I am currently in the process of ripping my blu ray collection using MakeMKV and was wondering if there was any reason/benefit to then change the container format from mkv to mp4? (I am not intending to re-encode to get smaller file sizes)
Nope. Stick to mkv for native rips.
Certain clients (including TvOS and iOS) will not direct play mkvs. Not for me, anyway. So I keep my mkvs for posterity, but also make passthrough mp4s for my ATV4.
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I have most of my movies saved as MKV. I don’t have a problem playing them back on anything I use (mostly rokus).
For me, I find mp4’s more reliable and consistent over many clients.
e.g. xbox one, xbox360, Shield TV, Apple tv4, Samsung smart TV, LG smart TV, Roku stick, 3 and 4, Ipads, iphones, Android phones and tablets, Android Tv boxes, Raspberry PI, windows app, chromecast. (I don’t own all these 
)
I copy or convert ALL mkv’s to mp4.
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MKV’s almost always required transcoding even if the codec used in it was a Direct Playable one, in the past. Things have changed a lot in the past few years, though. More and more client apps can support MKV’s, and even those devices that always forced a transcode in the past can now Direct Play them.
Still, I have a system set up to always convert MKV to MP4 before Plex ever sees the media. This is an automatic thing now that I have it set up, and I never worry about it anymore. I get MP4, H264 with AAC stereo (eng) and maybe a DTS or SC3 5.1 channel if one is included.
95% of my media streams Direct Play. the 5% is generally remote sessions with bandwidth limitations. And my NAS love this. It can easily handle more streams than the bandwidth could hope to support, and still have more CPU to do other things. Before I started this conversion I was lucky to get 1 or 2 streams without buffering.
Does this mean I’m going to allow MKV’s on my system? Not in this lifetime… What I have works and works VERY WELL. For a machine with less than 5100 passmarks I can serve up more media than some machines with over 10K passmarks with the wrong container. This is because I take the steps to ensure my “sub-par” system runs efficiently, and I do this by maintaining only the container and codecs listed above.
@Mike6.5 Thanks for your comments, makes absolutely more sense I think to change container to mp4 for exactly the reasons you mention, think I will only use media in mp4 container going forward, I actually found a neat little program that will do the conversion very simply as a direct stream conversion so takes very short time to do (approx 3 mins for a 35gb movie ripped to mkv.
@spikemixture said:
For me, I find mp4’s more reliable and consistent over many clients.
e.g. xbox one, xbox360, Shield TV, Apple tv4, Samsung smart TV, LG smart TV, Roku stick, 3 and 4, Ipads, iphones, Android phones and tablets, Android Tv boxes, Raspberry PI, windows app, chromecast. (I don’t own all these)
I copy or convert ALL mkv’s to mp4.
Yes well that only makes sense when he’s not going the native route. You can’t store TrueHD inside a mp4.
@Brynster58 said:
@Mike6.5 Thanks for your comments, makes absolutely more sense I think to change container to mp4 for exactly the reasons you mention, think I will only use media in mp4 container going forward, I actually found a neat little program that will do the conversion very simply as a direct stream conversion so takes very short time to do (approx 3 mins for a 35gb movie ripped to mkv.
Like I said before, if you’re watching your content locally on a player that can play all the codecs and you’re not planning to stream remotely, there is no point changing container to mp4. You can’t stick a TrueHD track inside a mp4 for example and it has various other limitations that you’d have to account for. If it’s for local playback, it’s not worth it.
What most of you seem to be forgetting before loudly exclaiming mp4 is better is that the majority of HD audio will not going inside a .MP4 while remaining inside spec and REQUIRES a .MKV. If OP is using a home cinema and not streaming, it is CLEARLY the better choice here.
@danjames92 said:
Yes well that only makes sense when he’s not going the native route. You can’t store TrueHD inside a mp4.
Why not?
