Multiplexing vs. something simpler? (Blu-ray, mkv, and a noob)

Help
1

Hi all. I backed up a couple 4K Blu-ray movies to MKV to take on a trip to my friend’s house to try out his new home cinema. I used a software that pulled the videos from the disc to MKV format with no added compression/transcoding. My friend does not have a 4K Blu-ray player, but has a PC that I can play an MKV off of to test his Atmos surround sound.

I noticed that my MKV rips have ALL of the audio tracks and ALL of the subtitle “tracks.” I need only the english Atmos/TrueHD audio track, and english subtitle track. I want to remove all the others to cut the GB down.

Using mkvtoolnix gui (windows), I am able to view these tracks in the “Multiplexer” view (input file), I can deselect the unwanted track, and I can start a multiplexing job to create a new MKV file that presumably will no longer have these items.

Is this the correct, easiest, fastest way to do what I am trying to do? Having to wait for the multiplex job on this is just kind of annoying when it seems like it should be fast to save the MKV without those tracks… (after 18 minutes its at 47% completion for one MKV file (its about 76GB)… I just wondered if there’s a better way to get the outcome I’m after.

Thanks in advance!

2

Welcome!

Well, you could skip the MKVToolNix step & only select those tracks you actually want to keep in the first step. If you’re using MakeMKV for copying the Blu-ray, it allows you to do just that.

If your software doesn’t allow you to do that, then the procedure you’ve described is indeed the correct & probably the fastest/easiest way to go about things. That it takes that long isn’t surprising; mkvmerge (the part of MKVToolNix that does the actual remuxing) isn’t the fastest program on the planet.