Reencoding MOV to MKV from digital camera Canon Ixus 115 HS

[Bogino]

Hi community,
Recently I bought compact digital camera Canon Ixus 115 HS. It is great choice for taking nice quality pictures together with HD1080p record option. The only problem is that Canon moved from AVI (in previous Ixus models like Ixus 80) to MOV container. I cant burn videos from camera on Bluray disc and watch it on Full HD LCD TV via Bluray player. None of them support MOV playback. Thatswhy I need to convert video from MOV to MKV (or other) format, which I assume is the most prefered by BR players manufacturers. Nowdays, most of recent BR players are capable „reading“ containers as MKV, MP4, AVI, etc.
I read few topics in this great forum, giving me just more mess in my head how to proceed.
As a total amateur in this stuff, I have been using free software from eRightsoft „Super“ (version 2011 build 49) and Avidemux (version 2.6.0 r7566) for converting my videos. Still, I have few questions for more skilled people because I want to convert my videos ones for all, and store then on Bluray disc for years.
First of all, the videos from camera are stored with following parameters (MediaInfo):
Container: MOV, MPEG-4 (QuickTime)
Video stream: 33.7Mbps, 1980x1080, 23.976fps, AVC (Baseline@L5.0) (1 Ref Frames)
Audio stream: 768Kbps, 48KHz, 16bits, 1 channel, PCM (Little/Signed).

Till now, I reencoded videos to:
Container: MKV
Video stream: 7000Kbps (7Mbps), 1980x1080, 23.976fps, H264 (AVC (Baseline@L1.3, 1 Ref Frames)
Audio stream: 196Kbps, 48KHz, 16bits, 2 channels, AC3

So, the questions are:
1. Which software to use for reencoding ? Is „Avidemux“ a good choice ? I prefer simple user interface with
no need of other software installation.
2. Is MKV container good choice for near future ? From the point of view: playing file on standalone BR player.
3. Video codec: which one to use. Is H264 OK ?
a) What bitrate in case of HD1080 ? I wonder if 7000Kbps is enough for HD1080. I watched mentioned
converted video on 42“ Full HD LCD, I saw no disturbences (squares, lines, messed pixels) in picture.
b) What bitrate in case of HD720 ? I assume 3500-4000Kbps is enough.
4. Which encoding mode to use? Constant bitrate, Constant quantiser or Constant Rate Factor? („Super“
offers only one choice: bitrate). File size is not important, just to preserve quality.
5. Audio codec. Which one to use? AC3, mp3 or AAC ?
a) What bitrate ? Original audio is recorded in Mono, and the scenes are just family talking, children, etc.
196Kbps is OK or less ?

Thank you very much, all the answers are appreciated and my appologies if the questions look stupid :(

Bogino

[TheFluff]

Newer versions of MOV is basically the same thing as MP4. If your BluRay player plays MKV, the simplest and by far the fastest way to do what you want is to just drag and drop the MOV files on mkvmerge GUI and hit mux. That'll make an MKV without any quality loss at all. The downside is that the files won't get any smaller.

You should probably re-encode the audio though, PCM is a bit excessive bitrate-wise. AAC is probably the best for that.

[Blue_MiSfit]

I doubt the stream uses level 5.. to find out you should be able to remux it into an MKV using mkvmergeGUI as TheFluff suggested. If this works on your BluRay player, then you're good. If it stutters or doesn't play at all you're probably stuck with transcoding.

Don't use SUPER though... it's dreadful.

[sneaker_ger]

I doubt the stream uses level 5

With 33 Mbit/s average bitrate and 50 Mbit/s already being the max allowed at level 4.2 it doesn't seem that doubtful.

1. So many choices, but all of them use essentially the same backend software, so it's really just a matter of taste. (HandBrake, RipBot, MeGUI, etc...)
Even using the CLI version of x264, eac3to and then muxing with mkvmerge GUI isn't very hard today.
2. yes. If you're just using H.264 + stereo AAC (no subtitles or multi-channel audio) MP4 is also a very good choice.
3. yes
a) b) see 4.
4. use Constant Rate Factor. Most people use something between 18 and 23. Don't use baseline profile, it wastes too many bits, choose at least High Profile level 4.0
5. see TheFluff's post
a.) 192 is more than enough, 96-128 should be sufficient for a good AAC encoder (Apple, Fraunhofer)

[Bogino]

Newer versions of MOV is basically the same thing as MP4. If your BluRay player plays MKV, the simplest and by far the fastest way to do what you want is to just drag and drop the MOV files on mkvmerge GUI and hit mux. That'll make an MKV without any quality loss at all. The downside is that the files won't get any smaller.

You should probably re-encode the audio though, PCM is a bit excessive bitrate-wise. AAC is probably the best for that.

I see.
I tried it. Very easy and simple. It just "rewrite" MOV container to MKV, leaving video and audio stream untouched.
Thank you.

I will play now with Avidemux to achieve smaller file size, 33Mbps video and 768Kbps audio from original file seems to be much.
According to sneaker_ger advices (still using Avidemux, but will try also suggested aplications) gave me file size from 400MB to 237MB for 97 second of recording.
Settings:
Container: MKV
Video: MPEG4 AVC (H.264), CRF 18 (no possibility to choose Profile, automatically gives High L4.0)
Audio: AAC, 192Kbps
Overal bit rate: 20Mbps (I dont know how to find out bit rate of video and audio separatelly, MediaInfo, Media Player, VLC Player gives me nothing)

Fair enough to preserve such a quality videos :thanks:

sneaker_ger:
Does "CLI version of x264" means x264 encoder ? Usage from command line ?

Do anybody have other suggestions (to my initial questions) ?

[sneaker_ger]

Does "CLI version of x264" means x264 encoder ? Usage from command line ?

Yes, manually from command line. But all those programs I mentioned plus AviDemux plus basically every freeware out there uses x264 internally, so they all offer the same quality as long as they use the same settings.

Try increasing CRF as long as you're still happy with the quality to lower file size even more.