Burning MKV to DVD/ BD?

[jamesj84]

Hi, In need of a quick piece of help.

I use ripbot & handbreak to convert all my movies to MKVs.
If i ever need to burn my MKVs to a DVD file structure format or Bluray structured format what is the best program to do this and whats the best program to use the dvd / BD structure andput this on a dvd/BD.

Also if the file is too big for a dvd, is there a program to shrink the file for DVD.


Cheers guys

[Atak_Snajpera]

for BD structure you can use TSmuxer,
However most of bd players already support mkv so i guess remuxing to BD structure may not be necessary.

[jman98]

Handbrake produces output that's not valid for DVD so do consider that. I have never used ripbot but most likely what you are getting from it would also not be valid for DVD.

If you just want to burn MKV files that are small enough to fit on a DVD disc and you don't care about changing them to DVD format, you can just burn a data disc to a DVD blank using the free ImgBurn. If you want to burn MKV files without change to a BD data disc then ImgBurn can do that too.

[jamesj84]

Aghhh, Gosh. I use TSmuxer when i want to save an audio file i may like to keep for future use. As you never know. I have never seen the BD structure selection. I take it it will have a dvd structure selection aswell will it.

SO can i burn a mkv file straight onto a disc and it will play in a supported bd player. That would save a lot of agro.

[poisondeathray]

Aghhh, Gosh. I use TSmuxer when i want to save an audio file i may like to keep for future use. As you never know. I have never seen the BD structure selection. I take it it will have a dvd structure selection aswell will it.

no it doesn't have dvd option (dvd-video doesn't use transport stream)

SO can i burn a mkv file straight onto a disc and it will play in a supported bd player. That would save a lot of agro.

Not necessarily - it depends if the mkv was complaint or not (if it used compliant settings)

Note as Atak mentioned above most newer bd players can play mkv directly either on disc or usb

[jamesj84]

OK, No probs. Best thing i can do for this task would be to use tsmuxer to put into a bd structure then i can use bdrebuilder to shrink if required to dvd. I will give that a go.

[poisondeathray]

ok , to clarify we are talking about 2 slightly different things:

I misunderstood what you were asking: when I said DVD-Video earlier, I mean standard definition regular DVD (think old DVD players)

You're talking about HD content on a DVD5 disc (medium), sometimes called a "BD5" or "AVCHD disc" . These discs won't play on a regular DVD player, but will play on some blu-ray players. Then yes, it can be done with tsmuxer (if it fits the capacity) , and the encoding settings used were compliant

[jamesj84]

Yes, Sorry I was vague, I did mean BD5 not SD DVD.
WHat my reason is, that when i stay at my girlfriends over the weekend, until i get myself a HDmedia player all i have is a PS3 and is doesnt read MKVs unfortunately. So the cheapest way of watchin my HD films is using dvds.
I think i will use tsmuxer, and imgburn. If its too big i will shrink using bdrebuilder. And hopefully thats my probs solved Cheers guys for the input

[poisondeathray]

With the PS3 you will have problems if its' not 16:9 content (eg. if it's a cropped 2:35:1 film) . You will have to add the black borders back e.g. uncropmkv - this requires re-encoding

[hello_hello]

Not having used a PS3 in my life, doesn't it support MP4?

If so, YAMB will open MKVs and resave them as MP4s as long as the audio and video within are supported by the MP4 container. Or there's MkvТоMp4.

[jamesj84]

I havent cropped any of my films, kept them as much to the original as possible.
Thing is only my MKVs created from DVDs will work in MP4 but not my BDs as i have copied the sound which most of mine are in DTS etc and not AC3. Also the PS3 only supports files of 4gb in size so any of my HD collection which is bigger then this will be a prob.

Think i may have to just buy something like a popcorn hour or similar and use to play my MKV files. This may be the more feasble then to start re encodng etc

[hello_hello]

Does your other half own a laptop with a HDMI out?

In the mean time.... if you just want to make a few movies watchable until you buy a decent media player.....

Some converters will remux video into MP4 while only converting the audio, which shouldn't take long. It'd guess MkvТоMp4 does. ffcoder is basically an encoder GUI but it's one which lets you copy video while encoding audio, or the other way around. MKVMergeGUI will split MKVs into segments if 4GB is a limit. YAMB probably does the same for MP4 but if not you could split the MKVs first the remux them as MP4s.

Just some thoughts.... but I'd imagine something like that would have to be faster than converting to Bluray structure then shrinking with bdrebuilder.

[jamesj84]

Thanks guys for the responses.
I have found a mkv player which is really cheap and may do the job for now. Its a cyclone micro 2+, if anyone has heard or got any reviews of this. Its £30 an you plug hard drive into it. Plus its HDMI output to TV so quids in. woohoo

[FulciLives]

The Sony PS3 will play MKV's that you convert to M2TS files via txMuxer. It doesn't matter if it is cropped as long as the pixel ratio is 1:1 which should be the case for any 1080p re-encode that is left 1920xwhatever or 720p encode that is done at 1280xwhatever

The trick is that the audio must be AC-3 and you cannot have more than one audio. Also subtitles like SRT will not work.

If the audio is DTS then you can run the MKV through XviD4PSP and use "copy" for the video (no re-encoding is done) and select AC-3 for the audio (you can use up to 640kbps for the AC-3 bitrate) and select M2TS for the output. It will then re-encode the audio and spit out a new file that is a M2TS file. Since only the audio is being re-encoded it is fairly quick.

Again you can do this directly with tsMuxeR if the audio is already AC-3 and again no re-encoding is taking place so it is very fast.

If your video is not cropped and is exactly 1080p or 1920x1080 ... or if it is not cropped and exactly 720p or 1280x720 ... either way ... you are probably better off making an AVCHD with tsMuxeR and the reason why is two fold.

1.) The PS3 will play AC-3 and/or DTS audio from an AVCHD and even let's you have multiple audio tracks
2.) Subtitles like SRT will work and can be turned on or off

There's even a way to make the AVCHD structure play back on a PS3 via a USB stick but that requires a hint more work so it's probably better to just burn it to a DVD5 or DVD9 (assuming it fits one or the other). However if the file is too big to fit a DVD9 then USB works just fine.

To use USB AVCHD you would make one as you normally would with tsMuxeR but set the file splitting on the blu-ray tab to 4.0GB and then afterwords use a free program called "AVCHDMe" (can be found in the TOOLS section here). It will make sure your file name structure is PS3 friendly. Now simply copy the AVCHD folder over to a USB stick (use FAT32 formatted sticks) making sure the AVCHD folder is in the root directory. It will now work.

Only drawback to AVCHD as I see it is that your video cannot be cropped. However when that is the case it works rather well.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[jamesj84]

Awesome response. Thank you very much

[FulciLives]

I wanted to add:

If using XVID4PSP use the last "official" version. It's listed on the website as: XviD4PSP 5.037 full official version

Also note that the PS3 can read files bigger than 4.0GB from a DVD disc. So if you burn a M2TS on a DVD9 and that file is over 4.0GB it can still read it. The 4.0GB limit is only when using external media like a HDD or USB Thumb Drive. Such devices MUST be formatted FAT32 to work with the PS3 and that is what imposes the 4GB barrier. However as I pointed out you can make a huge AVCHD on USB as long as you set the file split to be 4.0GB in txMuxeR. I've done this with files that wouldn't otherwise fit on a DVD9 disc (I don't yet own a blu-ray burner).

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
I've played back AVCHD on the PS3 on a USB stick that had bitrate spikes up to 50Mbits and it never chocked and my USB stick is a cheap 'slow' one. It's a nice solution!