DVD/Blu-Ray to MKV

[smh0427]

I know there are bunch of threads discussing this but I havent found what I want yet, so posting a new thread.

I want to convert my DVD/Blu-Ray discs to mkv files. I do not want to lose too much on quality as I have a 1080p display on my laptop. I have seen some mkv movies which have amazing quality and file size is around 1-1.5 GB. How do I achieve this perfect quality/size combination. Also please let me know which software to use (I am leaning more towards free/open source software).

[Baldrick]

Ripbot264 or Megui.

But you wont get any blu-ray 1080p to mkv in just 1-1.5GB.

[smh0427]

Thanks Baldrick. Could you please tell me the settings I need to use on Ripbot264 or MeGUI to get the best quality/size combination?

[smitbret]

Thanks Baldrick. Could you please tell me the settings I need to use on Ripbot264 or MeGUI to get the best quality/size combination?

I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In my mind, there is no way to get a decent 1080p movie into 1-1.5GB. If space is that much of a premium, I would convert the whole thing to 720p.

Ripbot Settings:
L4.1 Custom
Everything checked
M.E. Algorithm = 3-UMH
Subpixel Refinement= 7-RD on all frames
Number of R-Frames = 4
Number of B-Frames = 3 (using more makes it more efficient, but could introduce shadow blocking, from my experience)
Trellis Quant = 2-Enhanced
Adaptive B-Frames = 2-Enhanced
AVC Level = 4.1

Use 2-Pass and lock size to about 1.3GB per hour.
Convert your audio to .aac 2-channel@ 128kbps.
Save as .MP4
Hit "Go" and come back in 12 hours (depending on your CPU).

Good luck. This may work for some movies and not for others. h264 encoding is more of an art than a science. A lot of it is going to depend on your playback device, too. Personally, I would never consider less than 4Gb for a 720p movie or less than 8GB for 1080p to be adequate. You might as well just rip a DVD instead and just let your player upscale it. For my own BR rips, I usually shoot for about 66% of the original size with a 6-channel .aac audio track at 320kbps.

[mis3]

I would like to convert some of my existing DVD into MKV to conserve space.

Because of the source, I will mux it to no more 480p.
The DVD size is 5-6 GB (DL, some even 7-8 GB) and with the same resolution, what would the typical size of the resulting MKV?

Is there a tutorial written for MeGUI?

[wulf109]

Take a look at Vidcoder.

[mis3]

Take a look at Vidcoder.

As per your advice, I tried Vidcoder to convert DVD to MKV. It worked great, thanks.

I have a question on resolution:

1st DVD: Input resolution: 720 x 480 Output: 720 x 470
2nd DVD: Input resolution: 720 x 576 Output: 720 x 432
3rd DVD: Input resolution: 720 x 480 Output: 704 x 480

Looks to me that the resolution of the output is always a bit less than the input.
What can I do to retain the resolution of the source? Or is there anyway I can increase of the resolution of the output?

[wulf109]

In settings under "Picture" you can set the output size. Set cropping to custom and reset to 720 x 480. 720 x432 is PAL? Not all DVD's are true 720 x 480. 704 x 480 is a standard DVD size. Is the PAL 720 x 432 a 16:9 DVD? PAL is nomally 720 x 576.

[mis3]

I set Cropping to Custom, the Top-Bottom-Left-Right were automatically set to 0,0,0,0. The Output Storage and Display resolutions were 720 x 480 and 853 x 480 (same as Input).

I then clicked on the Video Tab and the Constant Quality was 20. I could move the counter to 0 to 51. So, 20 is, I guess, the default setting.

What I want is to reduce the space but retain the picture quality. What settings should I set in Vidcoder?

[wulf109]

There's no simple answer to the quality question,it's what you see on screen,is it good or bad to your eyes.
CRF20 is the default quality setting in most programs,it's considered "good" quality. I prefer to set the output size by MB's,I use 2GB's per hour as a rule.

[mis3]

This is what I don't understand. Isn't picture quality depend on resolution? Higher numbers represent better PQ, right? Higher resolution will take more disk space. I have HD mkv movies (2 hr) with 1080p resolution which takes 10GB while some 720p files are 4-5 GB.

Since the source is DVD, I cannot get any better PQ than 720X480.

I am confused about these 2 parameters, resolution and constant quality. Pleade help.

[wulf109]

1920x1080 is far more detailed than 720x480 because there's 6 times as many pixels in the picture. So fine details are easier to see. "Quality" will be determined by how many bits go into each pixel. The more bits per pixel the larger the file becomes. I've seen 900mb 720P movies which look fine on HD screen. The fewer bits per pixel the more likely you'll get artifacts like macroblocking. Reduce the file size until you don't like what you see. Beauty as they is in the eye of the beholder.

[mis3]

Thanks. I just made another MKV file using Constant Quality = 19. The resulting file is 1.7 GB. I may try again later with Constant Quality = 18.

As a side note, the output file works in my PC but not so well with my media player (Patriot PBO). With my PBO, everything works if I watch the movie form the beginning. However, if I do fast-forward, it will not go back to normal speed. I then tried other downloaded MKV files and they were OK. Strange.....