Removing Subs to reduce MKV size / other options?

[kmcc]

I have a bunch of MKV videos, each with 4 subtitle sets. I assume that takes up a fair amount of space... I used mkvmerge to 'de-deselect' the sub files but I think it just disabled them rather than remove them from the container because the file size is the same.
My other options as I see it to reduce the size of these MKV files is to compress the video or convert to AVI which is what my other video files are.
Which of these 3 options would be easiest for a newbie and what programs should I use?
Thanks!

[noemi7]

Subtitles take usually no more than 100 kb, so nothing in comparison to video and audio size. Video conversion/compression leads to quality lose. Plenty of freeware programs can do it, just look i.e. here.

[netmask56]

I have a bunch of MKV videos, each with 4 subtitle sets. I assume that takes up a fair amount of space... I used mkvmerge to 'de-deselect' the sub files but I think it just disabled them rather than remove them from the container because the file size is the same.
snip
Thanks!

MKVMerge removes them. You can easily confirm this by comparing a MediaInfo log of the original with subs and your subs removed version. The removed subs version will not have a heading at the bottom of the log TEXT. Or you could run the removed subs version through MKVMerge to see if you can "put them back" I think not!.

As the previous post said subs only take up a very small amount. Re-encoding to avi etc will reduce the file size depending on what you want but you will lose quality. As an alternaive if the sound track is 6 channel AC3 or DTS you could convert down to 2 track MP3 audio (also a loss of quality but may be a better trade off than the video)