emmcd 6 Posted July 17, 2014 Share Posted July 17, 2014 I've done a decent bit of reading online and through the forums and I was curious what video format you guys use for storage? Most of mine are original vob or mt2s. Any recommendations on not losing the quality and moving to a non-folder rip format? If seems like most of what I've seen so far is to go mkv. Makemkv the way to go? Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cheesegeezer 3086 Posted July 17, 2014 Share Posted July 17, 2014 Personally most of mine are in mp4 containers, they seem to be compatible with almost all of the clients, if not all requiring minimum or no transcoding from the server side. My favourite movies do remain in mkv format with all the best video and audio streams, dts-hd ma, trueHD, etc. Mkvmerge is the best for demuxing bluray streams and then remux them into mkv, selecting only the audio, subtitle and video streams to go into the mkv container. Makemkv is a good one click program, havent used it in ages tho I use wondershare video converter ultimate to convert to mp4's Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yardameus 220 Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 I'm no expert on video formats, but my experience has been that the best looking videos with the best video sizes have been mp4. I would guess the options vary depending on your concern (video size/video quality). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Hobbs 91 Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 I think mp4 has some limitations that make mkv a little better if you are looking for the highest quality source. Like cheese said, mp4 tends to be better supported, but if you aren't doing things like looking to play back through something like an xbox 360 or play without transcoding to mobile devices then you could go with mkv for sure. Personally I have been converting everything I have to mp4 because I am more interested in compatibility and not too worried about (what I consider) a minor loss in quality. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buddyweiser 105 Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 I think mp4 has some limitations that make mkv a little better if you are looking for the highest quality source. Like cheese said, mp4 tends to be better supported, but if you aren't doing things like looking to play back through something like an xbox 360 or play without transcoding to mobile devices then you could go with mkv for sure. Personally I have been converting everything I have to mp4 because I am more interested in compatibility and not too worried about (what I consider) a minor loss in quality. I just read somewhere that some versions of Android support mkv playback natively. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swhitmore 781 Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 (edited) H.265 aka. HEVC is showing some real promise, and will be the successor to .264. Depending on your situation, you'll likely have issues with support atm, but I don't think it will be long before it's the new standard. Speaking of which, @@Luke does MB or rather ffmpeg have any support for .265 atm? Edit: A quick search shows that it is. Edited July 18, 2014 by swhitmore Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Koleckai Silvestri 1150 Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 I store my videos in a MKV container with the video as h.264 and the audio in its native HD format and its 2 channel AAC format. I don't use MP4 because it won't hold separate subtitle streams. Subtitles have to burnt into the video. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psykix 97 Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 H.265 aka. HEVC is showing some real promise, and will be the successor to .264. Depending on your situation, you'll likely have issues with support atm, but I don't think it will be long before it's the new standard. Speaking of which, @@Luke does MB or rather ffmpeg have any support for .265 atm? Edit: A quick search shows that it is. I can confirm x265 is supported. I use MBT/MadVR and it plays flawlessly. Also, it transcodes to iPads and Roku boxes just fine too. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdrianW 1052 Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 I don't use MP4 because it won't hold separate subtitle streams. Subtitles have to burnt into the video. But you can just have a separate .srt or .ass file stored alongside the mp4 file. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Koleckai Silvestri 1150 Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 (edited) But you can just have a separate .srt or .ass file stored alongside the mp4 file. I could. Cleaner to have it all in one container. Personal preference I guess but if I rip the subtitles at the same time, just easier to put it all in the same container. With external files created by a third party, you have to worry about syncing. Embedded, you can adjust for syncing issues once and forget about it. Video isn't usable without subtitles in my house. I go through and add the external subtitles downloaded by Media Browser to my containers as well. I don't fear transcoding though. That is why I have a server/client system. Edited July 18, 2014 by Wayne Luke Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WarrenH 16 Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 mp4 or avi as they'll play natively on anything, iso if i want to retain origional quality such as my music dvd's; whilst mkv is probably the best, you're gonna need a huge amount of storage space Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saajan4u 79 Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 all sorts ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spaceboy 2493 Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 i'm with wayne, i use MKV because its much simpler, holds h.264 and multiple audio tracks and subtitles. i rip everything at full quality Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deathsquirrel 741 Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 MP4 container with h264 video. Audio is the best passthrough track supported by MP4 plus the best audio track available converted to an equivalent number of channel AAC track. Subtitles are burned in only for forced english subs. I don't use subs except the forced track so this works perfectly for me. Only thing wrong with it is not being able to embed PCM or truhd tracks in the container. They aren't common but it's annoying when it happens. Most blu rays have DTS-HD and that I can pass into the file unaltered. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
z31fanatic 6 Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 MKV container with h.264 video, all audio tracks from the disc, plus the subtitles (english only). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fantaxp7 190 Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 (edited) MKV-4LYFE-YO OR...until something better comes along really. Edited July 18, 2014 by fantaxp7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JAJ 11 Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 (edited) MP4 container with h264 video. Audio is the best passthrough track supported by MP4 plus the best audio track available converted to an equivalent number of channel AAC track. Subtitles are burned in only for forced english subs. I don't use subs except the forced track so this works perfectly for me. Only thing wrong with it is not being able to embed PCM or truhd tracks in the container. They aren't common but it's annoying when it happens. Most blu rays have DTS-HD and that I can pass into the file unaltered. This is exactly what I use also ...works great across all devices that I use. Edited July 18, 2014 by JAJ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turntablejunky 3 Posted November 27, 2014 Share Posted November 27, 2014 But you can just have a separate .srt or .ass file stored alongside the mp4 file. I have these .srt files alongside the .mp4, but cannot for the life of me get the subtitles to appear. Is there a separate piece of software or plug-in to make the subtitles show? I'm using Media Browser version 3.0.5424.1, and Windows Media Center version 6.3.9600.16384. Thank you, Andre Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdrianW 1052 Posted November 27, 2014 Share Posted November 27, 2014 I have these .srt files alongside the .mp4, but cannot for the life of me get the subtitles to appear. Is there a separate piece of software or plug-in to make the subtitles show? I'm using Media Browser version 3.0.5424.1, and Windows Media Center version 6.3.9600.16384. I currently use MPC-HC as en external player with MBC - and that caters for all kinds of subtitles very well. But, I do remember having issues with mp4 files and external subtitles before I switched to MPC-HC. I used to fix it by simply remuxing the mp4 into mkv. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TolkienBard 54 Posted November 27, 2014 Share Posted November 27, 2014 About a 2 years ago or so I finally bit the bullet and stopped worrying about the best way to maximize quality and space. I sat back and realized that no matter what I did, my collection was going to be prohibitively large. When I accepted this, and established that quality was king, I began the process of converting everything to mkv directly from the original source, and without any compression after the fact. The initial outlay for hard drives was painful, but now I'm at the point where I can add one drive at a time and it takes a significant amount of time to fill that one drive. Drives are getting cheaper by the day. I'm actually considering moving up from 4 TB drives to 6 TB drives with my future expansions. If I do that, the first 8 TB of space will be very expensive since the first two 6 TB drives will actually be replacing my two 4 TB parity drives. After that though, I can buy probably 2 6 TB drives per year and not have to worry about running out of HDD space, even though I am not compressing anything. I find more platforms are starting to support mkv these days. I'd love it if I could find more mkv players to cut down on the transcoding the server has to do, but I'll survive as it is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Hobbs 91 Posted November 27, 2014 Share Posted November 27, 2014 I have these .srt files alongside the .mp4, but cannot for the life of me get the subtitles to appear. Is there a separate piece of software or plug-in to make the subtitles show? I'm using Media Browser version 3.0.5424.1, and Windows Media Center version 6.3.9600.16384. Thank you, Andre Make sure the sub has the same filename (minus the extension of course) as the video file. It should just get picked up automatically that way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KarterJK 35 Posted December 1, 2014 Share Posted December 1, 2014 all of mine are stored in .vob format, currently about 600 vids on 5 TB of space, I use 4TB WDMyCloud for storage, cost about $150-$180 US each, and I just keep adding drives as needed. The problem with .vob, is that, it is not the optimum format for streaming, While Media Browser does a reasonably good job at handling it, if I were to start anew I would probably go .mkv. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gaitkeeper 2 Posted December 4, 2014 Share Posted December 4, 2014 This looks like as good a place as any to pose this question. I have all of my movies as vob AND mkv (don't ask) and I'd like to go exclusively with mkv, but when I play movies through MB2, my receiver doesn't get 5 channels lighting up. It only shows in stereo. Yet when I stream that same mkv to my WD TV Live player, I do get 5 channels. Are there upgraded codecs in MB3? Maybe it's a good time to make the switch. TIA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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