Pirates Frustrated After TV Groups Swap MP4 For MKV

Megalith

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I had thought MKV was the standard for years now and can’t remember ever not muxing my rips into another container format.

While pirates may not appear to be the most organized people, the groups that make up the top of the piracy pyramid abide by strict rules. Every so often they agree on a new set of standards, which determine what a proper release should look like. Most recently, new changes were announced for TV show releases, and these are set to go into effect this coming weekend.
 
I hate when I see shows I like capped by FLEET, seems they screw up a lot of the caps, they have a high nuke rate.
 
Wait I thought groups always used mkv containers because of flexibility. Ofc the avg joe probably thinks mp4 and mkv somehow effects the quality of the encoded audio and video not understanding that they just packaged the already encoded crap and don't effect the quality. I mean seriously you can easily demux a mkv and repackage it to mp4 in a minute doesn't require much cpu power just disk spnning. Then again i doubt anyone who would complain understands the difference between the file extension and actual A/V encoding. You could even batch it up pretty easily.
 
I hate when I see shows I like capped by FLEET, seems they screw up a lot of the caps, they have a high nuke rate.

FLEET is awful, there are only two guarantees with a FLEET encode;
1. It will be messed up in one way or another.
2. Their info will contain some form of tantrum about another one of their releases getting nuked.
 
Who the fuck uses MP4 for anything?

I switched to ripping to .m4v/.mp4 years ago because so many devices (Android) didn't like .mkv at the time. It was a pain in the rear because I traveled a lot and kept having to run in software mode.

Not sure if it's been rolled into modern hardware or not. I look for .mp4.
 
lol pirates upset about the switch to MKV. uh sorry to break it to you media, but that's what they've been trying to get the industry changed to for the last 10 years. MP4 has been an obsolete media package for even longer than that.
 
I create a lot of promotional material, and I always enclose the final product in mp4 container. Because this is the least problematic when the suits want to play them on their handy dandy, cool looking, fashion statements they call laptops. They don't even have to download them, I just send them a link and any modern browser will play them right then and there.
 
Not that I would know about such things :D but mkv has been used as the default for years. Or at least that's what I hear anyway :LOL:
 
I come from the streaming media industry and the MP4 container is the most common container in use. From that container you can repacketize it to be delivered via RTSP (ancient, but still in use), RTMP (used as a fallback these days), HLS, and MPEG-DASH.

My thoughts on MKV? Whatever floats your boat. I've seen some pristine content in MKV and some content that makes me wonder what the person was thinking or using as the content either looked abysmal or the content, when repacketized to MP4, was broken to the point that I had to put it into a non-linear editor to fix the audio. With broken content like that even Plex will choke. MKV is also much like a box of chocolates. You never know what you are going to get inside. I've also seen some abysmal MP4 content that either looks bad or has massive A/V sync issues. Never trust content that you haven't created.

When MKV is done right it is pristine, will have subtitles built in, and will have everything broken down into chapters. For a similar experience using MP4 you need an SRT file, but that isn't bad because I use a channel called Roksbox on my Roku to deliver my videos from my BSD jail running nginx on my FreeNAS box which requires SRT files for subtitles.

If for some reason you need to stream your content I wrote a blog entry that is going to be referenced in an upcoming book by Jan Ozer. My blog entry can be found here.

On a side note I use DVDFab to copy the DVD VOB file or Blu-ray M2TS file so that I can work with the raw source. From that I process it using a 1700 line bash shell script I wrote that drives FFmpeg, uses MediaInfo, and if the audio sucks it uses Sox to provide some level or normalization.

Oh, and Netflix can suck it.
 
I prefer MP4. I rip my own movies and encode within the MP4 container. Movies are moved to my NAS and pulled by each device. Most use Kodi. And if we're on a long trip I can simply copy the movies to our iPad, iPhone, Android phones, etc. MP4 works flawlessly.

I keep hearing people tell me that MKV is "better." I've never met someone who could tell me how MKV was superior without resorting to making things up. And, while I'm sure there's some justifiable reason, it won't be better for my needs.
 
I prefer MP4. I rip my own movies and encode within the MP4 container. Movies are moved to my NAS and pulled by each device. Most use Kodi. And if we're on a long trip I can simply copy the movies to our iPad, iPhone, Android phones, etc. MP4 works flawlessly.

I keep hearing people tell me that MKV is "better." I've never met someone who could tell me how MKV was superior without resorting to making things up. And, while I'm sure there's some justifiable reason, it won't be better for my needs.

Its just people on their high horse. Someone uses something different, ergo they are wrong, because I would only do whats right.

You can put H264/H265 in an MP4.

You can put whatever sound you want.

You can put however many tracks you want.

You can have chapters.

The only issue I really see is the subtitles as pointed out. Specifically for "soft" subtitles. But I looked at it and I really have not ever needed soft subtitles. If there is forced subtitles, I want them onscreen....so burn in. If it's a foreign film I have to have the English subtitles on....so burn in. The ability to toggle subtitles has just never been an issue for me. That's not to say that you can't do soft subs in a MP4, device compatibility is more the problem.

The purists will claim that transcoding a Bluray causes image quality issues and that is why MKV is superior. I say call them out on it. AppleTV "only" supports up to ~24Mb/s on the video stream. I challenge anyone to notice image quality problems with 24 megabits of bandwidth on H264 using slower processing parameters.
 

Comparing MP4 and MKV there is fun. With MP4, you get short lists of what it will do, in MKV you just get "Yes" or "virtually anything" across the board. It's the old "it's compatible with everything" versus "it can do everything". It's more compatible because it can't do very much.

M76 said:
I create a lot of promotional material, and I always enclose the final product in mp4 container. Because this is the least problematic when the suits want to play them on their handy dandy, cool looking, fashion statements they call laptops. They don't even have to download them, I just send them a link and any modern browser will play them right then and there.

Count yourself lucky that they aren't insisting on the product being available on 3.5" floppy disks, because that's where the "because it's more compatible" argument eventually takes you.
 
Comparing MP4 and MKV there is fun. With MP4, you get short lists of what it will do, in MKV you just get "Yes" or "virtually anything" across the board. It's the old "it's compatible with everything" versus "it can do everything". It's more compatible because it can't do very much.

What exactly are you wanting to do with your MKV's that require so much more? Video, Sound, Chapters, Subtitles. You need more then that? Considering the state of things as they are today I don't see how the MP4 and MKV capbility are that different. MP4 supports H264 and AVCHD....that's what nearly everyone uses right now. And they are excellent codecs. You can put DTS and Dolby Digital, you can put high bandwidth audio.

It's cool if you prefer one over the other, but to degrade others for using something different.....I don't get it.
 
Comparing MP4 and MKV there is fun. With MP4, you get short lists of what it will do, in MKV you just get "Yes" or "virtually anything" across the board. It's the old "it's compatible with everything" versus "it can do everything". It's more compatible because it can't do very much.

And by "virtually anything" you mean "include eight sets of subtitles for an Anime porno" since that is about all MKV is used for which can't be done with a different media type.
 
Is there a streaming media player that supports streaming mkv with dts sound? Right now doesn't seem like there is.
 
As far as I know MP4 doesn't support DTS-HD which I always use in my MKV files for my favorite films. Is that not true anymore? For regular films I go for DTS, but for the ones I really like, DTS-HD.
 
Is there a streaming media player that supports streaming mkv with dts sound? Right now doesn't seem like there is.
When it comes to streaming media it gets down to the packetization level and protocol support for a given container. To my knowledge there are no players that support streaming MKV, however the Matroska site states that streaming is theoretically possible. They claim that segmented HTTP content works, but the input file would need to be segmented into a playlist (.ts for HLS or .mpd for DASH). They provide no information on player support.

I used to support the Helix Media Streaming Server when I worked at RealNetworks and know just enough about streaming media to get myself in trouble.

Remuxing MKV to MP4 often works as long as the target container supports the codecs that are in the MKV container, but then again the player has to support that specific combination of codecs in the container or it won't play.

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -vcodec copy -acodec copy -f mp4 output.mp4
 
As far as I know MP4 doesn't support DTS-HD which I always use in my MKV files for my favorite films. Is that not true anymore? For regular films I go for DTS, but for the ones I really like, DTS-HD.

Handbrake will support it. I usually put it as audio track 3
1. Stereo AAC
2. 640kb/s AC3 5.1
3. DTS-HD

AppleTV ignores it, but it doesn't prevent the movie from playing though.
 
Remuxing MKV to MP4 often works as long as the target container supports the codecs that are in the MKV container, but then again the player has to support that specific combination of codecs in the container or it won't play.

This is really all it comes down to. People used to feel the same way about AVI, because as a container it could hold anything. But if the player didn't support it what the hell good does it do? There were devices that played AVI*, but then you look at what the * meant and its: must be certain MPEG within certain resolutions within certain bitrates and it only supported certain audio codecs.

MP4 is limited, sure, but by being limited a hardware manufacturer knows exactly what needs to be addressed.
 
Great. Another 'my dick is nicer than your dick' argument. Just another case of nobody gives a crap except the people arguing. It's like the girl actually gives a crap about another half inch of dick; they want the guy with the most money but guys never understand that, they're so wrapped up in what THEY think is important.
 
Great. Another 'my dick is nicer than your dick' argument. Just another case of nobody gives a crap except the people arguing. It's like the girl actually gives a crap about another half inch of dick; they want the guy with the most money but guys never understand that, they're so wrapped up in what THEY think is important.
Why should they care? The scene doesn't do this for you. If you choose to d/l their stuff, then it's on you to make sure your hw/sw can play whatever it is they release. TBH, I thought this change happened close to 10 years ago.
 
If anyone would RTFA, you'd realize the shift from MP4 to MKV only affects people in the SD release scene. People downloading HD releases have been getting MKV for years already.
 
When I was editing, it was all .mp2/.wav files merged into an .avi. (Pinnacle DC2000)

I don't really care if it's an AVI, MPEG, FLV, MP4, MKV. If it plays, I'm happy. If I have to manually load a subtitle in VLC player, I'm cool with that.
Honestly, I don't have time to watch jack at home, but sometimes will rip something as fast and easy as I can to have it on the tablet when the family goes on a trip. (Kids love cartoons in the car!! WHEW!!) It usually ends up an .avi or .mp4.
 
It's stupid simple and here's a simple solution on any platform (Windows, Linux, OSX, etc):

1) Get/install ffmpeg (make sure it's added to your path environment variable so you can run it from anywhere)
2) Navigate to where the file is located (or type out the whole path if you prefer) and use this command replacing "filename" with the relevant info:
ffmpeg -i filename.mkv -c:v copy -c:a copy filename.mp4
3) ?!?!?!?!
4) PROFIT!!!

It takes like 10-20 seconds on most machines, it's not re-encoding anything in the process, it's just copying the audio/video streams from inside the MKV container into an MP4 container so it takes seconds to accomplish.

Seriously, I get why "the scene" is doing this but it's not that much of a big deal to most people who're familiar with containers and what they obviously contain. If you can't or won't do the command line (since it doesn't really work great with huge batches of files), then you can use something like this on Windows:

rebox.NET 2.9.9.3 - Download

which is a tool that just moves the audio/video streams from an MKV container into an MP4 container.

This is a big fuss over nothing at all, seriously.
 
It's stupid simple and here's a simple solution on any platform (Windows, Linux, OSX, etc):

1) Get/install ffmpeg (make sure it's added to your path environment variable so you can run it from anywhere)
2) Navigate to where the file is located (or type out the whole path if you prefer) and use this command replacing "filename" with the relevant info:
ffmpeg -i filename.mkv -c:v copy -c:a copy filename.mp4
3) ?!?!?!?!
4) PROFIT!!!

It takes like 10-20 seconds on most machines, it's not re-encoding anything in the process, it's just copying the audio/video streams from inside the MKV container into an MP4 container so it takes seconds to accomplish.

Seriously, I get why "the scene" is doing this but it's not that much of a big deal to most people who're familiar with containers and what they obviously contain. If you can't or won't do the command line (since it doesn't really work great with huge batches of files), then you can use something like this on Windows:

rebox.NET 2.9.9.3 - Download

which is a tool that just moves the audio/video streams from an MKV container into an MP4 container.

This is a big fuss over nothing at all, seriously.


This means you have to interact with every file after download, it's just a pita. Yeah you can do anything if want to do 10 extra steps, but technology is supposed to help me avoid having to do those 10 extra steps.
 
Pirates love mp4 because its a "Standard"

Except Mp4 has rather strict restrictions in order to be played on legacy devices such as PS3/4's etc such as amount of b-frames, ref frames, key frames, GOP values etc, most of which actually hamper a high quality encode

MKV however allows whatever codecs you want to throw into it, which may not sound like a big deal, but a 200Kbps~ OPUS file sounds better than a 300Kbps AAC file by a longshot, has far better acoustics and is far smaller in size
 
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