A general newbie question handbreak vs Makemkv

[Ryan Charles]

This is a pretty rookie question. I wanted to convert my Blu-Ray collection to digital copies, so I can store them on my hard drive. I read an article suggesting that I use MakeMKV followed by handbreak. I have to go purchase a Blu-Ray player for my laptop, but in the interim I decided to convert some DVDs to try out the tools. I used MakeMKV to create the MKV file and as we speak Handbreak is doing its thing. My laptop can play MKV files, I am using VLC, so what is handbreak used for? Is it only used for Blu-Rays and not DVDs? Am I losing video and/or audio quality by using both programs?

Thanks

[poisondeathray]

makemkv just re-packages the dvd into mkv container (no quality loss)

handbrake re-encodes the video using video compression (smaller filesize, quality loss according to the settings you choose)

mkv is just a container (think of it as a box containing video, audio, possibly subtitles and other information like timing). "mkv" doesn't necessarily indicate anything about what is inside