Best .avi and dvd to .mkv?

[xxnonamexx]

Whats the fastest convertor to convert my dvds and .avi files to .mkv?

[Baldrick]

MakeMKV for DVD and mkvtoolnix for avi. No video reconversion at all so it doesn't take that long.

Or do you want to shrink to a mkv with h264 video?

[xxnonamexx]

whats h264? Would that play better on big screen tvs? I am looking to have them play in .mkv on a tv from my hard drive. Thanks

[Alexstarfire]

Why bother converting them to MKV? It seems like you're not adding anything to the files, like extra audio files and such, so to me it seems needless to convert them.

[xxnonamexx]

I thought .mkv is better quality? I am looking to convert my dvds into good files to use on a harddrive to access library of dvds instead of disks.

[Jim44]

I thought .mkv is better quality?

"Better" than what? The best quality will be the VOB files ripped right from the DVD.

[xxnonamexx]

So question then if I rip files from a dvd (VOBS) how can I get it into a format to have a library of dvds on my hard drive to access to watch on my tv?

[Alexstarfire]

I'm assuming that you have your computer hooked up to the TV. You can find media players to directly play VOB files, or so I've read anyway. I usually just rip the DVD in ISO format and use VLC or SMPlayer to play the DVD, either directly from the ISO or by mounting it on a virtual drive.

ISOs would leave you with an easy way to organize your stuff.

[xxnonamexx]

I would like to not have my computer hooked up to my tv. I am looking to have a hard drive hooked up to my tv through a media center. I wanted to know best format to keep my files to accomplish this feat.

[jagabo]

MKV is a container -- a box that can contain audio and video data. The container has nothing to do with the quality of what's inside. If you simply remux your DVD VOB files into a VOB container the quality will not change. What determines the quality is the properties of the videos and codecs used on the data within the container. What container and codecs you use will depend on the media player you have (or plan to get).

If the player can play DVD ISO images then ripping as an ISO image will get you an exact copy of everything on the DVD. If the player can play VIDEO_TS folders you can simply rip your DVDs to the hard drive, each in its own folder. That is basically just copying the files (and removing the CSS encryption) from the DVD to the hard drive. In both these cases the quality will be exactly the same as the DVD. You can remux from the VOB set to an MKV file and get exactly the same quality too. But that's an extra, unnecessary step.

If you want to reduce the file size then you need to think about what codecs and containers you want to use. h.264 video in an MKV container will usually get you good quality with smaller file sizes. But h.264 encoding is pretty slow and many players do not support it. Many people will prefer to use Divx or Xvid in an AVI container (not as good quality at the same file size as h.264) because it's much faster to convert and more widely supported.

[xxnonamexx]

Wealth of information. I was just looking at Popcorn hour and it appears they will play dvd files from a HD. It appears it plays all files. What do you think is the best way to organize my harddrive example I will have the movie name then what are the best files? I think VIDEO_TS will play I guess I should leave those folders.

[Bonie81]

The fastest DVD conversion as far as I know by experience is
AVI (XVID/DiVX video codec and lame audio codec), while mkv is just a wrapper, you can have many flavors inside.