Once and for all: MKV to MP4

[Alrescha]

Originally Posted by Javed305

The AppleTV 2 doesn't play very well with AC3.

I'm sorry, what?

This is news to me. I've never had any problem with AC3 with any file that uses the standard format (Video track, AAC track, AC3 track).

A.

[dynaflash]

Originally Posted by Javed305

The AppleTV 2 doesn't play very well with AC3. Your best bet, if dealing with an MKV with AC3 is to convert just the audio to 5.1 channel AAC (which works a treat on the AppleTV 2).

huh? its plays ac3 just fine. Also if you mean six channel discrete 5.1 aac, the atv actually downmixes that to kind of a strange 3.0 downmix. Next best to AC3 pass thru is dpl2 aac.

[SuperRob]

I'm using Subler. I have about a terabyte of TV and Movies I've converted from MKV to M4V to stream to my Apple TV, and it's been great. I've only had a couple files it seemed to have issue with, but 99% of it has converted flawlessly.

[mic j]

Originally Posted by Javed305

The AppleTV 2 doesn't play very well with AC3. Your best bet, if dealing with an MKV with AC3 is to convert just the audio to 5.1 channel AAC (which works a treat on the AppleTV 2).

For drag-and-drop simplicity, I use the MKV to AppleTV script here, which works great to repackage MKVs so they import into iTunes and play on ATV/iPhone/iPad, etc. The one thing it doesn't do is convert AC3 automatically (though there are good instructions on how to do that quicky).

Never reencode the video if you don't have to. A lot of the tools out there will reencode everything, even if just the audio is incompatible.

Bunk!!

This thread has drifted into becoming a place product selling not helpful information.

[boomhower]

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.

[jdag]

Originally Posted by boomhower

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.

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.

[mic j]

Originally Posted by boomhower

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.

Subler does the same thing for free...now that's well worth the money.

[boomhower]

Originally Posted by mic j

Subler does the same thing for free...now that's well worth the money.

Ok, well now to give that one a go!

[Menneisyys2]

Originally Posted by boomhower

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.

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]

Originally Posted by Menneisyys2

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.

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.

[Menneisyys2]

Originally Posted by boomhower

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.

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.

[mic j]

Originally Posted by Menneisyys2

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.

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?

[Menneisyys2]

Originally Posted by mic j

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?

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.

[mic j]

Originally Posted by Menneisyys2

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.

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?

[Menneisyys2]

Originally Posted by mic j

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?

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.

[Menneisyys2]

Originally Posted by Menneisyys2

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.

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/81986513/08...nSkyTEASER.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.

[alexeliasson]

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!

[Andy C]

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.

[mic j]

Originally Posted by Andy C

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.

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.

[pmcdunnough]

Originally Posted by Menneisyys2

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.

What's wrong with iVI (Pro)?

philip

[Menneisyys2]

Originally Posted by pmcdunnough

What's wrong with iVI (Pro)?

philip

It's slow and unreliable with MKV remuxing - see my review.

[pmcdunnough]

Originally Posted by Menneisyys2

It's slow and unreliable with MKV remuxing - see my review.

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

[Menneisyys2]

Originally Posted by pmcdunnough

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

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.

[chiefpavvy]

Originally Posted by Menneisyys2

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.

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)

[Menneisyys2]

Originally Posted by chiefpavvy

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)

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.)