Running an MKV through mkvtoolnix after rip

[pstnta]

Hi,

I was doing some reading about remuxing MakeMKV-created mkv files and stumbled upon this thread : https://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopi ... =1&t=11235

there was this statement : However, if you remux an MKV made by MakeMKV using MKVMerge, the resulting file will come out smaller. Basically, MakeMKV makes for neater tracks, nicely synced and neatly organised, yet MKVMerge is the superior Matroska muxer, assuming the tracks it's muxing have been pre-processed in some way.

Thing is, I was planning remuxing some rips I did a while ago with MakeMKV to remove the DTS-HD tracks to save some space (I muxed both the DTSHD and the DTS at the time) but now I'm afraid to do it since I don't wanna lose all the sync'ing that I remember MakeMKV doing during the rip (I had the av sync debug messages turned on).

could a dev or someone who knows for sure confirm or refute that statement?

thank you

[Chetwood]

I think it's BS. MakeMKV is faster, that's for sure. And why not try it yourself and compare file sizes?

[d00zah]

IIRC, mkvtoonix uses zlib compression on subtitle tracks, which MAY result in a marginally smaller file. The downside would be that some players don't cope well with compressed subtitles. You'd need to test results to see what works best in your situation.

[pstnta]

IIRC, mkvtoonix uses zlib compression on subtitle tracks, which MAY result in a marginally smaller file. The downside would be that some players don't cope well with compressed subtitles. You'd need to test results to see what works best in your situation.

I think it's BS. MakeMKV is faster, that's for sure. And why not try it yourself and compare file sizes?

thanks for replying guys, my concern isn't file size or compatibility, it's about losing the audio sync work that MakeMKV did.

the guy in the thread said "MakeMKV makes for neater tracks, nicely synced and neatly organised", does that mean that's lost if we remux it with mkvtoolsnix/mkvmerge?

[yorgo]

I've rarely (like maybe twice) had to use MKVToolNix to remux a file created by MakeMKV but I do not recall running into an audio sync issue. I recommend remuxing and testing both files.

[d00zah]

I use mkvtoolnix often & have never had it introduce audio sync issues.

[angelgraves13]

I always use mkvtoolnix after MakeMKV.

MakeMKV is for my initial backup to MKV. mkvtoolnix is for organizing and removing needless subtitles. I actually don't consider my MKVs to be complete until I run it through mkvtoolnix. I usually check if all the tracks are named correctly, and remove subtitles I don't need except for English and SDH and apply a forced flag for the Forced subtitle track. I'll usually move Forced tracks to the top followed by English and English SDH. If there are no forced tracks and the SDH subtitles are not on a black background, then I'll remove the standard English subtitle track entirely.

mkvtoolnix is updated regularly as is MakeMKV, and it's sometimes a good idea to run older remuxes through them if you want it to append the metadata found within the audio and video and subtitle tracks to the MKV index. It's only metadata though, and is only extracted from the streams. The player can do the same thing when playing the file. Looks nice when you go to Properties though and it lists it all there.

I've also used mkvtoolnix to delete Chapters from MKVs that I find rather useless, like if there's a chapter after a company logo that's 2 seconds long. The most useful feature for me is splitting files at durations or timecodes. I used this to remove some Warner Archive logos from a few TV episodes and it works quite well.