprised that the output file was so huge. I know that it has to be in order to maintain the original quality, but I've seen many MKV movies (widescreen) that are 720p in quality. One of the movie sites (that shall remain nameless) mentioned MakeMKV, but their movies are always around 1GB or less in size. Any ideas about shrinking the size of the output file. More than 1GB is too big for me. Thanks.

[Woodstock]

You have to remember the purpose of MakeMKV - to create an MKV file of what is on the source disk. It is not intended to recode the video. What is on a disk can be large - DVDs can top 8GB, and BDs can be as much as 50GB (actually over 100GB, but that is rare).

There are other tools intended to shrink things down. Handbrake is popular because it is free and pretty easy to use, but there are other tools. A few mouse clicks or some simple batch file creation can turn the raw MKV files into smaller files that are tuned for the device they'll be played on.

Using separate tools can be a pain at times, but, it allows each one to be best at what it does. The Handbrake people do not have to fight the war of keeping up with DVD/BD copy protection schemes, and MakeMKV doesn't have to fight the war of "best encoder".

[OldTimerToo]

Another thing to keep in mind when using Handbrake, it is, as I stated earlier, a lossy system, even when using a dual-pass encoding method to produce MP4 files. MKV files are fine, but I have never figured out Handbrake's system for putting it all together. MakeMKV has a much easier-to-understand interface.

Now, to the problem of reducing the file size to under 1G. For some shows and movies, that is not much of a problem. Use Handbrake and if the show is not a long movie, it will generally produce a file nuder 1G per episode or shorter movie. Longer films, especially those that require dual layer DVDs, aren't going to reduce to that side without some serious impact on the video. Keep in mind that I'm talking about normal DVDs, 480 lines, not higher.

The is especially true of any blu-ray disc, since the resolution is typically 1080 lies. You can use Handbrake to reduce the resolution, and the results may be fine. However, you'll see a degradation of the video, even on a 720 system. And to get the file size under 1G, the resolution is going to be horrid -- close to watching a movie on video tape or worse.

[ChipsNGuac]

I just started using MakeMKV last night and I was wondering the same thing.

My first MKV file came out at 4.27 GB (roughly the same size as the ISO/VOB files. I havent tried Handbrake yet, but I was able to get the MKV file down half to 2.08 GB. I used DVDShrink to compress the VOB files before converting it to MKV. (I did that twice, the first compression got it down to 2.87 GB)

I havent tried playing them on my TV yet to see if there is a noticeable difference in quality yet. I will also try Handbrake and see how that compares to the DVDShrink method and report back with my findings.

[ndjamena]

If you still have the actual discs, you're better off ripping a full size file with MakeMKV and then compressing that with Handbrake. You'd wind up with the same file size AND better quality.