Blu Ray - MKV or M4V on AppleTV? Is conversion necessary?

General Discussions
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Hi all,

I’m new to Plex and I’ve just finished ripping my DVD library and now I’m working on my Blu-Ray collection. I’ve been using JuiceWSA’s guide for using Handbrake for the DVD’s but I’m wondering if I’m doing it right for Blu-Ray.

I’m using MakeMKV to rip the blu-ray and then using Handbrake to convert them to M4V.

Do I need to convert the MKV to M4V?
Is there an advantage to MKV over M4V (or vise versa)

Thanks in advance!

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Basically you should be ok with keeping the MKVs. They’re more flexible when it comes to the content they can include. Also this means you simply keep the media in its original quality, while Handbrake completely re-encodes the media (usually at a lower quality… but even for a high-quality transcode there’ll be an impact on your quality).

Same goes for DVDs btw…

You should only consider converting/transcoding your media if…

  • your storage is Limited and you don’t want to keep the original quality
  • your server isn’t strong enough for basic streaming (e.g. there’s audio or video formats on your Blu-Ray which your client cannot deal with -> e.g. DTS audio on the Apple TV)
  • you regularly watch movies from outside your network (remote access) and your ISP upload bandwidth cannot deal with the Blu-Ray bitrates
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[quote=“G-Man, post:1, topic:307601”]
I’m wondering if I’m doing it right for Blu-Ray.[/quote]
The procedure is the same for DVD’s and Blu-rays. There are some minor settings that are worth fiddling with if you are a hardcore Handbrake user, to optimize quality/size.

Fine approach. I do the same for both DVD’s and Blu-rays.

Nope. Handbrake will give you smaller files though, which may be convenient if you lack space, or you have a ■■■■■■ server or network.

The AppleTV can Direct Play M4V (At least, it is supposed to, but it isn’t working properly for a lot of people, and the Plex team doesn’t care about their clients anymore so it will likely never be fixed along with the tons of other bugs), but only Direct Stream MKV. In practice it doesn’t make much of a difference though.

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