When DVD's were popular I ripped hundreds using a program that ripped to MKV format. All of these videos have a very slightly grainy, and very slightly blurry look to them. When I download mp4 versions of the same films they are sharp and clear, despite being a third of the file size. Handbrake does not seem to improve the quality at all and often the ratio is miles out anyway so can anyone suggest anything else that might help me improve the mkv files?
Your video playback quality will only be as good as the source. The reason your old MKV playbacks appear fuzzy and grainy is because of the limited quality of the source, and there is nothing short of AI that you can do to make them better, but you can obtain a higher quality source and redo them. DVDs had a resolution of 480p which was good for the time but not up to par with today's playback equipment. So the problem here isn't Handbrake but your source material. The reason your mp4 downloads are better is because the original source was at least 1080p and they are reencoded in at least 720p. So if you rip and encode quality blu-ray copies of the same DVD movies/TV shows the quality will be on par with or better than what you're downloading. Matroska and mp4 are both containers. The benefit of mkv is that it can easily store multiple sound tracks but it's not as universally compatible as Mp4. All my video collection are mp4. So try this, get a blu-ray rip of a video from your mkv collection, rip it, and then make both mp4 and mkv copies and then compare them to your old DVD copy, and then consider what you want to do.
Aha I understand now, I always thought DVD were high quality but clearly not. The file sizes from them are large but I can't make them improve. I don't have most of the dvd's now, (maybe 4,000 left) and I'm certainly not buying anymore as BluRays, as I'd be buying and copying forever. I doubt AI software would run on my computer which is just an NUC, so it looks like am just going to have to suck it up. Thanks for the comment.
DVDs are decent quality for the TV screen size of the time, but when screen sizes started to hit 32" and higher, and capable of 720p to 1080p resolution they fell into obsolescence.
I wonder if you would upload one of the blurry, etc. files to something like dropbox, wetransfer, etc. and share it, get a link and post the link here.
The issue of grains & what you refer to as blurry which i assume is a wash look is more pronounced when compression is used & the more compression the worse it is. When they're converted 1 to 1 it's not much of an issue except for the grain. If you still have the dvd's, try ripping one but this time add no compression & remove front & end credits with dvdshrink before converting to mkv. If it's acceptable compared to what you have re-do the lot. Yeah it'll take time however the sooner you start the sooner you'll finish. Yes it took me months to do my movies & tv shows. Then again you could make it faster by just ripping the movie & not converting
