use TS or MKV for conversion to MP4?

[justinrh 259]

I use Emby to record movies off of live TV, which produces a TS file.  I then convert to MKV to help mitigate the viewing anomalies on Android TV and make seek smoother.

If I want to convert the video to MP4 (using Handbrake usually), would be it better to use the original TS source or use the MKV?

[RanmaCanada 494]

It won't matter if the mkv you created is done with mkvtoolnix.  But why would you want to convert it to an inferior container like mp4?  

Edited February 14, 2024 by RanmaCanada

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

1 hour ago, justinrh said:

I use Emby to record movies off of live TV, which produces a TS file.  I then convert to MKV to help mitigate the viewing anomalies on Android TV and make seek smoother.

If I want to convert the video to MP4 (using Handbrake usually), would be it better to use the original TS source or use the MKV?

Every time you make a copy the quality degrades so copying twice TS->MKV->MP4 would reduce quality more than TS->MP4.

There is some consideration that Handbrake (or any other converter) might be much better at producing an MP4 from an MKV and the Emby conversion to TS might also be a lot better than Handbrake's job. But I very much doubt that and I think it would be better to go directly from TS to MP4. 

[RanmaCanada 494]

1 minute ago, Gilgamesh_48 said:

Every time you make a copy the quality degrades so copying twice TS->MKV->MP4 would reduce quality more than TS->MP4.

There is some consideration that Handbrake (or any other converter) might be much better at producing an MP4 from an MKV and the Emby conversion to TS might also be a lot better than Handbrake's job. But I very much doubt that and I think it would be better to go directly from TS to MP4. 

This is only true if it's encoded.  One can easily use mkvtoolnix to just repack the ts file into an mkv without having to re-encode anything.

[justinrh 259]

9 minutes ago, RanmaCanada said:

It won't matter if the mkv you created is done with mkvtoolnix.  But why would you want to convert it to an inferior container like mp4?  

Ah, good detail.  I meant encode to MP4.  I repackage to MKV (using FFmpeg).

[roaku 842]

2 minutes ago, justinrh said:

Ah, good detail.  I meant encode to MP4.  I repackage to MKV (using FFmpeg).

mp4 is a container format, not a video codec.

Handbrake will happily convert your, presumably, mpeg2 recording to h264 or h265 and package that into an mkv container. You could also package that converted video into an mp4 container, but mkv is generally better for most cases.

[justinrh 259]

20 hours ago, roaku said:

mp4 is a container format, not a video codec.

Righto, I didn't think that thru before replying.