thanks for your replies and help.
I figure i must be doing something wrong. When using a 40 min video it takes about 20 mins so i guess im converting and not "muxing".. Any tips?
Thanks
Alex
Yeah, sounds like it, that can be very processing intensive.
An MKV file is a container, that is, it's almost like a folder. In that folder you've got a video file, an audio (possibly more than one), and other files for things like subtitles.
The video is [generally] H.264 which an iPad can play back, but it can't recognize the video in the MKV file, so you need to write it into a file that an iPad/iTunes can understand. The video stream itself doesn't need to have a different CODEC, or a different resolution.
So these apps like Subler, just read and write the audio and video streams into a new file with the correct headers, etc. That's why it's quick, it's mostly just a file IO operation, not complex frame-by-frame analysis.
Subler is super easy, open, modify meta-data, add to queue, done. I'll have to check out that app I recommended, since I haven't run it myself, just did a little research on it. It should be pretty quick since as I explained above, it's not too processor intensive, it's more like a giant IO operation on a big GB file.