MKV encoder for Adobe?

rawfa

rawfa

Veteran
Hi,

Some of the best blu-ray rips I´ve seen so far are MKV. From what I´ve seen so far it is a great compromise between quality, file size and compatibility. I´d like to start exporting my movies directly from the adobe suite (mainly Premiere and After FX) using an MKV encoder. How can I dod that? Is there a free MKV encoder plugin I can get?
 
Hi Rafael,

MKV -- Matroska -- is just a container format. All it does is wrap a video stream -- which is already encoded in some format -- and an audio stream (or potentially more than one, plus maybe subtitles) up in a single file, interleaved, so that the video and audio can be played back in sync. This is exactly what MP4 does, too.

In other words, using MKV won't make the blindest bit of difference to the picture quality. If you have seen some nice-looking MKVs, it's because of how the video was encoded, not because of the MKV container.

Personally, I used to use MKV a lot, but now that MP4 is so widely supported, I've switched to using that instead. Again, this doesn't affect quality in the slightest, but it does mean that my movies will play on a wider range of systems.

So, the video inside the container is what matters. Nowadays just about everyone is using H.264 (this works with both MKV and MP4). I can tell you from direct experience that device manufacturers are putting 80%+ of their effort into making H.264 work well on their systems, as opposed to any other format. (Generally with an MP4 container and AAC audio; Android also supports WebM, which is a subset of MKV.)

Of course there are a zillion different ways to encode H.264, so if you want high quality, use something like high profile with a decent bitrate. High profile at level 4, at 20 mbits/second, will give you very good quality for 1080p. Level 4.1 at 40 Mb/s is BluRay level, but probably over the top for most things.

Hope this helps.
 
Thanks, it does help.
What is better, to select CBR or "douple pass" VBR?
Isn´t there a way to export a H.264 already wrapped on an MKV container?
 
Avoid Adobe's encoder if you want quality that you often see with MKVs. Matroska has nothing to do with quality, but most people who use MKV are not encoding their H.264 video with Adobe. Use x264!
 
JeganRX said:
Avoid Adobe's encoder if you want quality that you often see with MKVs. Matroska has nothing to do with quality, but most people who use MKV are not encoding their H.264 video with Adobe. Use x264!
Click to expand...

Is x264 on Premieres' format list?
 
If you want to avoid the cost (though you presumably wouldn't have MPEG-LA licensing) you can just use the actual, free x264 through a variety of GUIs.
 
Isn´t there any good free alternatives out there?
What´s a good free x264 encoder to use after exporting lossless?
 
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x264 IS the encoder, you simply need a GUI frontend if you want to make it easier, otherwise you'll have to figure out the commandline ;)
 
I´ve managed to get the debugmode frameserver working but when I go to handbrake, source and select the avi file that the debugmode displays I get:

"No Title(s) found.
Your source may be copy protected, badly mastered or in a format which HandBrake does not support.
Please refer to the Documentation and FAQ (see Help Menu)"

The file on the timeline is an MTS Sony NEX file. I´ve tried using RGB and YUY2.
 
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I´ve tried ripbot264 but it is very limited and it won´t export audio and the exporting options were very limited.
Any other suggestions? Do I have to export audio separately?
 
Not free but TMPGenc does mkv/mpeg4-avc.
You could frameserver over to TMPGenc or use a intermediare file as stated above.
 
rawfa said:
I´ve tried ripbot264 but it is very limited and it won´t export audio and the exporting options were very limited.
Any other suggestions? Do I have to export audio separately?
Click to expand...

did you enable audio in the debugmode configuration?

what export options were you looking for specifically? ripbot (and most x264 GUIs) allow you to access the commandline (100's of options), not all of them are included as a button or switch or the GUI would be too cluttered with 100's of buttons . The most complex GUI would probably be MeGUI (in advanced mode). It exposes more options in the GUI (along with commandline)
http://mewiki.project357.com/wiki/X264_Settings
 
f you are not into command line stuff, skip that dammed frameserver, render out an uncompressed master and load that in handbrake - works like a charm.

Frank
 
I've been trying out X.264 (via the 3am Software's X264 Pro trial version) vs. MediaEncoder's built-in H.264 as of CS6. Gotta say I'm having trouble seeing the difference... flipping between the images, sometimes it seems that X264 is VERY SLIGHTLY sharper... and sometimes the other way around. Am I missing something? Or is this it? Or did MainConcept get an upgrade in CS6?
 
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