HandBrake

Hello,

I am encoding my movies with H.264. Should I use MP4 or MKV format?

What are the differences?

Thanks,
Miguel

Depends on what you what to do with the final output, that is, what's the destination player device/software.

However, in general, I would recommend MP4.

I am using Western Digital TV (http://www.westerndigital.com/en/produc ... anguage=en) to watch the movies on a TV.

I was able to see MKV files with no problem ... But I also had some problems with some movies when encoding to MKV.

So I am not sure if I should start using MP4.

Thanks,
Miguel

I suppose you should ask on a WDTV related forum, like wdtvforum.com or on avsforum.com.

Anyway, I also have the WDTV, and AFAIR, mp4 container is more restricted in supported audio codecs, e.g. I'm not sure you can have AC-3 in MP4. So that's the kind of thing you could consider.

fred_be9300 wrote:Anyway, I also have the WDTV, and AFAIR, mp4 container is more restricted in supported audio codecs, e.g. I'm not sure you can have AC-3 in MP4. So that's the kind of thing you could consider.

Not sure if you're meaning that the WDTV may not support AC3 in MP4, but AC3 in MP4 is definitely supported in the MPEG-4 standard. That's why it's available in HB.

(Just chiming in. I don't have a WDTV.)

Probably more accurate to say that until fairly recently AC3 was not supported in the MP4 standard, and many (especially hardware) players haven't caught up yet. I would be surprised if the WDTV could read it, the NMTs definitely can't, so for those purposes MKV is probably better.

True enough. That said, the WDTV manual doesn't list AC3 as available in the mp4 file format/container. It does specifically call out Dolby Digital in AVI, DVR-MS, and MKV files. Neither do the release notes for the 4 available firmware updates list anything about AC3 in MP4. They keep making updates for the MKV container.