Is it time to change from a DVD structure (video TS) to something else?

[conejo99]

Years ago I decided to keep my videos in a DVD structure even when saved to dasd. I thought that any other structure might eventually become obsolete.
Space usage/compression never mattered much since disks are so big these days.
What does matter to me is simplicity, compatibility, longevity, and the ability to easily support subtitles.
For music MP3s seem to have achieved a permanent prominent place in the electronics industry.
Is there a corresponding container/codex/structure in the video arena that seems likely to be widely supported indefinitely?

[roubosga]

I'm busy converting my DVD's to MKV.
What mp3 is for music, mkv is for video. It's compressing my DVD's 4X, sometimes even more.
The problem however is the compressing time.
With my old computer (Dual core) it took me about a day.
But now with my new eight core AMD it's become 50 minutes.

[accident]

(05-14-2012 03:22 AM)conejo99 Wrote:  Is there a corresponding container/codex/structure in the video arena that seems likely to be widely supported indefinitely?

Nothing is support indefinitely. The codecs in your dvds will be around for a long time and remuxing a video to another container doesn't change the encoding so long term you can easily move things around if that ever happens.

I'd probably also recommend mkv, it's widely adopted container and you'll even find it in the newer internet connected tvs. It "SHOULD" handle your subtitles needs just fine and lots of tools available to help you take the dvd files and pull out the video to mkv file(s).

I don't really see why you need to transcode anything like someone else said.. you can just remux it to a new container pretty quick with no loss of quality.

[chris57]

Depends on if you want to keep the original DVD menu or not.

If you don't then MKV is the way to go. You can try using an uncompressed DVD > MKV 'backup' using makeMKV. If you like it, PCH 200 onwards has a special pop-up menu on MKV playback via the Title button, then you can look at using x264 to compress your DVD into say a 2Gb MKV if you so desire.

[conejo99]

(05-14-2012 09:11 AM)chris57 Wrote:  Depends on if you want to keep the original DVD menu or not.

If you don't then MKV is the way to go. You can try using an uncompressed DVD > MKV 'backup' using makeMKV. If you like it, PCH 200 onwards has a special pop-up menu on MKV playback via the Title button, then you can look at using x264 to compress your DVD into say a 2Gb MKV if you so desire.

Thanks to everybody for the advice. I think I'll try MKV without any conversion/compression.
I find DVD menus annoying, I'd much rather the movie just start. The exception is collections of videos (such as TV shows).

[kryzchek]

I stick with the ISO format, and simply remove the menus/trailers etc...

I use an A-110, and while MKVs have the resume feature, which ISO does not, the support for fast-forward/rewind is not as good.

[chris57]

In what way?

Perhaps its a 100 series thing. The 200 onwards supports chapters in MKV and you can skip- forward in chapters the same as a DVD or BD. You can also use the same goto, timestamp , and more usual xff/rw as you can on any file types. You can select different audio, subtitles, and chapters via the 'Title' button.

[accident]

iso format wouldn't play on a "smart tv". I'm not sure what 100 series mkv missing features they are talking about, I don't experience those..

[tinyhands]

I think some people make too much noise about compression, whether it's mp3 or mkv. I transcode 90% of my videos (and all of my audio) to a compressed format and I'm satisfied with the way they look onscreen. I'm the one who has to watch it, so as long as I keep me happy, I've done my job. And there's a reason most apps have batch processing capability.

I too have played with keeping dvds as iso and was not happy with the performance on my 110-series, 3rd party PCH. For me, playback was not smooth and I did not have ffw/rwd. H.264/Mkv is the right choice for me, and chapters do work on mine.