Burn mkv files to DVD5 preserving chapters and subtitles

[ziggy1971]

I have a lot of .mkv files I made with MeGUI. Some of which are music videos (no chapters/subtitles) and others are TV episodes (with chapters/subtitles).

I would like to know how to burn the .mkv TV episodes to DVD5 and still have the chapters/subtitles work like they do in a regular DVD.

I would rather not have to transcode the videos to another format, if possible.
If transcoding is required, what is the process required to get these files to play on any standard Blu-ray player (I have a Samsung HT-C5500).

I would just like to burn these videos to DVD's as backup hard copies instead of only storing them on HDD.

I did some searching, but searching for "burning mkv files to DVD" seems to bring up a lot of conversion tools to DVD, which I don't want to do.

Any suggestions, comments or questions?

[Baldrick]

Why do you use white color in the text?Copied from another black forum?

If you want standard dvd-video format must you reconvert.

[ziggy1971]

OK, that is clearly not the way I wrote it.
No, I didn't copy it from another forum, this is the only place I posted.

I don't want to convert it to DVD format (i.e. vob's), just burning the mkv backups preserving the chapters/subtitles.

[TreeTops]

Can't you just use windows copy files to DVD as a data disk? Guess XP has some problems burning data to a DVD. You can read more here: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=101758

[wulf109]

Does your BR player support file playback? If they are in "normal" mkv format just drag into Imgburn and select UDF 2.50 for burning.

[aedipuss]

use imgburn in build mode. drag the mkv file into the window and burn. as long as it is less than 4.3GB and fits on a DVDr it should just burn the file as is, it will still be the original mkv on the disc.

[ziggy1971]

Sorry, I'm using Windows 7 64bit, not XP.

@ wulf109
What is considered a "normal" mkv format?

I just used Imgburn with UDF 2.50 to create iso file, then burned to DVD+RW for testing.
Audio/video plays as expected, but no chapters, subtitles or even fast-forward or rewind.

I also tested streaming mkv from PC with the subtitles extracted and renamed to match video, now subtitles work.

Apparently Samsung has issues with embeded subtitles in mkv files.
On the other hand, .avi files burned to DVD has the following enabled:
- fast-forward 3 speeds
- rewind - 3 speeds
- slow-motion - also 3 speeds

I need to do some checking on the subtitles or support for avi subtitles.

I wanted to use the mkv format due to its use of chapters, subtitles, audio tracks, etc., but if a stand-alone player won't play them, then what's the point in using that format? Ideas?

[aedipuss]

there is no standard for mkv playing on a blu-ray player. every player is different, the only standard is a blu-ray disc. you could try converting to avchd disc which is closer to blu-ray on a dvdr. try multiavchd or bdtoavchd

[jman98]

MKV is not a commercial format. While the specs are available, since it's not a commercial format and there's no certification board for it, devices that support it are free to implement it in any way this wish, which may mean partial support. Most devices that support MKV play the subtitles fine, provided that the subs are in a subtitle format the device supports. Getting chapters to work is a whole other story. To be blunt, if you are going to go gung ho into MKV then you have to accept that at least at present chapter support is very iffy and you should expect it to not work more than it works.

My limited experience is that most standalone devices that support MKV don't fully implement it. I've got an MKV file I made where I had a video only with a foreign language soundtrack. The original source video is Xvid. I put the Xvid video and an English soundtrack that I had to delay some miliseconds to get it to sync into an MKV container and none of my players that support MKV would touch it, even though the audio was good old AC3 and all of them could play the original AVI file that contained the video with the foreign language soundtrack. So this just shows you that there really are no guarantees right now about MKV if you use anything but a PC for playback.

[nbarzgar]

...

My limited experience is that most standalone devices that support MKV don't fully implement it. I've got an MKV file I made where I had a video only with a foreign language soundtrack. The original source video is Xvid. I put the Xvid video and an English soundtrack that I had to delay some miliseconds to get it to sync into an MKV container and none of my players that support MKV would touch it, even though the audio was good old AC3 and all of them could play the original AVI file that contained the video with the foreign language soundtrack. So this just shows you that there really are no guarantees right now about MKV if you use anything but a PC for playback.

I can supplement this experience: I have tried three different models of Blu-Ray-Player; the extend of support for .mkv's as well as the video/audio-streams inside the .mkv container accepted and played back by the device was each time a little different.

So far I have found:
- the mkv's accepted seem dependent on the respective version of mkvmerge, at least I found that files muxed by a very recent version (6.x.x...) weren't supported. Using mkvmerge version 5.6.0 always results in files supported by these devices: Philips BDP5100 and BP5500, LG BP420.
- I had to try out, which video/audio-streams inside the container will be supported in each case. The more recent devices tend to be even more lenient towards the variety of accepted formats.
- And yes, sometimes a video stream inside an .avi will be played back, the same stream inside an mkv will not... (mkv not being a commercial standard.. s.a.) *sigh*

[wulf109]

Ziggy - It;s a good practice to run MKV files thru MKVmerge. It will list all the streams in the file,video,audio,substreams.and chapters. Many MKV files don't have AR flags and MKVmerge will correct that. Often with MKV in 2:35AR will play full screen with a distorted AR. As other have said there's no real standard for MKV files.