The most efficient way to deal with MKV?

[The-Nightmaster]

Hey i just wanted to ask you guys what is the best way to deal with MKVs because the times i tried it with Vdm i ebded up with an impossible big file. These just collected up to redicules numbers, i'm just trying cuming back inzo editing and this would be prob help a little.

[l33tmeatwad]

First off, I'd drop VirtualDubMod, it is out of date and therefore may cause more problems than it solves. Second, if you convert to lossless AVI it will be huge, but that is because you are maintaining and not losing quality. Avoiding quality loss is VERY important as you will be compressing again after you edit. Additionally, MKV is a container, not a format, so keep that in mind when asking questions as there are actually more details you need to pay attention to when deciding how to best handle your footage. Lastly, while it is not necessary, I would HIGHLY recommend getting AMVpack as it bundles all the tools typically used for source handling.

So, to answer your question, at the end of the day there are really only two choices for handling footage without losing quality, recontainering or converting to lossless. Obviously you are interested in smaller sizes, so lossless is not the ideal for you. While I would still recommend doing lossless for better stability of the files in your editing software, recontainering the footage may be what you are looking for. If you are using the latest Adobe software it should work with no problems, however if you are using Vegas or something else, you will have to pay attention to the bit-depth of the video footage, because if it is not 8-bit you will have to convert to lossless. Here is a guide on how to typically handle MKV files.

[The-Nightmaster]

THX a lot that helped tonn.