This is a great thread, thx!
I too want to move my ripped .MKV's back into .ISO's and burn backup
copies of some movie-DVDs, and the info here sounds like the ticket.
I noticed one reply, which was explaining the issue of single-layer vs dual-layer
blank DVDs. I'd heard of this, but needed a 'refresher course', so I googled on
Wikipedia and found this article, which explains details of 'DL' (dual-layer).
Hope this article is helpful to others:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD#Dual-layer_recording
[The URL above points into the relevant section to info about dual-layer.
The fuller article covers almost anything you'd want/need to know about
DVD media types, etc.]
That said, my goal will be to try to produce .ISO files that will fit on single-layer
media, as I suspect that using dual-layer might be more trouble than its worth,
so I'd like to avoid that whenever possible.
[Tried tsMuxR, but then learned that it seems to be BlueRay only!? e.g. the output
'STREAM' always seemed to be .m2ts file, which is not what I wanted...too large to
fit on 4.7GB. The webpage and docs are in Russian...they of course can be translated
but I haven't bothered to do that yet. Plus, I don't own BlueRay player (yet) either.]
Next I installed the FreeMake video converter mentioned in an earlier reply...
I then selected for input a .MKV file, then
chose 'DVD' icon, and the sub-option 'Create an .ISO (file-container)'. Nice.
[This software overall is IMPRESSIVE...looks simple to use, and nicely presented!]
Yes, as someone else mentions, it DOES have a much longer run time
(about 35 mins for a movie .MKV, on my quite-fast i7-CPU-ed laptop w/4.0-GB of ram),
but I rationalize that with fact that it chose to re-compress, which normally takes
3-5 times longer than de-compressing...so be patient.
The resulting .ISO for
the chapters of a movie was reduced to about 1.6-GB, so it's easy to conclude that
indeed, it clearly was re-compressing. So far, this 'FreeMake' converter software looks
impressive...the install felt right, and the first output seems reasonable looking.
[I haven't yet burned the .ISO onto physical DVD-media, but will do that soon
and report back whether that newly burned DVD will play ok on my DVD-player.
In theory, it OUGHT to. (Update: Yep, it does, w/ one minor glitch...can't
select to enable any sub-titles...it keeps saying "Operation can't be performed
during playback, stop playback first".
This problem seems to be a menu-design glitch, from choosing
a 'motion-menu', using FreeMake v3.0.2. I burned a 2nd one, using
'text-menu' choice the next time, but it has the same issue.]
I've used their support-email system to seek advice on this problem, and
am waiting to hear back.
(It's not really a showstopper...I can view the movie fine, just not
with sub-titles.)
Cheers...