Looking for a Blu-ray ripper that can downscale to 720p

[pacotacoshell]

It's been a while since I've done this whole editing thing, so I'm very rusty. I'm using three software now, but only one of them is doing the job. Basically, I'm trying to:

1. Rip a Blu-ray into an m2ts or MKV file (in 720p)
2. Convert the MKV/m2ts file to mp4 (from 1080p to 720p if needed).

I have tried DVDFab9 and MakeMKV for step one, but both of them give me problems. DVDFab9 gives me the option to downscale to 720 which I like, but it gives me errors for certain films and it won't rip the blu-ray. MakeMKV is good but it outputs a 1080p video. For step 2, I use MKVtoMP4. I really like this software because the conversion process is fast (14 mins for a 2 hour video file), but it doesn't give me (or I can't find) the option to downscale to 720p. I want to reduce the amount of conversion steps I take to 2, so I'd rather not throw in another on top of the steps I mentioned. Also, converting to lossless AVI is not an option, because I have too many films to convert for this project and not enough space.

So basically my questions are:
Is there a way to have MakeMKV downscale a Blu-ray to 720p?
Is there a way to have MKVtoMP4 downscale the MKV file to 720p?
Is there software that can rip blu-rays to m2ts/mkv in 720p?
Is there software that can convert MKV/m2ts to mp4 from 1080p to 720p (with similar conversion speed as MkvtoMp4)?

[l33tmeatwad]

What you are asking for is not possible, and I'll explain why. Blu-ray discs use the MPEG-2 Transport Stream (M2TS) container to store audio, video, and subtitle data. The video formats supported are H.262 (MPEG-2 Part 2), H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC), and VC-1, all of which can be stored in a MKV container. MakeMKV is decrypting software that simply copies the audio & video data from the M2TS container after decrypting the disc and places that same data into a MKV container. Then when you run that MKV file through MkvToMp4, that software takes the H.264 video data and copies it into a MP4 container. This process is very fast because no actual processing is done, it's just copying and pasting data. When it comes to reducing the resolution, now you are trying to alter that data, which will require you to re-encode that video. Since MP4 only supports MPEG based codecs that are mostly lossy* and take a lot of time to process, you would be losing quality and time by compressing. This is one of the reasons why lossless AVI codecs are recommended when altering or cleaning up video. Similar to opening a JPEG photo and resizing it in photoshop, you will still need to either save it lossless, or recompress to JPEG again and lose quality.

*Note: It is possible to encode lossless H.264, however that really does not give an advantage over lossless AVI.

[Niwa]

I have a question regarding this, since I'm the process of ripping a BD at the moment.

After getting the MKV from MakeMKV, is it possible for the new version VirtualDub to read this MKV file? I just recently find out that the latest version of Vdub actually reads MKV files, but I'm unsure about the limitations.

I'd really want to convert this MKV into a Uncompressed AVI with UTvideo codec.

[RTW47]

stand-alone VirtualDub shouldn't be able to handle mkv. Not without FFMpeg Input Plugin (FFInputDriver) or some Matroska plugin;
=> I would try peeking inside plugins32/64 folder;

[l33tmeatwad]

stand-alone VirtualDub shouldn't be able to handle mkv. Not without FFMpeg Input Plugin (FFInputDriver) or some Matroska plugin;
=> I would try peeking inside plugins32/64 folder;

This, and you can download it here.

[Niwa]

I managed to import the MKV file into VirtualDub without needing the plugin.

I got Virtual Dub 1.10.4, maybe it was included when I downloaded it?

[l33tmeatwad]

I managed to import the MKV file into VirtualDub without needing the plugin.

I got Virtual Dub 1.10.4, maybe it was included when I downloaded it?

It is not, however if you installed VirtualDub through AMVpack it is included with that.