what do to with MKV files ?

[Luke_of_Mass]

I recently acquired an MKV file from gits101, i was wondering if this format is lossless? and if so, how do i go about authoring it to a dvd in such a way it retains its losslessness and is not compressed in any way?

i do not know much about making dvds, although that much is probably obvious already as i imagine this is a pretty newbie question to be asking

but anyway, enlighten me!

thanks

[Unidecker]

play it with mpc-hc that's media player classic home cinema and enjoy

no it is not lossless it is lossy.. as it was compressed from a larger file set most times mkv's are ac3

you can also use another program to convert it to dvd --- >DVD FAB.

[jabulon]

MKV (or Matroska) is an open standard container format and it aims to be the future standard of audio/video. It is NOT a video or audio compression format (video codec). It is a container for which there can be many audio, video and subtitles streams.

[newmillenium]

Ah, so you could have lossless OR lossy video in mkv? If so, how do you tell?

[Dav-Alan]

mkv? ah the format that crashes my linux media player unexpectedly (esp. with > 4 gb size)
I would assume if the thing is that large or larger the "lossyness" would be at a minumum or none at all? I can make a lossless (or very near so) avi or mp4 or etc, if I set the codec params to make a really large file out of it...and have even tried this successfully with the normally lossy mp3 audio format....however forget any size reduction it that is your goal. In fact your conversion may be a size increase.
I almost always end up doing a conversion to dvd (mov), but keep the original for seeding, avi, mp4 or anything that will playback consistently due to the problems I have with mkv, , but keep the original mkv for seeding.

[jabulon]

Originally Posted by newmillenium

Ah, so you could have lossless OR lossy video in mkv? If so, how do you tell?

It is hard to tell the difference between lossless and lossy video from only the specifications of the video (you could use a program like MediaInfo for getting these).

Let's say I record a show and I need an entire DVD9 to do so. Let's say the video specs of this original DVD9 are MPEG 2 with an average bitrate of 9000 kbps.

Now someone wants a DVD5 of this, so converts (crops) the DVD9 to a DVD5. The video specs of this new DVD5 would be something like MPEG 2 with an average bitrate of somewhere around 4500-5000 kbps.

The last one would be called lossy in comparison to the first. But that is hard to conclude from just the specs and you would have to know about the existance of the first one. This is one of the reasons why we value on lineage.

[jabulon]

Originally Posted by Dav-Alan

mkv? ah the format that crashes my linux media player unexpectedly (esp. with > 4 gb size)
I would assume if the thing is that large or larger the "lossyness" would be at a minumum or none at all? I can make a lossless (or very near so) avi or mp4 or etc, if I set the codec params to make a really large file out of it...and have even tried this successfully with the normally lossy mp3 audio format....however forget any size reduction it that is your goal. In fact your conversion may be a size increase.
I almost always end up doing a conversion to dvd (mov), but keep the original for seeding, avi, mp4 or anything that will playback consistently due to the problems I have with mkv, , but keep the original mkv for seeding.

Playback problems can be caused by hardware, make sure your video drivers are all up-to-date. This could help too may be:

YouTube Video

Bloating a lossy mp3 will never have a lossless result.