Seeking advice on converting .iso to .mkv or .mp4 -

[vhwul62]

Windows 10 x64.

I would like to convert quite a number of .iso (DVD format when extracted) to .mp4 or .mk4
Have been looking all over on Internet for the last day.

Looking at
BatchMKV
VidCoder (currently running converting an .iso file, don't know yet what comes out)
VLC (currently also converting an .iso file, don't know yet what comes out)
xMediaRecode (same as VidCoder and VLC, so I have 3 converters running)

and also have used TMPGEnc Video Mastering Works.

I prefer not to use BatchMKV , although it is highly recommended. I should install MKVToolNix
but after that Windows Defender blocks this tool.

VidCoder shows this as details of the source.


[Attachment 56742 - Click to enlarge]

In VidCoder I should choose a profile, but honestly I would not know what to choose to get at least close to the source quality.
I don't mind the file size, as long as it isn't bigger than the source.
Also my selections result in long encoding times (see screenshot)

I tried with 1 profile already, but the output was 5.2GB (source 4.2GB)

Another attempt with xMediaRecode resulted in a file that could not be played (see below)
As said, I am giving it another try.

I am not an expert on this...

Three questions
1. is it always necessary to re-encode? so it always take maybe an hour or more to convert?
2. in case of using VidCoder - what settings should I use ? (to get close to the original 720x576. As said, the file size isn't important)
Output either .mp4 or .mkv is okay.
3. if re-encode is always necessary (I don't know..) then I might as well just use Video Mastering Works.

Thanks!

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[Attachment 56743 - Click to enlarge]

[davexnet]

https://www.videohelp.com/software/MakeMKV

[vhwul62]

Sorry, BatchMKV is based on MakeMKV, I prefer not to make use of that tool.
MakeMKV requires to load each separate iso and then convert.
For batch convert one has to figure out a script (complicated), or make use of BatchMKV... which is blocked by Windows Defender.
So I prefer to look for another tool, more user friendly, if possible.

[Alwyn]

If you're not worried about file size, do a lossless convert as follows.

Mount the ISO in Windows Explorer (Windows 10) and then use DVDVOB2MPG to join the VOBs for each movie into one MPG.

For Windows 10:

Right-Click on the ISO and choose MOUNT. The ISO will appear as a DVD drive on the left side of Windows Explorer.

Click it and the VIDEO_TS folder will be visible on the right.

Open DVDVOB2MPG and use the Select button to navigate to the mounted VIDEO_TS. Double-click to open it then highlight the movie VOBs (one movie at a time eg there may be multiple VOBs and multiple movies eg trailers, shorts). The main movie VOBs can be spotted by files being 1048mb with the last one of the movie probably being less.

Back on the DVDVOB2MPG main screen, tick "convert output files and add them to one single file".

If necessary, add ".mpg" as the file extension in the "Save as MPG..." filename box.

Click Convert. If you have selected more than one VOB eg a multi-VOB movie, make sure the program processes all the VOBs by watching the progress bar. If it only processes the first VOB, reboot you computer and DVDVOB2MPG will then process all the VOBs. You only need to do this once in a session.

You'll end up with a losslessly-copied MPG of your movie.

To dismount your ISO, RC on the DVD drive for the ISO then click Eject.

[vhwul62]

Thanks a lot!
Actually this is more or less the same as with MakeMKV - I have to load the .iso and then hit on convert.
However, MakeMKV does not support adding to a queue, so one has to do it one by one.

Other tools are re-encoding at take quite a lot of time.

regretfully so.

[lingyi]

You can run multiple instances of MakeMKV and a DVD should take just 5-10 minutes to remux.

Unless all you want is the main movie and don't care if there are extra audio tracks and subtitles, you're better off loading each disc separately and choosing what you want, audio, subs, extras, etc. rather than having to scrub through the multiple .MKVs generated, removing unwanted audio, subs and extras such as unrelated trailers.

The other issue with using a batch is that not all audio tracks and subs are in the same order on every disc, this is especially true if your releases are from other countries. I exclusively collect Asian movies and sometimes the best or only releases are from countries other than the original country of release. Which means the non-native tracks are the first in order.

[netmask56]

If Windows Defender is blocking MKVToolNix then that is a false positive and you should make an exception within Windows Defender if it has an "allowed" section. Malwarebytes often objects to Popcorn Audio Converter but it is totally clean as II use it a lot I've reported the action to Malwarebytes and put it in the exceptions list.

[vhwul62]

You can run multiple instances of MakeMKV and a DVD should take just 5-10 minutes to remux.

Unless all you want is the main movie and don't care if there are extra audio tracks and subtitles, you're better off loading each disc separately and choosing what you want, audio, subs, extras, etc. rather than having to scrub through the multiple .MKVs generated, removing unwanted audio, subs and extras such as unrelated trailers.

The other issue with using a batch is that not all audio tracks and subs are in the same order on every disc, this is especially true if your releases are from other countries. I exclusively collect Asian movies and sometimes the best or only releases are from countries other than the original country of release. Which means the non-native tracks are the first in order.

Thank you!

I tried MakeMKV pretty much default.


[Attachment 56756 - Click to enlarge]

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[Attachment 56757 - Click to enlarge]

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I select the entire title, not chapters or something and then hit the MKV button.
Only changed the storage path.

The outcome is named : title_t00.mkv

Have no idea how to get a file name named after the source iso file name, i.e. when the source file name is named:
This is some movie file name.iso
Then I prefer to have output: This is some movie file name.mkv

Thanks for the tip of running multiple instances of MakeMKV - I'll give that a chance.
As long as the output file is still named 'title_t00.mkv' then this option is not possible: it would overwrite the previous .mkv.

[vhwul62]

If Windows Defender is blocking MKVToolNix then that is a false positive and you should make an exception within Windows Defender if it has an "allowed" section. Malwarebytes often objects to Popcorn Audio Converter but it is totally clean as II use it a lot I've reported the action to Malwarebytes and put it in the exceptions list.

'BatchMKV' is blocked by Windows Defender (MKVToolNix is not installed).
Actually, hardly anything is installed, i.e. BatchMKV is running on a pretty much clean machine.

See screenshot of program list.



[Attachment 56758 - Click to enlarge]

[lingyi]

AFAIK there's no way to change the default naming of files in MakeMKV. When running multiple instances, the output folder name will be the title of the DVD, e.g. d:/THIS_MOVIE or d:/THAT_MOVIE, and the .MKVs will be Title_00.mkv, Title_01.mkv, etc.

Beware that some discs don't have a proper title and will default to d:/DVD_VOLUME or some other generic name and you have to be careful not to overwrite previous remux. You'll be prompted before an overwrite of an existing duplicate file is attempted.

I don't think this happens with DVDs, but some Blu-Ray's have actual names instead of Title_XX, though this may only apply to non-English movies.

[vhwul62]

Thanks again.
Over the last two days I've played around with some converters. I am not an expert so I used mostly the default settings to convert.
Except for MakeMKV the output often was (much) smaller. For instance xMedia Recode with HQ720 settings reduced a 4.2GB to just 500MB.
Quality was poor from my point of view - when played full screen. VidCoder reduced the file to about 1.6-1.7GB, quality was so-so and it took
almost an hour.
MakeMKV is okay, the output size is not much smaller than the original size.
As for DVD iso files and naming: one has to enable 'Expert' and then go into 'Advanced' tab and paste the file name there in order to avoid something like title_t00.mkv.

Probably the only workaround. I haven't been able to use the MakeMKV naming templates.

Also tried VLC, but at one point in time after almost an hour, it reported some error 'unable to render' or something, so I gave up on that.

Reason why I wanted to convert the iso to mkv or mp4 is that, after extracting the .iso, software players hang at the intro. I tried with MPC-HC, MPC-BE and VLC.
All three start to play the video (intro commercial about other, available, videos) and then after 15-20 seconds or so, stopped. Only way to close is killing the app using the task manager.
This happens quite often with VIDEO_TS structure, now and in the past, so my idea was to convert them all.

Probably I should stick to Video Master Works that I have.

Anyway, many thanks for your help/suggestions!
Truly appreciated.