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[shimrod]

After searching this and other sections I have a couple questions I haven't found answers for.

I have an extensive collection of archived DVDs ripped to hard disk. Most are ifo, some are MKV. I use MC on both windows and linux machines and I've been unable to get JRiver to play ifo on linux. MKV seems to work fine on both operating systems and takes up less disk room as well. Typical use is playing on PC with output to tv - no handheld phones or tablets. At present my tv is a 1080P plasma but I expect to buy a 4k eventually.

I am considering converting all of my ifo video files to another format, most likely MKV unless another option is preferable. I have the following questions:

1. I can use MC to convert files or I can use MakeMKV to open the ifo file and rerip to MKV. Is there some reason to prefer one method to the other aside from JRMCs ability to queue up more than one conversion? Will I get the same quality file from either method? I performed a test file conversion with JRiver and it seemed to take quite a bit longer than directly ripping a disk.

2. Is there a file quality benefit to re-ripping the original DVDs vs file conversion?

3. JRiver allows for conversion of the original 720 DVD file to 1080 or higher. Should I maintain the original format and allow the TV to perform any upscaling? Is there any benefit (or degradation) changing the format during the file conversion?

4. Are there any other issues with reformatting my video files that I should take into account?


Thanks

[eve]

After searching this and other sections I have a couple questions I haven't found answers for.

I have an extensive collection of archived DVDs ripped to hard disk. Most are ifo, some are MKV. I use MC on both windows and linux machines and I've been unable to get JRiver to play ifo on linux. MKV seems to work fine on both operating systems and takes up less disk room as well. Typical use is playing on PC with output to tv - no handheld phones or tablets. At present my tv is a 1080P plasma but I expect to buy a 4k eventually.

I am considering converting all of my ifo video files to another format, most likely MKV unless another option is preferable. I have the following questions:

1. I can use MC to convert files or I can use MakeMKV to open the ifo file and rerip to MKV. Is there some reason to prefer one method to the other aside from JRMCs ability to queue up more than one conversion? Will I get the same quality file from either method? I performed a test file conversion with JRiver and it seemed to take quite a bit longer than directly ripping a disk.

2. Is there a file quality benefit to re-ripping the original DVDs vs file conversion?

3. JRiver allows for conversion of the original 720 DVD file to 1080 or higher. Should I maintain the original format and allow the TV to perform any upscaling? Is there any benefit (or degradation) changing the format during the file conversion?

4. Are there any other issues with reformatting my video files that I should take into account?


Thanks

I use MakeMKV on essentially all my disc sources. This way, you can effectively 'remux' the original streams (selectively, you could obviously exclude languages you weren't interested in) into a MKV, meaning there's no encoding or loss of quality compared to the original.

I wouldn't really recommend doing the upscaling in some 'offline' manner that you save to a file. Its typically a waste of space, we can always develop better scaling algorithms, you're better to keep the original material instead. Realtime is perfectly fine, so in other words, client devices handle that scaling (thus on a player you care about, you could use JRVR or MadVR, and elsewhere, on say a media player, the display might handle the scaling). Obviously if you have something *really* rare, and there is no hope of a native HD copy, there's the option of highly intensive offline upscaling (dubbed AI upscaling usually but that's such a misnomer). This requires GPU hardware and is typically many times slower than real time (for example with some of the stuff I do, a 22 minute episode may take 12+ hours).

[shimrod]

So to ensure I completely understand, you recommend I convert the current ifo files to MKV (smaller files and playable on all devices) and I should maintain the original scaling.

You refer to "....keep the original material...". Are you simply referring to the original scaling or is there some reason I should retain the ifo files after creating MKV copies? I will run into storage limitations if I want to keep copies in both formats.

Thanks for your advice.

[JimH]

Try a few and test. Then decide.

[shimrod]

I've done that but I'm limited by my current TV, a 10 year old plasma. I'm concerned I'll degrade the files in a manner that's only discernable on a better tv. I don't have a 4k screen available for testing.

[eve]

So to ensure I completely understand, you recommend I convert the current ifo files to MKV (smaller files and playable on all devices) and I should maintain the original scaling.

You refer to "....keep the original material...". Are you simply referring to the original scaling or is there some reason I should retain the ifo files after creating MKV copies? I will run into storage limitations if I want to keep copies in both formats.

Thanks for your advice.

The MKVs wont be much smaller than the DVD itself in some cases. What you're doing with MakeMKV is essentially extracting the 'streams' and re-wrapping them into an MKV.
I'm not suggesting anything re: your original IFOs, keep them, or delete them, that's sort of up to your workflow and what you value. You may use MakeMKV to extract all the non main title stuff from a disc, like bonus features and things, in that case, keeping the original IFO / DVD structure is possibly moot.


Storing an upscaled version of your DVDs is pretty wasteful and doesn't provide any kind of future proofing. Again, there's exceptions if you go beyond traditional upscaling, more towards the AI / GPU accelerated offline upscalers, but that's more in the realm of restoration than anything and really good work requires a large amount of user input and huge amounts of processing time. I have a workflow for this but, it's time consuming. It's for things that I know won't ever really make it to HD, either due to material limitations, or absolute rarity.

[shimrod]

Thanks for your response. I'll proceed with the conversion to MKV format with no scaling change and feel comfortable I haven't degraded the files in the process.

[eve]

Thanks for your response. I'll proceed with the conversion to MKV format with no scaling change and feel comfortable I haven't degraded the files in the process.

It's the smartest way to handle this IMO. Especially if we're talking about DVDs stuck in standard def. This upscaling (both the real time scaling that happens on a device or with a PC using something like JRVR or MadVR, and the fancy offline stuff) tech gets better all the time. It's way more future proof to keep your material in it's original format.

Like I said, there's edge cases where 'I want to spend a few days of computer time upscaling this movie' makes sense but as a general policy for your content? That's ineffective and wasteful.