DVD demux vs encode

[mpress03]

Greetings everyone,

I have recently ripped my entire DVD collection to the .mkv format. I have been reading heavily about making these into a format that iTunes recognizes and can be played on my appleTV 2. I have come to the conclusion that their are 2 main ways to do this. The first would be to re-encode them using handbrake (which i am familiar with, having used it in the past) and demuxing the files into an .m4v.

So I guess my question is, other than time are there any advantages to demuxing DVD's? Is the end result the same whether I encode or demux, or does one have better quality than the other?

Thanks in advance.

 

[BlackMangoTree]

Greetings everyone,

I have recently ripped my entire DVD collection to the .mkv format. I have been reading heavily about making these into a format that iTunes recognizes and can be played on my appleTV 2. I have come to the conclusion that their are 2 main ways to do this. The first would be to re-encode them using handbrake (which i am familiar with, having used it in the past) and demuxing the files into an .m4v.

So I guess my question is, other than time are there any advantages to demuxing DVD's? Is the end result the same whether I encode or demux, or does one have better quality than the other?

Thanks in advance.

What you want to do is use an app called "MP4Tools" it will put everything from your mkv's into a M4v even transcode dts to ac3 is needed. It will by far be the fasted way with no quality lost

 

[peterjcat]

It depends what exactly you did with the DVDs in the first place. If you literally just ripped them with eg MakeMKV then they will still have MPEG2 video and won't play on the ATV -- you will need to transcode them using Handbrake or similar. However, if you made the MKVs with Handbrake in the first place, you will already have encoded them as well as ripping them, the video should be in the right format already and you can simply remux to MP4/M4V with Subler, iFlicks, MP4Tools etc.

 

[mpress03]

MP4Tools is unfortunately OSX only and my Mac took a dive, so I am using a windows machine until the new iMac is released.

Are there any advantages to demuxing rather than using handbrake aside from time (which is an advantage, don't get me wrong). I am just trying to figure out if the end results will be the same as far as quality and if there are other advantages. I have also read that people are having problems using AC3 pass thru when demuxing and this isn't an issue with handbrake.

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I ripped them with MakeMKV directly. So I can't just demux them?

 

[peterjcat]

No you can't; MakeMKV preserves the original video which is always MPEG2 and unfortunately incompatible with the ATV unless you want to jailbreak it. So instead of just remuxing you have to convert the video to an ATV format, which Handbrake does.

 

[mpress03]

No you can't; MakeMKV preserves the original video which is always MPEG2 and unfortunately incompatible with the ATV unless you want to jailbreak it. So instead of just remuxing you have to convert the video to an ATV format, which Handbrake does.

That answers my question, thank you so much.
Is this also true for blu-rays?

 

[peterjcat]

The most common video codec for Blu-rays is AVC/H.264 which is what Handbrake uses and is compatible with the ATV, so they can often be remuxed and will play on the ATV2 (and 3), though sometimes the bitrate may be too high (and the file sizes are huge). Some older Blu-rays have MPEG2 video and some have VC1 video, both of which need recoding as the ATV won't play them. MakeMKV will tell you what kind of video you're dealing with.

 

[Sedulous]

That answers my question, thank you so much.
Is this also true for blu-rays?

I think bluray is in m2ts. So you'd also need to convert it to mp4. Maybe someone more familiar with bluray ripping could clarify.

 

[obsidian1200]

That answers my question, thank you so much.
Is this also true for blu-rays?

Some but not all. The video codecs used in blu-rays, at least the ones I've personally ripped, are usually either in mpeg-4 format (which can be demuxed into an .m4v container and played by an ATV) or VC-1 (which needs to be encoded with some software afterwards). I don't think the audio codecs are foreign to the ATV, with the exception of DTS and other HD codecs, but these tracks are easy enough to convert without encoding the entire movie.

 

[mpress03]

Thanks for information everyone. I think I will just stick to encoding to avoid any snares and I know it works well.

Thanks again.