So I have some videos in files that are not super Apple compatible. Mostly .mkv files, what would be the best way to convert them to use for the new Apple TV, Mac Computer or my iPhone & iPad.
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Best Way To Convert Video for Apple?
- Thread starter thomamon
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Yeap, Handbrake would be a nice choice. In addition, macx free video converter is another video converting software that can convert videos to Apple, iPhone, iPad friendly format. It is free as well and also can create slideshow video from photos.
For me it seemed to work fine for well behaved video, but if there is any corruption or quirks its just crashed or failed.
Handbrake works better
If the video contains hiccups, the bigasoft prores converter does the best job of the several paid and free apps I've tried, especially for windows media files. You can also adjust many of the conversion parameters, if you know what you are doing.
All these apps seem to use the ffmpeg utility, but have differing GUI, so they all work about the same. Some use multiple cores so the transcode can be much faster.
But Handbrake is my go to software for making apple compatible video. Great results and smaller file sizes.
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Dear Thomamon,
I just want to mention that .mkv is just a container format. Do you know also happen to know how the video channel was encoded? And what about the audio channel?
The reason is that possibly you only need to change the mkv container into mp4 for making it to play. In that case Re-muxing is faster. But it's only valid when the encoding is in h264 for video and AAC for audio (both supported by the MKV container). When the video and audio are not properly encoded, you need to do just that. Encoding takes more time and comes with (not necessary visible) a reduction in quality.
I use Subler as a muxer (it's free).
When you require to re-encode the video then my vote is also to use Handbrake.
That being said, when the issue is about the audio track only (=the video is in h264), which is the quite common when changing to Apple TV, I use MKV2M4V (app store) to convert the audio track an mux everything togheter in Subler.
I hope it helped.
I just want to mention that .mkv is just a container format. Do you know also happen to know how the video channel was encoded? And what about the audio channel?
The reason is that possibly you only need to change the mkv container into mp4 for making it to play. In that case Re-muxing is faster. But it's only valid when the encoding is in h264 for video and AAC for audio (both supported by the MKV container). When the video and audio are not properly encoded, you need to do just that. Encoding takes more time and comes with (not necessary visible) a reduction in quality.
I use Subler as a muxer (it's free).
When you require to re-encode the video then my vote is also to use Handbrake.
That being said, when the issue is about the audio track only (=the video is in h264), which is the quite common when changing to Apple TV, I use MKV2M4V (app store) to convert the audio track an mux everything togheter in Subler.
I hope it helped.