DVD to mkv with same quality as orginal?

[abel1]

I have now tryed handbreake program and it worket fine. But how much can i shrink a movie in size but keep it in dvd quality? I am new to this... i want to keep ac3 sound also. I know there is makeMVK program aslo but if it possible to make the file smaller without loosing any quality it would be great.

/Abel

[Baldrick]

You will lose a bit quality by reconverting but if you don't shrink it too much you shouldn't notice it in most parts of the movie.

How much you can shrink it depends on the source but if you use constant quality mode the encoder will try adjust the compression to the source material, like lots of action/motion higher bitrate/bigger file size.

So I would use h264 video, keep the ac3 source and under video use the constant quality encoding mode. You have to decide what quality setting to use though...

[creamyhorror]

Follow Baldrick's suggestions. Handbrake's constant quality mode at CRF 18-19 will give you very good quality. You can go to 17-17.5 for even better quality, at the cost of more filesize.

[abel1]

thank you for the help. I will be watching the movies on 50" plasma tv. I testing now handbreak with constant CRF 17. i normaly use dvd shrink and shrink movies to a 4.3GB disc. But as i understand mkv is better quality rips.

Regards Abel

[creamyhorror]

Keep in mind that normal DVD players won't be able to play H.264 video (which Handbrake produces).

[abel1]

I have lg bluray 370 player and it shall play mkv files. I have not tryed yet.

Abel

[tun.tin]

DVD to MKV with MakeMKV without quality loss, consider hard drives are very cheap now a day

[abel1]

I have now tryed my mkv file that i did in handbreak with CRF 17 in quality, the file size was ca 2GB.
it wont play any good in my LG 370 BD player, but as i have read on internet its because its some changes to the mkv format resently. And lg is working on software update for that.
But it played fine in my computer.
But i dont get the chapters to work... isent that possible to have chapters on mkv file?
And do i gain much if i set CRF to even lower like 15 ? The source i have is dvd movie in 6.5GB
I want as much quality picture as possible.

/Abel

[creamyhorror]

I have now tryed my mkv file that i did in handbreak with CRF 17 in quality, the file size was ca 2GB.
it wont play any good in my LG 370 BD player, but as i have read on internet its because its some changes to the mkv format resently. And lg is working on software update for that.

I doubt LG has support for MKV playback, but I don't know for sure.

But i dont get the chapters to work... isent that possible to have chapters on mkv file?

Yes, it is. I'm not sure why Handbrake isn't doing it for you; try reading the Handbrake wiki.

And do i gain much if i set CRF to even lower like 15 ? The source i have is dvd movie in 6.5GB
I want as much quality picture as possible.

Going below CRF 16 is quite pointless. Even at CRF 18, most people won't be able to see any difference between the original and the encode. At 16-16.5, just about no one can (not without comparison screenshots). This assumes you're using good quality, slower settings.

[abel1]

Thanks for answering. i will read wiki about the chapters thing maby the answer is there.
And yes the LG BD 370 player has support for mkv, https://www.videohelp.com/dvdplayers/lg-bd370/10016
So its a good player, so hope the fix the issiuses with the changes in mkv format soon.

/Abel

[abel1]

Why do i get diffrent resolution on the movies i do with handbreak? sometimes its 720x553 and other its 720x434 why is that? it should be 720x576 PAL

/Abel

[stiltman]

in handbrake, it auto crops unless you tell it not to each time.
change from automatic to custom and put 0s in all 4 areas

[abel1]

ok thanks. But if i crop do the the aspect ratio become wrong? Is it any point to crop ?

/Abel

[brettski74]

But as i understand mkv is better quality rips.

Note that Matroska (ie. MKV) is a container format only. It has little to do with the quality of the embedded video streams. That is defined by the video stream format, the codec used to encode it and the parameters used. MKV supports more features than some other formats, but video qualityis really independent of the Matroska container.

[brettski74]

I have now tryed my mkv file that i did in handbreak with CRF 17 in quality, the file size was ca 2GB.

<snip>

And do i gain much if i set CRF to even lower like 15 ? The source i have is dvd movie in 6.5GB
I want as much quality picture as possible.

People often say that they want as much video quality as possible, but if that were really true, you wouldn't be transcoding the video all. the fact that you're transcoding the video tells me that either you care about disk space usage or you don't understand why you're transcoding. If, as I suspect, it is some concern about saving space, then it becomes a trade-off between how much space you want to save over how much visual degradation you can accept. I use crf=22 for near-DVD-quality video and have noticed little to no noticeable distortion of the image in most video in everything I've tried so far. I wouldn't suggest going much below crf=20 as the gains you will make will be virtually unnoticeable, but your file size is going to continue to increase as you reduce the rate factor. The crf=17 that you're already using is probably already better than it needs to be. crf=15 is probably a waste of time and space, but to really answer your question, do some test encodes. Get yourself some small samples of video - at least a minute or two of low motion video and another minute or two of high-motion video. Do some encodes at let's say crf=18, crf=20, crf=22, crf=25 and crf=30 then watch the original MPEG2 along with each of your H264 encodes and see when you can start to tell the difference. If you can't tell the difference when you're really looking for it, then you're not going to notice it when you're casually watching. That should give you a good idea of where you should set the rate factor.

[brettski74]

ok thanks. But if i crop do the the aspect ratio become wrong? Is it any point to crop ?

Google is your friend, but...

Cropping helps improve video quality and/or save space. Most video codecs today store image data for the frame in ways which is very efficient for a smooth and gradual change in colour or shading, whereas a very sharp change requires more data to represent accurately. For most video, this is great, because most video has large areas of relatively smooth changes in colour and shading and relatively small amounts of hard edges. Encoding a video that includes black lines along the top and/or sides of the frame introduces additional large hard edges into the frame which then requires more data to be encoded accurately. Depending on what type of encoding you're using, this will either reduce the quality of the encoded video for bit-rate control approaches or unnecessarily increase the file size with no improvement in quality for quality control approaches.

Note that the same problem arises for most video codecs when your frame size is not an integral number of blocks in both width and height. This is because the incomplete blocks are typically filled in with black pixels by most codecs which then introduces a hard edge again. Most codecs use block sizes of 16 pixels or smaller, so when you crop, it's generally advisable to crop the frame to a multiple of 16 pixels in both width and height.