HD Video Conversion??

[moobox]

I have a question regarding video, and you all seem to be very smart people. Help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Lately I have been using Aimersoft Total Media Converter to convert .mkv and .m2ts 1080p video files to .mp4 format that can be viewed on my Playstation 3. I'm using a Macbook Pro to convert these files.

I'm wondering if I'm losing quality when converting. The video files that I convert typically have a video bitrate of between 5000 and 10,000 kbps, and an audio bitrate of 640 kbps.

In Aimersoft I choose the 1080p PS3 .mp4 setting and it has been working fine. While peeking through the program settings I notice that the max video bitrate that I can select is 4000 kbps and the max audio bitrate I can select is 160 kbps.

Am I losing out on video and/or audio quality?

If so, what can you recommend that I do to keep original quality? I'm open to suggestions for either new conversion software or better formats to convert to.

Again, any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

[mrswla]

I'm wondering if I'm losing quality when converting. The video files that I convert typically have a video bitrate of between 5000 and 10,000 kbps, and an audio bitrate of 640 kbps.

Evertime you convert you lose quality. Here is a simple tool search to convert mkv to mp4.

[moobox]

Thank you for the quick reply but that does not answer my question.

I am aware you can not generally retain 100% original quality. I'm asking if the drop in video/audio bitrate means significant drop in quality. The program I'm using to convert is sometimes cutting video bitrate in half and audio bitrate down 4-fold.

[mrswla]

You're going to get answers all over the place. For example, you'll see people on this forum say that they convert blu-rays down to BD5 (single layer dvd) and can't tell a difference. I think that's a little crazy. BUT quality is in the eye of the beholder. That's why I gave you that link to a list of different programs for converting mkv's to mp4's. Try some of them and see which ones, if any, you like.

[edDV]

mkv and mp4 are wrappers. They don't identify the format of the video. Use mediainfo to identify formats.

In theory it would be possible to rewrap a video format from mkv to mp4 without recode loss (same identical bit rate). This is called remux vs. recode. But that isn't what you are doing. We can guess you are recoding h.264 to h.264 which is highly lossy especially with bit rate reduction.

[guns1inger]

The PS3 can play m2ts files, with restrictions (no DTS HD, for example). I find the best solution is to create AVCHD discs, which allow the retention of HD audio, subtitles, and even the creation of basic menus. I don't know how well this process is supported on the Mac though.

[johns0]

Moved to mac forum where you can get more answers on mac apps from mac users.