14 DAY TRIAL // You always wanted to watch your DVD movies on your computer, but didn't knew how? MakeMKV is a simple tool for converting movie DVDs to the MKV format, allowing you to watch them from your Mac.
Movies are distributed nowadays on all kinds of formats, so all of us can enjoy them. For example, a person can buy a movie on a DVD format that offers a pretty decent quality at a reasonable price.
Technology evolved though, so now anyone can buy movies on a Blu-Ray disc, delivering astounding image quality, but for a higher price.You get that image quality because Blu-Ray discs allow a huge amount of data to be written on them (approximately 50Gb on a dual layer disc).
High definition movies can also be stored on your Mac if you want, and there are some formats available that support high resolution movies.
One of these formats is MKV.There are not too many MKV creation programs available though. MakeMKV is such a program, allowing you to create a DVD rip in the MKV format.
The Looks
MakeMKV comes with a simple interface and some pretty basic features. Upon starting it, you can see the main window, featuring three panels.
The first one is the disc panel, where you can visualize the contents of the DVD you inserted. Here you can also see the video format and the audio codec used during the creation of the DVD.
The second panel displays the track information, like codecs, resolutions, formats and aspect ratios. The last panel contains the log, where the program records all the actions made by the user.
The Works
When inserting a DVD, MakeMKV lets you visualize some information about the audio codecs that have been used, movie resolution, and also aspect ratios. This is useful since you now know the quality of the input and may have a glimpse on what the result can be.
The amount of information you get mainly depends on the DVD you inserted. For the test I used a 90 minutes long, 9 chapter movie, with a MPEG-2 video codec.The codec used here is important, as well as the image quality, because you simply can't get a good MKV output from a bad quality source.
After choosing the input, all you have to do is select the place on your hard drive that will be used to store the newly created MKV files.
After that, you begin creating the Matroska file. The conversion time varies from file to file, depending on various factors. For example, the time taken to convert a 2.9 GB DVD was 30 seconds, an impressive one if you ask me.
For the other DVD I used, a dual layer one, the conversion process took a little more that I expected (3 minutes, instead of 1 or 2). Still, this is a lot of speed for such a simple program, so it's still a nice performance.
MakeMKV also offers some features that most users won't use. For example, after converting a DVD to MKV, you can encrypt it, and start a streaming server, in order to share the file with your friends.
MakeMKV reads various types of protected discs. This is useful because it allows you to convert almost any DVD to the MKV format, without restricting your access to the conversion process. Some protected DVD types that can be read are AACS and BD+.
You can change the output path at any time, or set an automatic one, if you want. This is a good thing because you can choose one and keep it, or change it, if you run out of space on that partition.
MakeMKV also allows you to choose the aspect ratio and resolution of the movie, options that have a major impact regarding the size of the final MKV file.
The size of the converted MKV file is variable, and it mainly depends on the size of the input. For example, if the source DVD had approximately 4 GB, you can expect the output to have 5 or 6GB. As you can see, the difference is not astonishing (there were some cases where I got an MKV that had the same size as the output).
If you encounter any errors during the conversion process, you can save the BD bumps for further analysis.
When you create an MKV file, the program preserves all the meta-information from the original, so it's not hard to track the source of an error, in case one appears.
The converted MKV files had a good image and sound quality overall, making me use the program more often. Also important, MakeMKV does not use a lot of system resources, so you can do other things on your computer while the conversion process is taking place.
The Good
The application is also available on all major platforms, like Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, a good thing since most converters nowadays choose only a specific platform.
The Bad
I also encountered a pretty funny bug, where the program showed that the size of the inserted DVD was 405 GB instead of 4.5. But we must keep in mind that the tested version was a Beta.
The Truth
This article is also available in Spanish: Una Rapida Solución Para Crear Archivos MKV
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
