MKV or ISO?

**pblack00** · July 21st, 2010, 06:33 AM

So just curious, what format do you perfer for ripping movies? I'm open to either, but wanted to hear some opinions!

pblack00

**judgeschambers** · July 21st, 2010, 06:39 PM

Man, there are soooo many posts on this topic already.

I use ISO myself. I get the menus and everything as usual. But, I don't run HD or Blue ray content either. I also don't do subtitles or chapter scanning. I just push play. ;-)

Some like MKV, though I"m not entirely sure what advantage it offers (I think it benefits HD and high bitrate files). If you go MKV, be sure to rip with H264 .mp4 in the MKV container. Especially if it's HD content bitrate. The H264 .mp4 will trigger GPU acceleration in boxee. Any other encoding will be laggy...

The next obstacle is your XP os. I'm just going out on a limb here, but if you plan to play HD files.....your video card will not trigger GPU acceleration under XP. You'll need Vista/7

**gmd024** · July 21st, 2010, 07:51 PM

Originally Posted by judgeschambers

Man, there are soooo many posts on this topic already.

I use ISO myself. I get the menus and everything as usual. But, I don't run HD or Blue ray content either. I also don't do subtitles or chapter scanning. I just push play. ;-)

Some like MKV, though I"m not entirely sure what advantage it offers (I think it benefits HD and high bitrate files). If you go MKV, be sure to rip with H264 .mp4 in the MKV container. Especially if it's HD content bitrate. The H264 .mp4 will trigger GPU acceleration in boxee. Any other encoding will be laggy...

The next obstacle is your XP os. I'm just going out on a limb here, but if you plan to play HD files.....your video card will not trigger GPU acceleration under XP. You'll need Vista/7

Completely agree with JC

I use ISO's (but on my system Boxee needs to 'see' the BD ISOs on a Virtual Drive b4 it will play them) - there's no need for the VD if playing reg. DVD/ISOs

MKVs are another BD/HD option - and a smaller container size, if storage space is an issue - BD rips from MKVs will display as good as the resolution from a BD ISO - and from what I've seen on this forum -- MKV's seem to play for others with less issues than ISOs

I also believe (like the Judge) that depending on how the MKV was ripped -- it may have a smaller bit rate, which has less issues in Boxees' abilities to play HD/BD/1080p content

But keep in mind your XP OS may be a limiting factor

My OS is W7 x64 -- with Lots of resources to back it up

**judgeschambers** · July 21st, 2010, 09:39 PM

Originally Posted by gmd024

Completely agree with JC

MKVs are another BD/HD option - and a smaller container size, if storage space is an issue - BD rips from MKVs will display as good as the resolution from a BD ISO - and from what I've seen on this forum -- MKV's seem to play for others with less issues than ISOs

Good info everyone!

Do you mean BD MKV's are less troublesome for most vs BD ISO's? Or just ISO in general?

Cause, I've had no issues at all and I've not seen too many peeps post issues with plain ole ISO dvd rips. Can you clarify?

**pblack00** · July 22nd, 2010, 06:32 AM

Yes, XP is a limiting factor, and I know the H.264 content will not offload to the GPU from Boxee in XP, but at this time, I don't have an option to upgrade to 7 (I won't use vista!).

I don't plan on ripping a bunch of Blu-Ray content, so I'll probably just go ISO. I personally have had no problem playing any .MKV files or .ISO files. Thanks for all the help!

pblack00

**gmd024** · July 22nd, 2010, 12:17 PM

Originally Posted by judgeschambers

Good info everyone!

Do you mean BD MKV's are less troublesome for most vs BD ISO's? Or just ISO in general?

Cause, I've had no issues at all and I've not seen too many peeps post issues with plain ole ISO dvd rips. Can you clarify?

I guess I was leaning towards BD ISOs

In any case either MKVs or ISOs (from SD or BD/HD content) are both good choices -- it basically boils down to which one is a more comfortable choice with you and your PC/System - you can look on a dozen different forums and find many different opinions as to why people prefer one over the other

My choice is ISOs

**judgeschambers** · July 22nd, 2010, 06:53 PM

Gottcha.

**Prospero424** · July 25th, 2010, 09:37 PM

It all depends on what you're trying to accomplish and how much storage space you are willing to use.

A DVD ISO will preserve all available quality and the menus and extra features (if you rip them properly, at least), but you're looking at about 4.5-9GB of space for a single (presumably) standard-def movie.

If you rip the same DVD to an AVC (h.264) .mkv file, you lose just a little bit of quality but you can get away with a file size that fills a CD (~715MB) or maybe two (~1450MB) instead of the 4.5-9GB of a full .iso.

As for HD content: ripping a full-length Blu-Ray movie to your hard drive in an .iso can take up anywhere from 25-50GB! While this will obviously preserve the excellent quality you get with Blu-Ray, the standard file size for a movie compressed to an AVC .mkv file is 4.5-7GB for 720p and 7-14GB for 1080p (depending on movie length and bitrate preferences).

This means that with a terabyte-sized drive, you can fit about 15-30 BluRay .iso images or about 90 1080p .mkv files or about 175-180 720p .mkv files.

The choice is yours. As I said: it all depends on your needs and your total storage space versus your total number of movies you'll want to store. If you have the space, by all means, go with the .iso format. If you're after storage efficiency, go with converting to .mkv.

If you're new to video conversion, I wrote a short overview - complete with screenshot - of Handbrake (for Windows) settings to use for h.264 .mkv conversion right here.

**pblack00** · July 26th, 2010, 08:46 AM

Thanks for all the opinions, Recently i've noticed that .iso files lag during the menus, so I'll probably go with .mkv. Just curious what does everyone use to rip the file to .mkv, I've been using Makemkv, seems to work, but is there a program that lets you rip directly to h.264?

pblack00

**VeeDubb65** · July 26th, 2010, 04:04 PM

Even for standard def video, and ignoring hardware acceleration, h.264 mkv files offer extremely efficient compression. With the right encoding options, you can encode an average length movie into a 1-1.2GB file that is indistinguishable from DVD; while the ISO would be 3-6GB for the same movie. That's why I use h.264 mkv files for everything.

On the other hand, ISO means keeping 100% of special features, multiple audio tracks, menus, and all the goodies that make DVD's fun for movie geeks.

So, for me, it comes down to a choice between storage and 'extra' content. If you've got money for lot's of storage space and a big NAS box, go ISO. If you would like to keep a very large library or not more than a small number of TB's of storage, mkv is the way to go.