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Once and for all: MKV to MP4

boomhower

boomhower

macrumors 68000
Oct 21, 2011
1,570
56
After coming across this thread I tried out iFlicks and I will definitely be buying once the trial runs out. I had never heard of remuxing, I had always encoded everything again. Now it's three minutes of iFlicks compared to 1.5HRS of Handbrake. It's one of those apps that are well worth the money.
 
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jdag

macrumors 6502a
Jun 15, 2012
837
213
boomhower said:
After coming across this thread I tried out iFlicks and I will definitely be buying once the trial runs out. I had never heard of remuxing, I had always encoded everything again. Now it's three minutes of iFlicks compared to 1.5HRS of Handbrake. It's one of those apps that are well worth the money.
Click to expand...

Not sure if it still on sale, but iFlicks was only $2 the their day. I bought it, but do think I prefer iVI as you have more control.
 
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mic j

macrumors 68030
Mar 15, 2012
2,663
156
boomhower said:
After coming across this thread I tried out iFlicks and I will definitely be buying once the trial runs out. I had never heard of remuxing, I had always encoded everything again. Now it's three minutes of iFlicks compared to 1.5HRS of Handbrake. It's one of those apps that are well worth the money.
Click to expand...
Subler does the same thing for free...now that's well worth the money. ;)
 
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Menneisyys2

macrumors 603
Jun 7, 2011
5,997
1,101
boomhower said:
After coming across this thread I tried out iFlicks and I will definitely be buying once the trial runs out. I had never heard of remuxing, I had always encoded everything again. Now it's three minutes of iFlicks compared to 1.5HRS of Handbrake. It's one of those apps that are well worth the money.
Click to expand...

BTW, what OS version do you have? On my (clean) ML running on a 8GB late 2009 17" MBP with 2.8 GHz C2D and Vertex 4 SSD, the last (trial) version is unbearably slow to remux. Even off the SSD, it takes it between 15 and 50 minutes to remux videos that the fastest remuxers (e.g., Subler) convert in 2-8 minutes. Otherwise, it'd be an excellent and highly fault-tolerant app - unlike most other remuxers.
 
boomhower

boomhower

macrumors 68000
Oct 21, 2011
1,570
56
Menneisyys2 said:
BTW, what OS version do you have? On my (clean) ML running on a 8GB late 2009 17" MBP with 2.8 GHz C2D and Vertex 4 SSD, the last (trial) version is unbearably slow to remux. Even off the SSD, it takes it between 15 and 50 minutes to remux videos that the fastest remuxers (e.g., Subler) convert in 2-8 minutes. Otherwise, it'd be an excellent and highly fault-tolerant app - unlike most other remuxers.
Click to expand...

I'm on ML as well. Something is definitely off then. If all the remuxers were slower I'd say it was the CPU speed but if it's running that much slower than Subler then I don't know what it could be.
 
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Menneisyys2

macrumors 603
Jun 7, 2011
5,997
1,101
boomhower said:
I'm on ML as well. Something is definitely off then. If all the remuxers were slower I'd say it was the CPU speed but if it's running that much slower than Subler then I don't know what it could be.
Click to expand...

I'm at my wits' end. Installed it (trial version) on a clean Lion (10.7.4) on an iMac (500G HDD, 3.06 GHz c2d late 2009 model with 4G RAM).

The remux of "Iron Sky" (main, 16 GB MKV, 5 audio tracks and no subs, direct BR rip done by myself) iFlicks took 34:00 (of which the last 10 minutes was spent on the two final steps: muxing and streaming-friendly conversion). The same file could be converted by Subler (on my other Mac, a 2.8 GHz late 2009 MBP 17" with Vertex 4 SSD) in 6:58 (that is, about five times faster) and by MP4Tools in 20:20.

This isn't because of the HDD vs. SSD - iFlicks behaves in exactly the same way on my SSD-based MBP. Running Subler off a 70...90 Mbyte/s internal HDD would have resulted in at most a 50-80% increase in running time.

Do you think it's because it's a trial version? I won't shell out $20 for an app only to find out it's very slow and can only be used in some special cases when Subler is plain incompatible with the video I want to convert. If the registered version is as slow as the trial one I mean.
 
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mic j

macrumors 68030
Mar 15, 2012
2,663
156
Menneisyys2 said:
I'm at my wits' end. Installed it (trial version) on a clean Lion (10.7.4) on an iMac (500G HDD, 3.06 GHz c2d late 2009 model with 4G RAM).

The remux of "Iron Sky" (main, 16 GB MKV, 5 audio tracks and no subs, direct BR rip done by myself) iFlicks took 34:00 (of which the last 10 minutes was spent on the two final steps: muxing and streaming-friendly conversion). The same file could be converted by Subler (on my other Mac, a 2.8 GHz late 2009 MBP 17" with Vertex 4 SSD) in 6:58 (that is, about five times faster) and by MP4Tools in 20:20.

This isn't because of the HDD vs. SSD - iFlicks behaves in exactly the same way on my SSD-based MBP. Running Subler off a 70...90 Mbyte/s internal HDD would have resulted in at most a 50-80% increase in running time.

Do you think it's because it's a trial version? I won't shell out $20 for an app only to find out it's very slow and can only be used in some special cases when Subler is plain incompatible with the video I want to convert. If the registered version is as slow as the trial one I mean.
Click to expand...
So why not just go with Subler and for those "special occasions" (and I assume you mean when you need a dts track converted to AC3) use mp4tools? All this is free (yes, I know mp4tools has a nag screen you have to put up with). Why is iFlicks worth $20?
 
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Menneisyys2

macrumors 603
Jun 7, 2011
5,997
1,101
mic j said:
So why not just go with Subler and for those "special occasions" (and I assume you mean when you need a dts track converted to AC3) use mp4tools? All this is free (yes, I know mp4tools has a nag screen you have to put up with). Why is iFlicks worth $20?
Click to expand...

Only iFlicks and Subler have usable (ASS / SRT) sub support - all the others (incl. Smart) don't. I've found iFlicks to be more compatible with MKV files Subler can't read (there aren't many of them tho) - this is why I'm trying to make it work and to find out whether it's indeed worth the $20.
 
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mic j

macrumors 68030
Mar 15, 2012
2,663
156
Menneisyys2 said:
Only iFlicks and Subler have usable (ASS / SRT) sub support - all the others (incl. Smart) don't. I've found iFlicks to be more compatible with MKV files Subler can't read (there aren't many of them tho) - this is why I'm trying to make it work and to find out whether it's indeed worth the $20.
Click to expand...

I thought mp4tools also was able to either burn in or add as separate track srt subtitles. If not in the regular version, have you tried the beta which has been totally re-written to use ffmeg instead of mplayer?
 
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Menneisyys2

macrumors 603
Jun 7, 2011
5,997
1,101
mic j said:
I thought mp4tools also was able to either burn in or add as separate track srt subtitles. If not in the regular version, have you tried the beta which has been totally re-written to use ffmeg instead of mplayer?
Click to expand...

The (textual) sub support of the non-beta version was awful - it messed up everything with files with more than one sub track.

The new beta indeed rocks. It not only retains the subs (all of them), but is also, in average, two times faster than the prev. version and I've never encountered crashes - unlike with the old version.

It's still 40...100% slower than Subler, though and, in addition, I've found some direct BR rips it just couldn't remux, as opposed to the prev. version. Two examples: the Iron Sky trailer from the official Finnish BR disc and the behind the scenes from the same BR disc. These couldn't be converted: the app created a useless, 4 kByte-file in 1-2 second, independent of audio selection.

The main movie from the disc was remuxed 2 times faster than in the prev. version.
 
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Menneisyys2

macrumors 603
Jun 7, 2011
5,997
1,101
Menneisyys2 said:
I'm at my wits' end. Installed it (trial version) on a clean Lion (10.7.4) on an iMac (500G HDD, 3.06 GHz c2d late 2009 model with 4G RAM).

The remux of "Iron Sky" (main, 16 GB MKV, 5 audio tracks and no subs, direct BR rip done by myself) iFlicks took 34:00 (of which the last 10 minutes was spent on the two final steps: muxing and streaming-friendly conversion). The same file could be converted by Subler (on my other Mac, a 2.8 GHz late 2009 MBP 17" with Vertex 4 SSD) in 6:58 (that is, about five times faster) and by MP4Tools in 20:20.

This isn't because of the HDD vs. SSD - iFlicks behaves in exactly the same way on my SSD-based MBP. Running Subler off a 70...90 Mbyte/s internal HDD would have resulted in at most a 50-80% increase in running time.

Do you think it's because it's a trial version? I won't shell out $20 for an app only to find out it's very slow and can only be used in some special cases when Subler is plain incompatible with the video I want to convert. If the registered version is as slow as the trial one I mean.
Click to expand...

Continued with playing with iFlicks and the other remuxers. Still no success. Interestingly, it (last iFlicks running in trial mode) converts small, 300-400 Mbyte files with the same or even higher speed as Subler. For example, the Iron Sky trailer available at https://dl.dropbox.com/u/81986513/082012/periansubler/IronSkyTEASER.mkv is converted even faster(!) than by Subler, in 8 seconds on the late 2009, HDD-based, 3.06GHz / 500GB / 4GB iMac.

However, larger (2-3 Gbytes and more) files are converted appr. five times slower than with Subler or (in average) three times slower than with the new beta of MP4Tools.

This is entirely independent of whether Perian is installed or not or the system is Lion or ML or it's running on HDD or SSD.
 
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alexeliasson

macrumors newbie
Sep 24, 2012
7
0
Great thread guys!

Recently bought me an Apple TV 3. I'm getting closer and closer to the Apple landscape, but I only have an iPhone and ATV3 so far. iPad is the next thing coming.

Anyways. I've riped my original blu-ray library to my PC. The average size is around 6gb (720p) and the container is .mkv.

If I want to convert these files to be playable on a ATV3, which PC-software would you guys recommend?

I would like the quality to remain the same, but I also want the quickest solution.

Thanks in advance!
 
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Andy C

macrumors newbie
Oct 20, 2004
29
0
Farnborough, UK
I'm amazed no one has mentioned Remux for Mac. It changes container, e.g. MKV -> MP4, but without re-encoding.

I have a Feb 2011 MBP and it converts 1GB 720p TV rips from MKV to MP4 for playback on my PS3 in 15 seconds or less.


A.
 
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mic j

macrumors 68030
Mar 15, 2012
2,663
156
Andy C said:
I'm amazed no one has mentioned Remux for Mac. It changes container, e.g. MKV -> MP4, but without re-encoding.

I have a Feb 2011 MBP and it converts 1GB 720p TV rips from MKV to MP4 for playback on my PS3 in 15 seconds or less.


A.
Click to expand...

I will speculate that most of us already use Subler, or mp4Tools to do that. Frankly, I find it worth the time to covert (which I mostly do overnight). MP4 quality is excellent, use disc space efficiently and BR's load quickly and play without a glitch over wifi.
 
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pmcdunnough

macrumors member
Oct 15, 2009
91
12
Menneisyys2 said:
Only iFlicks and Subler have usable (ASS / SRT) sub support - all the others (incl. Smart) don't. I've found iFlicks to be more compatible with MKV files Subler can't read (there aren't many of them tho) - this is why I'm trying to make it work and to find out whether it's indeed worth the $20.
Click to expand...

What's wrong with iVI (Pro)?

philip
 
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pmcdunnough

macrumors member
Oct 15, 2009
91
12
Menneisyys2 said:
It's slow and unreliable with MKV remuxing - see my review.
Click to expand...

Have you tried the latest version? Doesn't seem slow to me, nor unreliable. It would be nice if it would not be quite so strict with the audio pass through. There have been quite a few reviews of iVI. It used to be slow for mkv remuxing but that is no longer the case, though iFlicks is faster.

Philip
 
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Menneisyys2

macrumors 603
Jun 7, 2011
5,997
1,101
pmcdunnough said:
Have you tried the latest version? Doesn't seem slow to me, nor unreliable. It would be nice if it would not be quite so strict with the audio pass through. There have been quite a few reviews of iVI. It used to be slow for mkv remuxing but that is no longer the case, though iFlicks is faster.

Philip
Click to expand...

Yes, I did (3.257, last updated in March; purchased from the Mac AppStore). It's especially slow with videos with several subtitle tracks - with them, remuxing can take hours(!). With a source MKV without subtitles, it's faster but still at least five slower than Subler.

iVI is a great app for, say, MTS remuxing but MKV remuxing isn't the strongest side of it.
 
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chiefpavvy

macrumors 6502a
Feb 23, 2008
707
0
Menneisyys2 said:
Yes, I did (3.257, last updated in March; purchased from the Mac AppStore). It's especially slow with videos with several subtitle tracks - with them, remuxing can take hours(!). With a source MKV without subtitles, it's faster but still at least five slower than Subler.

iVI is a great app for, say, MTS remuxing but MKV remuxing isn't the strongest side of it.
Click to expand...

I've used the Pro version of iVI for a long time now. It's not available in the MAS you need to purchase through the developers' web site. I don't know about "slow" as I have literally done over 400 remux of MKV with nary a hitch. And my Mac is a relic these days (late 2008 MacBook)
 
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Menneisyys2

macrumors 603
Jun 7, 2011
5,997
1,101
chiefpavvy said:
I've used the Pro version of iVI for a long time now. It's not available in the MAS you need to purchase through the developers' web site. I don't know about "slow" as I have literally done over 400 remux of MKV with nary a hitch. And my Mac is a relic these days (late 2008 MacBook)
Click to expand...

1. IIRC, the only diff between the Pro and non-Pro (AppStore) version is the lack of DVD ripping support in the latter.

2. did those MKV's have subs and if they did, did you remux them all? (The default seting is just remuxing the first, not all.)
 
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pmcdunnough

macrumors member
Oct 15, 2009
91
12
I don't quite understand the claimed slowness of the iVI (Pro) remux. It takes less than 3 minutes for a one hour 720p video with Dolby audio (but no subtitles). Subler does not take under a minute to do the same thing unless it doesn't convert the Dolby audio. iFlicks takes around 2 minutes or less and is faster but it does much less. Subler is ok but it doesn't automate the process, have watched folders, etc ... In any case the remuxing capabilities of all three are really good. I can't imagine iVI taking an hour to remux anything. Something is odd.

Philip
 
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chiefpavvy

macrumors 6502a
Feb 23, 2008
707
0
pmcdunnough said:
I don't quite understand the claimed slowness of the iVI (Pro) remux. It takes less than 3 minutes for a one hour 720p video with Dolby audio (but no subtitles). Subler does not take under a minute to do the same thing unless it doesn't convert the Dolby audio. iFlicks takes around 2 minutes or less and is faster but it does much less. Subler is ok but it doesn't automate the process, have watched folders, etc ... In any case the remuxing capabilities of all three are really good. I can't imagine iVI taking an hour to remux anything. Something is odd.

Philip
Click to expand...

This. I've used them all and IMHO, iVI is the best of the bunch. I do not do subtitles at all don't need or want them. I understand some do and perhaps one of the other options is better for that. I bought Pro because I wanted the DVD import functionality. It's not perfect but very good. I have never used Subler for these tasks, only to optimize and tag if needed.

I sure wish the iVI author would make a Windows equivalent because all the options I've tried on Win suck bad. Not even close to iVI.
 
ViperDesign

ViperDesign

macrumors 6502a
Aug 7, 2007
650
516
Utah
I tried them all and to be honest, the fastest one for me (rMBP) would be AnyVideo Converter HD.

It is extremely quick even on the retina MacBook pro.
 
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mikeheenan

macrumors 6502
Aug 8, 2007
305
15
I have several videos with low audio that I want to boost the audio to normalize it, and also several foreign movies with foreign tracks that I want to replace with an english audio track without re encoding the video. Which would be the best app for this purpose?
 
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