# .mkv converter



## Guitar King (Sep 24, 2007)

hey guys

I have a .mkv video file I am trying to get into iMovie.
the file is 1.4GB, and if I drag it into iMovie, its freezes.

any ideas??

thanks


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## irontree (Oct 28, 2006)

Try converting it to an mp4 with an app like Visual Hub first


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## corykg (Feb 1, 2008)

You'll be able to watch .mkv files in VLC media player. Thats what I have been doing for now, havent converted one yet, but it would be nice to watch some 720p downloads in Front Row.


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## Guitar King (Sep 24, 2007)

Well, this 780p .mkv file does play in front row.......but not nearly as well as when I use VLC to play it.

the problem is I want it on a DVD, which means getting it into iMovie, which mean converting it.
visual Hub worked.....but because its a trial it only converts 2 minutes.

any other programs that can do the whole thing??


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## irontree (Oct 28, 2006)

Guitar King said:


> Well, this 780p .mkv file does play in front row.......but not nearly as well as when I use VLC to play it.
> 
> the problem is I want it on a DVD, which means getting it into iMovie, which mean converting it.
> visual Hub worked.....but because its a trial it only converts 2 minutes.
> ...


iMovie not needed in the equation at all... Do you have Toast Titanium?


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## Adrian. (Nov 28, 2007)

yeah...unless you want to edit it iMovie is not needed.


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## irontree (Oct 28, 2006)

I'm not sure Toast can convert the file, but if it can't then all you need to do is create an image with VisualHub then drag and drop it on Toast to burn it


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## irontree (Oct 28, 2006)

Just did an experiment. I have a .mkv (720p) and I got Toast to recognize it... now how long it will take to convert is anybody's guess. So there you go- Toast is your all in one solution.


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## Guitar King (Sep 24, 2007)

no I do not have toast.
It seems like, toast will do it......but it is a $100 solution, not to mention there is not a free trail out there.


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## irontree (Oct 28, 2006)

Well then VisulHub would indeed be the cheaper way to go.


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## Guitar King (Sep 24, 2007)

so, can you honestly not convert .mkv for free?


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## irontree (Oct 28, 2006)

Sure you can... there are loads of programs that will convert it, but not necessarily into what you want. 
If you're desperate try out iSquint (that's free) and then see if you can bring the resulting file mp4 file into iDVD to create a disc.
Quicktime Pro might be able to do the conversion for you as well
As far as DVD authoring software goes I can't think of any free solutions other than iDVD (if this came with your mac, otherwise it's purchased with iLife)


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## mrt_mcfly (Oct 25, 2005)

irontree said:


> Sure you can... there are loads of programs that will convert it, but not necessarily into what you want.
> If you're desperate try out iSquint (that's free) and then see if you can bring the resulting file mp4 file into iDVD to create a disc.
> Quicktime Pro might be able to do the conversion for you as well
> As far as DVD authoring software goes I can't think of any free solutions other than iDVD (if this came with your mac, otherwise it's purchased with iLife)


i tried isquint on an MKV file, and it failed to convert.


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## Adrian. (Nov 28, 2007)

In my perusing of the internet I have noticed that there is a copy of Toast Titanium on limewire. I do not endorse downloading programmes at all. A lot of hard work is put into them.

However, since there is no demo version and you only want to use it once, you could attain such a copy and be responsible and only use it once.


cheers


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## mbaldwin (Jan 20, 2003)

mrt_mcfly said:


> i tried isquint on an MKV file, and it failed to convert.


Try changing the file extension to .avi first.


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

Guitar King said:


> so, can you honestly not convert .mkv for free?


Of course you can.

MoKgVm2DVD Guide

There are other solutions, but this is one of them not previously mentioned.


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## dona83 (Jun 26, 2005)

I forgot what i downloaded, it's on this forum somewhere, but it adds MKV support to Quicktime as well as a slew of other formats such as FLV. If you do a search for FLV you may find it.


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## Guitar King (Sep 24, 2007)

So iSquint works but has massive quilty lose.



chas_m said:


> Of course you can.
> 
> MoKgVm2DVD Guide
> 
> There are other solutions, but this is one of them not previously mentioned.


ok, I'll try this


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## Guitar King (Sep 24, 2007)

Adrian. said:


> In my perusing of the internet I have noticed that there is a copy of Toast Titanium on limewire. I do not endorse downloading programmes at all. A lot of hard work is put into them.
> 
> However, since there is no demo version and you only want to use it once, you could attain such a copy and be responsible and only use it once.
> 
> ...


Yeah, I never download illegal materal......like the video file I am trying to convert is a legal TV you can download. 

but if all else fails, I may try this. But that would be after I had tried every possible legal solution.


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## irontree (Oct 28, 2006)

you really should pick up Toast Titanium if you can... It's a bread and butter kind of program that everyone should have trust me.


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## Adrian. (Nov 28, 2007)

Yeah...I use toast titanium probably 5 times a month for just pretty normal use stuff. Excellent for burning video and data files nicely.


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## Guitar King (Sep 24, 2007)

chas_m said:


> Of course you can.
> 
> MoKgVm2DVD Guide
> 
> There are other solutions, but this is one of them not previously mentioned.


I tried this one.....and it does not work. It said it converted the whole file, but it actually it only converted 5 minutes of the file.

any other free solutions?


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## dona83 (Jun 26, 2005)

Sigh, since no one here is able to use ehMac's search function....

http://www.ehmac.ca/anything-mac/58251-who-hell-uses-mkv.html
Perian - The swiss-army knife of QuickTime® components


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## Guitar King (Sep 24, 2007)

irontree said:


> Well then VisulHub would indeed be the cheaper way to go.


ok..........so no one has an idea of how to do this for free??

I also burnt it to a disc as a .mkv file and tried to rip it with Handbrake, but it did not like the file formate either.
I have also tried Mpegstream clip which also did not work.

any other ideas??


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## Guitar King (Sep 24, 2007)

dona83 said:


> Sigh, since no one here is able to use ehMac's search function....
> 
> http://www.ehmac.ca/anything-mac/58251-who-hell-uses-mkv.html
> Perian - The swiss-army knife of QuickTime® components


I have Perian.....and I can play the file, I just can't convert it.


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## mikelc2 (Mar 3, 2008)

I would love to convert these files to .wmv so they can play on the Xbox. On my current computer (waiting for my macbook pro to arrive) it takes 24 hours for a 2 hour movie. 

I want to attain the hd quality. There is no easy way to do this though, right?


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## dona83 (Jun 26, 2005)

I've converted MKV to DivX for my phone just fine using Perian....


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## Guitar King (Sep 24, 2007)

I thought Perian was a decoder. You mean it can encode too? how?


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## dona83 (Jun 26, 2005)

XBox can play DivX files now.

Indeed Perian is a decoder only. To encode DivX you need DivX Pro.


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## mikelc2 (Mar 3, 2008)

Xbox can also play h264, what it doesn't recognize is the .mkv video package file, and changing the extension doesn't help me out in this situation!


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## CaptainCode (Jun 4, 2006)

Download FFMpegX, it should be able to do it. Visual Hub uses the same core libraries. FFMpegX gives you a lot more control and if you don't get the settings perfectly right then a lot of the time it doesn't work but it's free to play around with.


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## dona83 (Jun 26, 2005)

mikelc2 said:


> Xbox can also play h264, what it doesn't recognize is the .mkv video package file, and changing the extension doesn't help me out in this situation!


You'll need DivX Pro and prolly Quicktime Pro to convert your file to DivX which if you upgraded your xbox to the latest version does support.


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## r1dgeline (Jan 15, 2008)

dona83 said:


> You'll need DivX Pro and prolly Quicktime Pro to convert your file to DivX which if you upgraded your xbox to the latest version does support.


Quicktime will definately convert buy it will take over 36 hours for anything of a few hours


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## Guitar King (Sep 24, 2007)

soo......thats it. No one knows how to convert MKV for free? Wow, I thought someone would know!


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## r1dgeline (Jan 15, 2008)

Guitar King said:


> soo......thats it. No one knows how to convert MKV for free? Wow, I thought someone would know!


several mac forums and the same answers if any from what I gather


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

Guitar King said:


> soo......thats it. No one knows how to convert MKV for free? Wow, I thought someone would know!


HELLO.

I already gave you the answer earlier in this thread. MoKgVm2DVD.

It will extract the video and audio out of a mkv file FOR FREE. I'm doing one for a friend RIGHT NOW AS I TYPE THIS.

It will also convert the video/audio directly out to XViD. FOR FREE (though there is a nag screen asking for a lousy $3.50 donation, it's NOT required).

I know you said it didn't work for you, but I assume that's because you don't know what you're doing. It works fine.


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## Guitar King (Sep 24, 2007)

I tried it 5 times, with 5 different settings. 
one time it worked great......but only converted 5 minutes of video.

Another time it converted the whole file, but cut my 1.5gb file down to 600 mb, and a huge cut in quilty.

What settings do you use on MokgVm2DVD??


I'm not trying to be annoying, I just want to convert one stupid file, and I'm having a hard time doing it.


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

In this particular case, I was converting an anime file for someone. The file had four tracks:
Video (VFW/FOURCC)
Audio (A_VORBIS, Japanese)
Audio (A_VORBIS, English)
Subtitles (S_TEXT/ASS, English)

For her purposes (she wanted the english version, no subs) I selected tracks 1 and 3, set the video for XviD 1-pass (left the bitrate alone), changed the audio to pass-thru ac3 (128) and no subs. Hit "convert."

That's it. I later did a test copy for myself with the japanese and subtitles embedded, and that worked fine too. The result are .avi files I can burn directly onto DVD for playing in a DivX-reading DVD player. If I wanted to make a "movie" DVD, I would need to take the AVI files to toast or something else to convert them to proper MPEG-2 files.

Make sure you have Perian and ffmpegX installed on your system before working with MoKgVm2DVD, I suspect they call on the same libraries to do the conversion.


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## dona83 (Jun 26, 2005)

I gave you a suggestion it's Perian+Quicktime Pro if you want to go H.264. +DivX Pro if you want to go DivX. I currently use this method for MKV music videos I download off the net and it works fantastic. DivX for my phone, DivX or H.264 for my XBox, eventually H.264 when I get an iPod Touch mid this year. No it's not free, $37.99 for QTPro and $19.99 for DivX Pro but I say you certainly get what you pay for.

FYI Quicktime encodes video at minimum 2x (H.264) to 8x (DivX) speed for me. 36 hours for a 2 hour movie, what computer do you have?


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## r1dgeline (Jan 15, 2008)

dona83 said:


> Quicktime encodes video at minimum 2x (H.264) to 8x (DivX) speed for me. 36 hours for a 2 hour movie, what computer do you have?


I don't think I have Divx Pro but I have a new 2.4Ghz iMac with 3GB memory

EDIT I do have divx Pro and still no help to convert. Music videos don't take too long. It's the 720p movies


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## Guitar King (Sep 24, 2007)

chas_m said:


> Make sure you have Perian and ffmpegX installed on your system before working with MoKgVm2DVD, I suspect they call on the same libraries to do the conversion.


thanks man, It Worked finally!!! you showed me the missing key! I had Perian installed, but I did not have ffmpegX installed, which makes MoKgvm2DVD work!

thanks man.
Solved


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

Great! Good job!

(I should also note that ffmpegX can ALSO do conversions from mkv and ogm files, but I like MoKgVm2DVD for that specific task as it's less complex than ffmpeg.)


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## irontree (Oct 28, 2006)

Guitar King said:


> thanks man, It Worked finally!!! you showed me the missing key! I had Perian installed, but I did not have ffmpegX installed, which makes MoKgvm2DVD work!
> 
> thanks man.
> Solved


What kind of file does this convert the .mkv to? Does it create a video_ts folder?


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## r1dgeline (Jan 15, 2008)

Guitar King said:


> thanks man, It Worked finally!!! you showed me the missing key! I had Perian installed, but I did not have ffmpegX installed, which makes MoKgvm2DVD work!
> 
> thanks man.
> Solved


how long does a movie take you?


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## Guitar King (Sep 24, 2007)

irontree said:


> What kind of file does this convert the .mkv to? Does it create a video_ts folder?


It takes your .mkv file and makes it a .mkv.avi
YES, it doubles it up like that.



r1dgeline said:


> how long does a movie take you?


59 minute video which was 1.48 gigs took roughly 3 hours, and ended up being 1.55 gigs in the end. 

I having trouble importing to iMovie for editing, it seems to make the video "Jaggety and jerky". I'll try again over night.


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