gatormike Posted August 19, 2012 Share Posted August 19, 2012 Sorry for the redundancy here. I have looked at numerous posts and can't quite figure out the best way to go about ripping my DVDs. I am going to purchase either an Apple tv2 or Popcorn hour. I have used Handbrake to rip about 20 movies so my kids can watch them on my iPad for travel. Before going any further, I want to make sure the video quality will be ok with eother one of these devices in the file format mp4. I can't quite figure out which format is best (iso, mkv, etc) to ensure that I will nor be disappointed with video quality when I start streaming these movies. I want to avoid having to repeat the ripping process.Thanks for your help. It seems like there are numerous different ways to do this, which might mean there is no best way........ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dogdvr Posted August 19, 2012 Share Posted August 19, 2012 Format = the actual encoding format of the audio and video streams, of which there are many. For audio there's wav, mp3, aac, ogg (Vorbis), raw, and many others. For video some of the more popular ones are Divx, Xvid, MPEG1 (VideoCD standard from many years past), MPEG2 (DVD standard), MPEG4 (newer updated more efficient forms), h.264, and others.Containers are what holds the audio and video streams encoded using the formats above and include: AVI (probably the oldest still used container and the most popular by far), MKV (the "new kid on the block" but it can do most anything), MP4 (yes, it's a container, not a format), M4V (same as MP4 with some additional potentials), Ogg, and nowadays WebM by Google.Newer containers like MP4 and MKV can hold not only the audio and video streams but also chapter markers, captions or subtitle streams, and other data including multiple audio tracks too. MKV is the "King" in that respect as it offers the most potential for the most possibilities above and beyond all the rest. The downside to using MKV is that not every device out there is capable of reading the container to get the streams inside it.It's becoming more popular but right now the most widely supported native container format is MP4 which is workable on most any device you'll find. Now, just because the device can read the MP4 container does NOT mean it can decode the audio and video streams contained inside it - that's where you have an issue with format support if you encounter it. Like an MP4 container that has an Xvid-encoded video stream with an Ogg Vorbis audio stream but the device you're trying to play that MP4 on can't decode Xvid or Ogg Vorbis content. That's more common than you might realize but it happens.Today's most popular "video" file would probably be an MP4 with h.264-encoded video and AAC-encoded audio. That's playable on most anything - but there's multiple levels of potential h.264 encoding (Baseline, Main, High Profile, etc) that can cause problems too...Yeah, it's confusing at times but, best advice is stick to what works for you and your hardware - you're the one watching it, so as long as all your stuff works with the encodings you create, what else really matters? Stolen from hard forums Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gatormike Posted August 19, 2012 Author Share Posted August 19, 2012 That really helped a bunch. I greatly appreciate the explanation. Thanks for taking the time to write this thorough reply. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbat Posted August 19, 2012 Share Posted August 19, 2012 That's a really good explanation - thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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