DVD to MKV

I’ve actually forgotten how to take a DVD from someone and turn it into an MKV or an Mp4. Here’s the notes. The main thing is to use right constant quality:

For the Mac, download Handbrake
Put in the DVD and pick that as the source
The most important thing is to pick the Constant Quality. This is confusing as lower CQ is higher quality (??!!). It really should be called constant compressionas CQ of zero means no compression at all. That being said, 20 is the default and pretty good. For a 93 minute video on a DVD, this got me a 1.4GB M4V file so about a 3:1 compression at H.264 high profile.

DVD to mkv with same quality as orginal?

Follow Baldrick’s suggestions. Handbrake‘s constant quality mode at CRF 18-19 will give you very good quality. You can go to 17-17.5 for even better quality, at the cost of more filesize.