I have searched online for a free software tool to convert m2ts to MKV and couldn’t find such a tool to work well. All of the programs that can directly do the work are commercial software. But there are some good ways to do that with a few free programs working together.

1.Import the m2ts to tsMuxer and use the demux function to split the file to separate video and audio raw streams.

2.Use MKVmergeGUI （included in mkvtoolnix） to mux the separate video and audio streams together to an MKV.

This way is simple and fast without quality loss, and if you don’t remove the tracks or subs, etc., it doesn’t reduce the size of the file, for it just packages the file into MKV container without re-encoding the video/audio.

If you want to compress the file to smaller size, you can follow this way:

1.Use HdBrStreamExtractor （the GUI of eac3to) to demux the m2ts. You can extract the video track as MKV file and transcode the audio track to, say AC3 640Bit to get rid of HD sound.

2.Mux the video and audio in MKVMergeGUI.

If you want to reduce more file size, you can transcode your video track to 720p H.264 before muxing it in MKVMerge.

1.Extract the Audio from the DVD in WAV format. Please refer to How to Extract Audio from DVD in WAV Format.

2.Load it into Audacity and copy the good channel over the bad one.

Audacity

3. Encode the WAV audio back to AC3 which is one of the audio codecs used in DVD-Video content, using WAV to AC3 Encoder.

WAV to AC3 Encoder

4.Mux the original video and new audio with Muxman to create new VOBs. There is a guide to help you do this.

MuxMan

5. Use VobBlanker to Replace the old VOBs with the new ones.

VobBlanker

Then if you want to get complete episodes that extends from one VOB to another one into individual files, how do you do it?

The simplest way is to get the DVD ripped in separate episodes when ripping the DVD to the hard drive, using DVD Decrypter in IFO mode or DVD Shrink in Re-author mode. For specific operation, please refer to the articles relevant to this topic: How to Convert TV Show DVD into One AVI File for Free and Convert Each Episode of TV Show DVD to Individual AVI File Using Freeware. But if the DVD is already on your hard drive, there are two free tools to help you make a complete episode from different VOBs.

VOB2MPG

VOB2MPG goes through a whole VIDEO_TS folder and joins up various vobsets to produce MPGs for different titles without reconverting the video and audio. So it will split your VOBs into individual complete episodes/titles.

PGCDemux

Open the VOBs or the IFOs in PGCDemux and check “Create a PGC VOB”, and then it will output the individual episodes in the form of PGC VOB files.

Don’t forget to try our DVD Ripper which allows you to load the whole DVD folder or open DVD disk to get individual episodes and even individual chapters from one episode into whatever format.

rip DVD to separate episodes in TouchUp DVD Ripper Platinum

Then if you want to convert an improperly authored TV show DVD into a single file in AVI which is one of the most popular video format, how to make it easier yet for free? Following is the solution. For converting each episode to an individual AVI file, please refer to this article.

Use DVD Shrink to Re-author the DVD.

1. Rip the DVD to the hard disk drive first if DVD Shrink cannot decrypt it and then open the VIDEO_TS folder in DVD Shrink.
2. Select Re-author from the top menu
3. Select the episodes you want and drag them to the left panel under the DVD structure.
4. Select Backup on the top menu and select where you want to save the result files.

DVD Shrink Re-author

There is also a detail DVD Shrink Re-author tutorial you can refer to. After the re-authoring, you get the episodes without other extras and can re-number to place the episodes in correct order for encoding and then joining.

Convert the Re-authored DVD files to AVI

Use AutoGK to convert the DVD files to AVI files:

AutoGK

Merge to One AVI file

To join the separate AVI files to one file, we can use VirtualDub. Here is the detail guide on how to do this.

The above method is easy to use but is troublesome with three steps. The easiest method is to convert the DVD to an AVI file directly in one step, by using a commercial DVD ripper which allows you to convert DVD to whatever format and meanwhile lets you choose to merge the converted files  into a single one or not. This way can say you much time and what’s more important is you get the video with much better quality.

To trim a FLV video without re-encoding, we need a video editor that can open FLV format and can save the trimmed/edited file without re-encoding. There are two free programs that can do the work. One is FFmpeg and the other is Avidemux. Both are cross-platform software so they are applicable in Windows, Mac and Linux.

FFmpeg

FFmpeg is free and multi-platform for handling multimedia data. Many other software tools are based on it. Although it’s a command line program, which makes it difficult to use for novices, it’s an undeniable powerful program.

FFmpeg

The following shows you how to ignore the first 1 m 50 s of an FLV video with the -ss option and then copy the next 20 seconds with the -t option:

ffmpeg -ss 1:50 -t 20 -i input.flv -acodec copy -vcodec copy output.flv

The -acodec copy and -vcodec copy options will copy the audio and video streams and place them in a new flv container. In this process, no re-encoding happens and the quality keeps as the original.

Besides FLV, FFmpeg can handle many other formats including AVI, ASF, BFI, IFF, MXF, OMA, etc. You can use it to work with more than just FLV.

Avidemux

Avidemux is easy to use and stable in performance, with support for most video input formats like AVI, FLV, MOV, WMV, ASF, MKV, MP4, VOB, MPG and output formats like AVI, FLV, MPG, MPEG, M1V, M2V, MP4, MKV and OGM.

The following describes how to select the wanted part of an FLV video and save without re-encoding.

There are two options at the bottom of the window: A and B. You can cut the video by clicking on A to drag the bar to select the start point and B to drag the bar to select the end of the clip. Then, in the left panel, select copy in the drop-down menu of both Video and Audio and select the FLV format in the drop-down menu of Format. In this way, the video and audio streams will be copied and you will save the trimmed video and audio without re-encoding.

trim and save video without re-encoding with Avidemux

For more guides on editing videos using Avidemux, you can refer to another article by clicking here.

1.Download, install and launch HandBrake. Select the DVD file by clicking on Source.

open video file in HandBrake

Tip: If you are converting directly from a DVD, you may need to run a DVD decrypter in the background, since many DVDs are encrypted with copy-protection and HandBrake is unable to decrypt DVD.  You can use the freeware DVD43 as the decrypter.

2. Select the Iphone & Ipod Touch in Presets on the right side.

select iPhone&iPod Touch

3. In the “Picture” Tab, if you video aspect ratio is 16:9, change the resolution to 480 x 272. For non 16:9 video, set the resolution to 480 x “blank”. This will let the non 16:9 video to have a right 480 width but a smaller or larger height adjusted by HandBrake.

4. In the “Video” tab, leave all settings as they are.

5. In the “Audio” tab, change to “Stereo” and 160kbps.

Audio tab setting

6. Set a destination folder to save the converted file in.

set destination folder

7. Let the other settings keep as what they are and then click on Start at the top menu bar to begin the encoding. A window will open to show you the converting progress.

encoding

After it finishes, you will get a H264, M4V file ready for you to drag and drop to the Zune.

Tip: You can save the above settings for converting to Zune HD next time by clicking on Add button at the right bottom and store the whole settings as Zune HD or any name you like in the Presets..

save settings

Note: If you want a program to convert your video to Zune with much better quality, faster speed and more formats supported, you can check TouchUp DVD to Zune Converter, which release you from manually making the settings. What’s more, it lets you directly convert a DVD to your Zune without any other tool to decrypt the DVD first. You can read a tutorial for it to know this intuitive converting software further.

Download the Flash Video

1.First, download and install VideoCacheView. You can download by clicking here.

2.Open IE (it won’t work in firefox) and go to the webpage with the video you want and play it. To check if the video is the webpage is flash video, you can right click on the video and it will say about flash player if it is as the below screenshot shows.

check if flash video

3.Launch VideoCacheView and press F5 to refresh

In VideoCacheView click on F5 to refresh and then click on the Last Access-tab to order by date and you should see a new file. Next right click on it and select Copy Selected Files To… and save the file in an open dialog.

save file in VideoCacheView

Convert the Video

Now, install and launch TouchUp iPod Video Converter after download it by clicking here.

Next choose “File > Add Video File”. In the open dialogue, choose the FLV file just downloaded from the website. Or you can directly drop and drag the file to the main interface. Then set the output folder to save the final file in. Finally press the Convert button on the right to begin the conversion.

convert the flv video to iPod

You may have found from the above that TouchUp iPod Video Converter is so easy to use with just a few clicks and furthermore, you can find its converting speed is so fast that you will get the file ready for you to play in iPod very soon. Besides, TouchUp iPod Video Converter supports a wide variety of formats including ASF, SWF, WMV, M4V, AVI, DIVX, FLV, XVID, OGG, MOV, MP4, RM and many more.

You can refer to our another how-to on converting DVD to iPod with TouchUp DVD to iPod Converter, if you need to convert DVD to iPod.

Rip the DVD

1.First, download DVDx 2.2 by clicking here and install it.

2. Insert a DVD. Launch DVDx and click File>Open DVD root to select the hard drive location and load the VIDEO_TS folder of your DVD. This will open the following window. If you are ripping a movie, just select the longest title; if you are ripping a TV show or anything with multiple episodes, select the episode you want to convert.

select a title to rip

3. After you select the title, the Input Settings window will pop up. You can leave most of the settings as default. Just choose the language of audio, and language for subtitles. Besides, the Audio/Video Synchronization option is recommended to select, for it can make the output video and audio sync better, though take a little longer. Click OK to save the settings.

Input Settings

4. Click Settings in the main menu bar and choose Output Settings. In the Output Settings you need to choose WMV and click “Apply”.

output settings

5. Click File>Select Output File to select the destination folder to store the ripped file and then press the red encode button on the bottom right to begin the ripping.

Convert the Ripped DVD

After DVDx finishes the ripping which may take a bit long time, you should install and launch TouchUp iPod Video Converter. You can download it here.

Next choose “File > Add Video File”. In the open dialogue, choose the WMV file just created by DVDx and set the output folder to save the final file you will get.  Then press the Convert button on the right to begin the conversion.

convet to iPod Video

The converting speed is very fast and you can get the file ready for iPod very soon. At last, launch iTunes and add the converted file to its Library. Now you can play the movie in your iPod.

You also can choose a pay program to convert a DVD to iPod directly. One such program to produce excellent output video and audio quality with fast working speed is TouchUp DVD to iPod converter. You can read the detail tutorial for it and find the easiest to use DVD to iPod converter.

Step 1. Launch DVDFab HD Decrypter

DVDFab HD Decrypter is a simple version of the complete DVDFab and when you launch it, it will pop up the following window. Just choose HD Decrypter in the Option and click Start DVDFab. You don’t need to buy its products.

Launch DVDFab

Step 2. Settings

The application will automatically detect the DVD drive as the “Source” and you need to select the path to save the ripped files. Please make sure you select a folder having enough free space the save the files in.

Then please note that the free version just offers two options in the top-“Full Disc” and “Main Movie”. The former copies everything the DVD has including menus, trailer, extras and so on, while the latter only copies the main DVD content.

If you choose the “Full Disc”, just ensure the “Copy DVD-Video” is selected and click Start.

choose Full Disc in DVDFab HD Decrypter

If you choose “Main Movie”, for ripping a movie, select the longest title in the list; for ripping a TV show or something with multiple episodes, select the one you want. Then click “Next” to come to next step with a “Start” to click as the following two screenshots show.

choose Main Movie in DVDFab HD Decrypter

click start to begin ripping

Step 3. Ripping Progress

It begins to work when you click Start button with a ripping progress bar and the ripping will take about 30 minutes. After it completes, the DVD is copied to your computer and is ready for you to play or do further processing like format converting for playing in different devices.

ripping progress in DVDFab HD Decrypter

Note: DVDFab may fail in ripping a small number of DVDs which have some form of copy protection besides CSS. If you meet such case, you can try Touchup DVD Ripper which is capable of decrypting all copy-protection forms.