So you want to play your DVDs and BluRay discs on your TV using Plex, like you would with VLC on your computer. Sadly, there’s no fast built-in way to do this, but converting your DVD/BluRay (or ISO) to an MKV file has never been easier.

Step 1. Prepping the original media

You could insert your disc into a DVD/BR drive and use that, or you could make an ISO image of said disk. I’m not saying that you could have downloaded an ISO from torrent. Nope.

Step 2. Convert to MKV

Simplest way to do this is to download MakeMKV, because it’s free for 30 days and it has a really nice GUI.

Then it’s just a matter of selecting which streams you want included and converting.

Step 3. Merge files — Optional

Sometimes, the resulting MKV is split into several pieces. For example, I had a DVD of Notre Dame de Paris and it had 3 titles: one for each of the two acts, and a third for the reprise. Fixing this is simple. Go to the directory where the MKV files were exported, create a file named "list.txt" or something like that, and have this contents inside:

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file '/path/to/files/A1_t00.mkv'
file '/path/to/files/A1_t01.mkv'
file '/path/to/files/A4_t02.mkv'

Relative paths could be used, but I’d rather use absolute paths, to ensure everything works just fine. Once all this is done, just run the following command:

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ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i list.txt -map 0 -c copy -scodec copy output.mkv

Changing the extension of the output.mkv file would change the container’s format (MKV, MP4, MOV, whatever you want), and using the -scodec copy parameter ensures that all subtitles are transferred to the destination file.

After some things crunching on the screen, the end of the output should be something like:

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[out#0/matroska @ 0x6000030f4900] video:7378601kB audio:242916kB subtitle:15405kB other streams:0kB global headers:2kB muxing overhead: 0.063840%
size= 7641797kB time=02:28:04.17 bitrate=7046.4kbits/s speed= 808x    

Step 4. Import to Plex

Move your destination file to your Plex Library and it should be picked up automatically.

Step 5. Enjoy!

That’s it! Enjoy your legally obtained movie on your big-ass TV from the comfort of your couch, being powered by your own Plex media server.