Recently finished ripping all the CDs i could lay my hands on and now plan to convert a bunch of music DVDs to mkv.

Could use a hint or ten using Handbrake.

My DVDs are in TS_Video folders.
They come from different sources and this being a underdeveloping country, most of them are the DVD5 kind, not the regular DVD9 type.

Trying to get the most out of the available sound quality. Video sources in some cases are VHS (80s rock).

Will watch them on a HD TV and HT (7.1). Hoping to make the results Multimedia Server friendly (Plex, Kodi, other).

Thank you.

0-0

The presets are rather useful. I usually start with a preset and then adjust it a little to get it the way I want, then save it as a custom setting. It’s also useful to go to task manager and adjust the priority from max to normal so the PC remains usable during the conversion.

Handbrake will not deal with DRM. If your DVDs are encrypted, you will need a different program to rip the DVD first, then process the ISO through Handbrake. Something like Makemkv on Windows or MDPPro on Mac.

Handbrake is great for some things.
Ripping MKVs is not one of them.

I use MakeMKV
http://makemkv.com/

Super simple to use and I end up removing all the language tracks but English and all the captions except English to cut the file size down a bit.
Of course if it is a foreign flick I keep its native language track.

quote:

Originally posted by Black92LX:
Handbrake is great for some things.
Ripping MKVs is not one of them.

I use MakeMKV
http://makemkv.com/

Same here. MakeMKV rips the CD directly to a .mkv file, lossless, huge, and an exact copy of the CD. From there, I generally convert to .mp4/.m4a, but I save the .mkv files off to a platter disk in case I want to play with them in the future.

Piling on, Handbrake is what I used to use to convert mkv (preferred) to MP4 (less preferred) so that they'd play on my PS3 when I used it as a home theater console (PS3 doesn't have native support, and my experience with plex transcode has been pretty lackluster - video works but there's no sound). It wasn't the best tool for the job, but it worked. It eats my 3rd gen Ryzen 7 for breakfast - if there's a better option I'd go that route if I was you.

I haven't used the program Black suggested but I'd be willing to give it a shot.

MakeMKV here too. 1342 DVDs left in the DVD folder. I ripped more, but replaced some with higher quality. Oh, forgot the kids folder, couple hundred there too.
Handbrake for compressing to h.265 (or 264)

Having said all that, just download the torrent if you can find it. Much less headaches & most come with multiple subtitles/audio languages.
I don't know about Argentina, but I wasn't law-abiding when I ripped the DVD, so who gives a shit about how I get the digital copy. It's arguably legal to download a digital copy of a movie you own the DVD for (with caveats, but that's what VPN is for)