How big should MKV be?

rudy

rudy

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Apr 4, 2004
Messages
8,703
Not sure if this is the right section but I just had power dvd 8 update and it killed my ability to watch blu rays. So I until I decide what I am going to do I ripped blu ray to mkv, but these things are as much as 40 GB. And I only have a 320 GB hdd, with about 200gb in free space on this htpc (not including the OS SSD which is full with os and games). So I started looking at getting a bigger hard drive, however, I think something might be wrong those sizes seem astronomical. I thought they should be more like 15 GB, not more than 25GB.
 
Did you strip out the extras and just keep the main movie and audio track? They are usually around 30GB with the extras removed.
 
You could re-encode the video to a lower bit-rate to get you in the 10-20GB range as well.
 
I do not think the extras are out I will check on that and see if it is easy to do with makeMKV. But I guess you answered my question they are that big. With hard drive prices the way they are that sucks. I thought only dual laywer BR were over 25GB I did not realize they were already dipping into the second layer.
 
If you do it right with Makemkv they should be 12-27gigs at the most. Thats with out messing video or audio quaity. I just keep the main video and hd sound track. thats it.
 
Makeroflostsouls said:
If you do it right with Makemkv they should be 12-27gigs at the most. Thats with out messing video or audio quaity. I just keep the main video and hd sound track. thats it.
Click to expand...


What kind of junk blu-ray's are you getting that are 12gb.


I would return that to the store.
 
x264 rencoded 1820x1080 video at roughly 13mbps plus a DTS track at 1500kbps should yield files that are approximately 6GB per hour.
 
Makeroflostsouls said:
If you do it right with Makemkv they should be 12-27gigs at the most. Thats with out messing video or audio quaity. I just keep the main video and hd sound track. thats it.
Click to expand...
This. My average size with straight ripped vid + DTS-HD MA or TrueHD track is probably 21-23GB using eac3to. Occasionally you'll see the crappier transfers down in the 17GB range, with the best transfers over 25GB. Theres no need to bring all those pointless extras along for the ride
 
Activate: AMD said:
This. My average size with straight ripped vid + DTS-HD MA or TrueHD track is probably 21-23GB using eac3to. Occasionally you'll see the crappier transfers down in the 17GB range, with the best transfers over 25GB. Theres no need to bring all those pointless extras along for the ride
Click to expand...


Yea i've never seen a 12. I've had stuff in the 30's and 40's.
 
The movie The Strangers is only 16 gigs on the Blu-ray disk and 13gigs as an MKV.
Movie Hitman 21gig on Blu-ray 14 gigs as MKV.. Might have been a little off on the 12gigs but close.

Movie's varie alot on size. Now movies like Avatar went from 50gig on disk to 39gig on MKV. I would say avrage is 18-26gigs per movie in MKV format down from 36-50gig per movie. So you get about double the amount of movies you can store. Thats with out touching the quality of the movie. I store all mine to use in my teather so quality is a must have.
 
Terminator 3 is a 10.7GB .MKV ripped straight from BD, with just the English sound track. On the flip side, my largest, LotR - Return of the King Extended Edition is a 58.8GB .MKV. I also store mine without additional compression, just extras, foreign sound tracks and subtitles removed, video quality is very important to me. According to a little script I wrote, the average size for all my 118 Blu-ray rips is 24GBs.
 
Only MKVs I have seen around 12GB are old movies. With makeMKV that is I personally like using AnyDVD with Handbreak awesome quality and small file. Getting your blurays to MKVS is a choir no matter what. From the long transcode times to the forced subs it takes some trial and error to get it all the way you want. DVDs are much easer.

If your bluray with MakeMKV comes out under 25GB I would make sure your getting the right video and audio streams. 13mbps is really low most of my blurays have been 25mbps or more. My compressed MKVs are around 13mbps. DTS-MA is huge too! DTS is 1500kbps DTS-MA is lossless and much higher, up to 24mbps bitrate. Movies with lossless audio and 1080p are Huge
 
Last edited:
There's no one set answer on what the compressed video size will be because that's completely determined by how good you are with getting the most out of compression ratios. It took me about 5 conversions to get it right which maximised compression AND video quality.

For me high action movies range between 10 and 14 compressed. Animated movies fall much lower generally in the 7GB range. Dramas or low action fall lower 5 - 8. In terms of what the space requirements are as a rule I would set aside 80 GB in order to reencode a BD. I haven't bought one that required more than that.
 
Just ripped Avatar bluray yesterday...movie and HD audio only...37.2GB with MakeMKV.
 
rudy said:
Not sure if this is the right section but I just had power dvd 8 update and it killed my ability to watch blu rays. So I until I decide what I am going to do I ripped blu ray to mkv, but these things are as much as 40 GB. And I only have a 320 GB hdd, with about 200gb in free space on this htpc (not including the OS SSD which is full with os and games). So I started looking at getting a bigger hard drive, however, I think something might be wrong those sizes seem astronomical. I thought they should be more like 15 GB, not more than 25GB.
Click to expand...

If you want to keep 1080p...you are going to have to adjust your expectations. You can

a) Keep 1080p at full bit-rate keep about 10 movies (~30GB) per title)
b) Keep 1080p but compress further thus increase artifacts (~15-20GB per title)
c) Drop to tradional 5 channel audio (another 5GB)
d) Drop to 720p and compress audio to traditional 5 channel (4-8GB per title)

You will still see on a lot of Linux ISO sites that people still prefer for the 720p varients of Linux (5:1 ratio typically). They provide a lot of bang for the bit and unless:

a) your vision is pure awesome
b) You sit to close to your screen
c) You watch a lot of 1080p encoded power point presentations with 10p font. :p
d) have spacial hearing better than a veteran hunter who drinks his own piss.

Honestly, I encode all my movies @ 720p just for portability for tablets/laptops/phones. Only my most favorite movies are left @ 1080p.
 
I'll just put the disk in before i waste time with 720p. Why in the hell would you buy a blu-ray, and then rip it to 720p? It literally makes no sense at all.
 
Verge said:
I'll just put the disk in before i waste time with 720p. Why in the hell would you buy a blu-ray, and then rip it to 720p? It literally makes no sense at all.
Click to expand...
Some people stream to devices that cannot do 1080p
 
Verge said:
Then save a ton of cash and buy the movie on itunes.
Click to expand...
When you factor in bandwidth caps, DRM and device restrictions I don't see how this would save me anything in the long term. I still have TV Seasons ripped at 480p because of some terrible devices that couldn't do even 720 not so long ago. There are many reasons people use lower resolution and/or lower bitrate. Have you ever tried to stream a full blu ray quality 25mbs mp4 over wireless. It will choke most devices.
 
Verge said:
Then save a ton of cash and buy the movie on itunes.
Click to expand...

I see your point.

Frankly, I just rip to ISO and keep the entire disc in tact, extras and all. The extras, even though I don't always watch them when I watch the movie, are part of the reason for buying movies on disc. I don't see a good reason to toss that stuff away when I can get cheap hard drive space (which, obviously can't do right now, but I was getting them cheap when I started this ripping to disc).

To me, buying a disc and transcoding to lower bit-ray only make sense when you intend to view on a mobile device like a tablet. Otherwise, I want the full experience.

That said, when it comes to TV and blu-ray on TV, I do rip to MKV and keep the loss-less sound track. That way, I can get a full experience in MyMovies. That is where keeping the ISO doesn't make as much sense.

Anyway, that's what I do. Others should do as they see fit.
 
Last edited:
Verge said:
I'll just put the disk in before i waste time with 720p. Why in the hell would you buy a blu-ray, and then rip it to 720p? It literally makes no sense at all.
Click to expand...

1. The reality is...most of us have a very real limit on how many pixels per inch we can resolve at a certain distance. Right now I can still easily tell 480p from 720p. However, I cannot tell the dif between 720p and 1080p and normal viewing distances (especially on moving frames).

2. You cannot plug a disc into your tablet/phone. However, I can put a whole season of TV on a single cost effective 16GB flash drive or a couple of movies vs ONE movie. It also greatly reduces transfer time of getting that data to the portble medium.

What really bothers me about your post is you fully ignored the context I put it in at the end of my post.
 
Trepidati0n said:
If you want to keep 1080p...you are going to have to adjust your expectations. You can

a) Keep 1080p at full bit-rate keep about 10 movies (~30GB) per title)
b) Keep 1080p but compress further thus increase artifacts (~15-20GB per title)
c) Drop to tradional 5 channel audio (another 5GB)
d) Drop to 720p and compress audio to traditional 5 channel (4-8GB per title)
Click to expand...

Your estimate for A) is definitely a bit off. I just looked at one of my HD movie storage directories it measures 2.12TB with 106 movies, an average of 20GB per movie. All are 1080P MKV's straight off the disc with no compression after the fact, most of them have the lossless audio, though some have the DTS core only and maybe 1 or 2 have 5.1 channel FLAC audio. Its entirely reasonable to think that your per movie estimation is 40-50% too high for an average movie collection
 
Activate: AMD said:
Your estimate for A) is definitely a bit off. I just looked at one of my HD movie storage directories it measures 2.12TB with 106 movies, an average of 20GB per movie. All are 1080P MKV's straight off the disc with no compression after the fact, most of them have the lossless audio, though some have the DTS core only and maybe 1 or 2 have 5.1 channel FLAC audio. Its entirely reasonable to think that your per movie estimation is 40-50% too high for an average movie collection
Click to expand...

Interesting. I do a straight MakeMKV with only the main video and the main audio and average ~30GB on movie types I watch. I guess my range for A could easily be broadened from ~30GB to 20-30GB. However, the fundamentals of my post are still valid/correct.

I tihnk the OP is under the mistaken impression that that 1080p movies and somehow should only be a few GB at very high quality with moderm compression techniques. I was trying to illustrate that.

With a adoption of Hi10p encoding in some arenas, we are getting another 10-20% back, but it takes more horsepower to decode it. Secondarily, I haven't even seen "low support" for HW decode in this area. I am thinking we are getting to the point of "incompressible" with the current mindset/iteration of silicon. Therefore the only avenue I see going forward is larger and faster storage devices as people want "moar pixels".
 
Im using a program called convertXtoDVD & just drop your MKV in the UI (user interface) make sure DVD5 option is selected then burn it with image burn or whatever using the build mode, that's what I've been burning all my DVD's with.


_________________________
watch insidious online
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top