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DVD to .MKV software

BORIStheBLADE

BORIStheBLADE

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 15, 2008
138
0
I am making the transition back to a mac pretty good except for a couple of programs that worked pretty good. Basically I have my DVD's stored in .MKV files for my Popcorn hour streamer.
On my windows pc I use a DVD ripping program to save just the main movie in .ISO format. Then I would use another app that would save the .ISO as a .MKV.

I'm having trouble finding a program that does what MakeMKV does. It basically puts a movie in a .MKV container without any compression plus chapters. It takes basically 5 minutes for this program to do it. I have converted 160 of my DVD's this way so far and love it. I don't care to compress any of my movies since HD's are so cheap these days.

This is the program I'm referring to.

http://www.makemkv.com/

From the start with ripping a movie and ending up with an .MKV the process is about 30 min with this program.

Is they're a program that does what makemkv does? Am I better off trying to run Windows in virtualization with these apps?

thanks
 
I've had the best luck using MacTheRipper to rip the DVD to the HDD and then using HandBrake to encode the movie to H.264 MKV/MP4.
 
Jethryn Freyman said:
Not sure why you'd rip to .mkv (H264 is better), but Handbrake can do that.
Click to expand...

MKV is just a container format, just like MP4. The reason it's becoming more and more popular is the fact that it is open-source, and you can put basically whatever you want inside of it (H.264, DivX, AC3, MP3, etc...).

When HandBrake encodes a movie into a MKV container, it does it using H.264.
 
I have tried handbrake and it converts the file which takes hours.
I guess I'll just have to give parallels a try.

thanks guys
 
Chase R said:
MKV is just a container format, just like MP4. The reason it's becoming more and more popular is the fact that it is open-source, and you can put basically whatever you want inside of it (H.264, DivX, AC3, MP3, etc...).

When HandBrake encodes a movie into a MKV container, it does it using H.264.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I learnt something today. ;)
 
BORIStheBLADE said:
I have tried handbrake and it converts the file which takes hours.
I guess I'll just have to give parallels a try.

thanks guys
Click to expand...

HandBrake is transcoding the video into a completely new format, H.264. Thats why it takes so long. The bottleneck with HandBrake is the CPU.

To "pass-through" media into a container is completely different, there's no transcoding happening, just simple copy and paste. Thus, much shorter "file-create" times. The only bottleneck here is the speed of your HDD.

Are you trying to encode your movies into a smaller more efficient file (MKV with H.264 video)? Or simply leave the video as it is (more than double the size) and some how put it inside a MKV container?
 
Chase R said:
HandBrake is transcoding the video into a completely new format, H.264. Thats why it takes so long. The bottleneck with HandBrake is the CPU.

To "pass-through" media into a container is completely different, there's no transcoding happening, just simple copy and paste. Thus, much shorter "file-create" times. The only bottleneck here is the speed of your HDD.

Are you trying to encode your movies into a smaller more efficient file (MKV with H.264 video)? Or simply leave the video as it is (more than double the size) and some how put it inside a MKV container?
Click to expand...

I'm trying to leave the video as is. I want same file size, same resolution. Just different container. Thats what Makemkv did.
 
BORIStheBLADE said:
I'm trying to leave the video as is. I want same file size, same resolution. Just different container. Thats what Makemkv did.
Click to expand...

Oh ok, that makes sense. However, I don't know of any Mac apps that can passthrough DVD Audio/Video into a MKV container.

On MakeMKV's website it says that a Mac version is coming soon!
 
I guess I am not really adding to the thread, but it seems the beta mac version of MakeMKV works pretty good. This is the first time I have heard of it or used it, but it ripped a .mkv of the main feature of layer cake (a great flick) in about 14 minutes on my MBP 2.4ghz. It is a good thing to have options, and this program looks like a somewhat alternative to mactheripper, but if you plan on saving everyting from a dvd and not compressing, what I see so far, mactheripper is the way to go.
 
Royale w/cheese said:
I guess I am not really adding to the thread, but it seems the beta mac version of MakeMKV works pretty good. This is the first time I have heard of it or used it, but it ripped a .mkv of the main feature of layer cake (a great flick) in about 14 minutes on my MBP 2.4ghz. It is a good thing to have options, and this program looks like a somewhat alternative to mactheripper, but if you plan on saving everyting from a dvd and not compressing, what I see so far, mactheripper is the way to go.
Click to expand...

I don't think this program does much of any compression.
 
Chase R said:
From what I can tell, it just stuffs the VOB files into a MKV container with no compression or anything. This is really cool and what I have been looking for.
Click to expand...


Thats why i couldn't let go of my pc till now.;)
 
I just gave MakeMKV a try, and, well...

I ripped a DVD to my HDD via MacTheRipper. However, I couldn't seem to get that to work with MakeMKV; it would start and then say "Failed". So I turned my VIDEO_TS into a .ISO file (via a terminal command) to see if that would fix it... negative. Still wouldn't turn my DVD into an MKV.

The UI for MakeMKV also needs some serious work too. Hopefully they keep up with the updates for this app.
 
Chase R said:
I just gave MakeMKV a try, and, wel...

I ripped a DVD to my HDD via MacTheRipper. However, I couldn't seem to get that to work with MakeMKV; it would start and then say "Failed". So I turned my VIDEO_TS into a .ISO file (via a terminal command) to see if that would fix it... negative. Still wouldn't turn my DVD into an MKV.

The UI for MakeMKV also needs some serious work too. Hopefully they keep up with the updates for this app.
Click to expand...

try makeMKV alone. I tried it last night and it worked.

When I normally used it on a Win PC this is what my process was. DVDfabdecrypter (rip whole movie)->DVD shrink ( strip everything, but main movie with 5.1 in .ISO form -> makemkv. This whole process on a single core 2.4 cpu took about 30 min.

The UI does need some work, but for the sake of being free I can live with it.
 
Well, it worked when I just did it straight from the disk. Only thing now is that, using Quicktime with Perian, it stutters horribly and uses tons of CPU power. Using VLC however, everything is normal... just like watching the original DVD using DVD Player.
 
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