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[jgreen]

For DVDs that I've ripped to disc and kept in their native format, what are the Pros/Cons of transcoding these DVD files into MKV format?  

For me the main goal would be to get these DVDs playable by MadVR.  Typically the native format DVDs are the ones I care most about, so I want to make sure I'm not missing anything before I do this.

Space is not a concern for me, for movies that I'm less concerned about I have converted into (additionally) compressed AVIs at a fraction of their original size.  These files I just want to get playable by MadVR.    

I've downloaded and tried "MakeMKV" and it seems to work well enough EXCEPT that there doesn't seem to be any reverse transcoder, so if I want to go back to DVD files I have to haul out the dusty old box of DVDs.

Thoughts?

 

[audioriver]

Many pros: madVR/LAV, subtitle flexibility, single file etc. The only downside is that you lose the menus - not really important in most cases. Audio/Video Quality remains unaltered, and you can also gain space by removing unwanted audio tracks and bonus features.

[glynor]

IMHO there is no reason NOT TO do it this way, unless you are in-love with the crappy DVD menus they put on discs (I hate them with a burning, fiery passion in almost every case - they're garish, poorly designed, hard to use, and often poorly performing).

If you want the extras, just rip them to their own MKVs.

MakeMKV is awesome for this task.  When/If it ever comes out of beta and actually costs something, I'll be first in-line with my credit card in hand.

You are right, there is no reverse to this.  To be clear though, as long as you don't re-encode the videos, you aren't really "transcoding" them.  You're just wrapping the existing video streams in a different wrapper.  That's different than transcoding which means "converting a video stream from one compression to another compression type" (changing from MPEG-2 to H.264 would be a common use nowadays).  Transcoding usually (though not always) means a loss in quality.  Remuxing (changing the format on disk) does not.

That is not to say you couldn't re-author a DVD directory structure from a MKV source if you want to (you'd just need a DVD Authoring application that accepts MKVs, or something you can create from the MKVs).  It wouldn't "magically" give you all those original menus and whatnot back though.  You'd be making a new disc structure from the existing video data.  I don't know why you'd want to do this unless you had a friend who you wanted to burn a copy of a movie for their set-top player or something.

[Sandy B Ridge]

IMHO there is no reason NOT TO do it this way, unless you are in-love with the crappy DVD menus they put on discs

Unfortunately Ivy loves them! Especially on the girly movies. I'm not so bothered except for the fact that I have a feeling that I should archive the discs in as native a state as possible. I archive bluray into ISO for this (mainly because my copy of PowerDVD doesn't play back from folder structures and I can't justify upgrading just for this). I've made a concession with DVD and archived them as a Video_ts folder structure rather than iso because it seemed easier.

(I hate them with a burning, fiery passion in almost every case - they're garish, poorly designed, hard to use, and often poorly performing).

Agreed! But that is the nature of the beast.

I'm *really* surprised that no-one has cracked it in terms of a non-macrovision checking open source DVD navigator filter. The information about the menu structures is out there (is it red book or blue book or somesuch?). A $15 DVD player from costco with next to zero CPU performance, or a DVD player from 1995, works fine on all discs so I fail to see how an i5 super-duper CPU cannot do this in 2012!

If you want the extras, just rip them to their own MKVs.

MakeMKV is awesome for this task.  When/If it ever comes out of beta and actually costs something, I'll be first in-line with my credit card in hand.

Completely agree. My TV series DVDs without any useful menu bits have been changed to mkv by this great tool. But I've also kept the Video_Ts archive too! Disc space isn't a major issue anymore, being relatively cheap. 

I guess my goal has always been to try and preserve the media in it's original format as much as is possible. And to then play it back as original as possible. I have to confess that I am slowly coming round to the idea that there may be 'better' ways of playing back the media eg. decoding HD tracks to PCM in the PC rather than bitstream, and using videoclock etc, but I'm not ready yet to relinquish the 'archival' originality of my media!

SBR

[Bill Kearney]

So don't lose the archival quality.  You have the discs, use them when you want the 'full' disc and menu experience.  You do own these discs, right? 

Given how rarely you're likely to want that, using other storage means is a viable solution.  Most of the time you're like to want "just get me the movie and get on with it".  I think that's what most disc ripping efforts seek to provide.