MKV converter

Katholic

Does anyone know how to convert mkv files to extension types that windows media player can play?

mooshoepork

Download super, by erightsoft. Hope you can navigate the terrible site. It's a great program.

Deathwing

Media Player Classic is free, lightweight, and as far as I know it can play MKV's with no problem.

Mr_Rose

VLC is also free and definitely plays MKVs with no problem. Along with everything else under the Sun. Obnoxious interface for anything but the basics though.

Firebrand

VLC and MPC recommended above are both good players that I use, but if you insist on using Windows Media Player it's actually capable of playing MKV files, provided you've got the proper media splitter and codecs. It might give you a popupbox asking you about the unknown file type, but just click Yes.

I'm using the Combined Community Codec Pack which comes with splitter and various codecs. If you want to install as little as possible check out Haali Media Splitter, or Matroska Splitter for just the MKV files. Might still need more codecs depending on the contents of the MKV file.

shutz

Can I just rephrase the OP's question so that any real answers to it will also be helpful to me (and better for the OP) ?

Does anybody know of a piece of software that can take an MKV, demultiplex the video, audio and sub streams and then re-multiplex it into other formats, such as AVI, without needing to decompress and recompress any of the streams?

I mean, VLC and MPC are great (I use both) and Super is also good for transcoding from one format to another, but when you have videos that are longer than a few minutes, it takes a very long time because each stream needs to be transcoded.

I know that AVI has some stream limitations that MKV doesn't have, such as in the number of audio or sub tracks, so I'll be happy to keep only one audio and one sub stream with the video.

If someone knows of the kind of tool I'm asking for, that tool would be really good for the OP, as it would be much faster at generating files that WMP will be able to play, with the added bonus that the files will be more likely to be supported by other hardware devices, such as DivX/XviD/MPEG-4 DVD players, and portable media players (I've yet to see a DVD player that can open MKV files, but I've owned two DVD players that could play most AVIs I threw at it, as long as the video or audio wasn't compressed using an unsupported codec.)

Barrakketh

shutz wrote: »

Can I just rephrase the OP's question so that any real answers to it will also be helpful to me (and better for the OP) ?

Does anybody know of a piece of software that can take an MKV, demultiplex the video, audio and sub streams and then re-multiplex it into other formats, such as AVI, without needing to decompress and recompress any of the streams?

I mean, VLC and MPC are great (I use both) and Super is also good for transcoding from one format to another, but when you have videos that are longer than a few minutes, it takes a very long time because each stream needs to be transcoded.

I know that AVI has some stream limitations that MKV doesn't have, such as in the number of audio or sub tracks, so I'll be happy to keep only one audio and one sub stream with the video.

If someone knows of the kind of tool I'm asking for, that tool would be really good for the OP, as it would be much faster at generating files that WMP will be able to play, with the added bonus that the files will be more likely to be supported by other hardware devices, such as DivX/XviD/MPEG-4 DVD players, and portable media players (I've yet to see a DVD player that can open MKV files, but I've owned two DVD players that could play most AVIs I threw at it, as long as the video or audio wasn't compressed using an unsupported codec.)

The short answer is no. AVI doesn't support subtitles (any hacks that are used to embed them don't conform to the standard, and so support will vary from player to player), and another thing that usually accompanies subs are fonts (which can be embedded in Matroska containers) which it also doesn't support. If you wanted video with subtitles you would have to hardsub the subtitles, which would require re-encoding the video.

shutz

Barrakketh wrote: »

shutz wrote: »

Can I just rephrase the OP's question so that any real answers to it will also be helpful to me (and better for the OP) ?

Does anybody know of a piece of software that can take an MKV, demultiplex the video, audio and sub streams and then re-multiplex it into other formats, such as AVI, without needing to decompress and recompress any of the streams?

I mean, VLC and MPC are great (I use both) and Super is also good for transcoding from one format to another, but when you have videos that are longer than a few minutes, it takes a very long time because each stream needs to be transcoded.

I know that AVI has some stream limitations that MKV doesn't have, such as in the number of audio or sub tracks, so I'll be happy to keep only one audio and one sub stream with the video.

If someone knows of the kind of tool I'm asking for, that tool would be really good for the OP, as it would be much faster at generating files that WMP will be able to play, with the added bonus that the files will be more likely to be supported by other hardware devices, such as DivX/XviD/MPEG-4 DVD players, and portable media players (I've yet to see a DVD player that can open MKV files, but I've owned two DVD players that could play most AVIs I threw at it, as long as the video or audio wasn't compressed using an unsupported codec.)

The short answer is no. AVI doesn't support subtitles (any hacks that are used to embed them don't conform to the standard, and so support will vary from player to player), and another thing that usually accompanies subs are fonts (which can be embedded in Matroska containers) which it also doesn't support. If you wanted video with subtitles you would have to hardsub the subtitles, which would require re-encoding the video.

Could I get the long answer, then, please? It's not too hard to rip out the subs and leave a .sub file with the same name as the .avi file, so that MPC and (I think) VLC will automatically open it and display the subs.

I'm mostly concerned about ripping out one video and one audio track out of the .mkv and remultiplexing the two into an .avi, without re-encoding, and if possible, without having to first extract the streams (which doubles the amount of free disk space necessary for the process, although that's not THAT big a deal.)

So, what do you say? Do you know a tool that can do that?

EDIT: I apologize to the OP. Sorry, Katholic! I just believe the final answer might be of interest to you.