MKV on MAC ?!

[killmoms]

I've only seen it in anime as well. VLC and Mplayer have worked great for me. But when I started using front row, it had to be quicktime compatible. So I used this to extract the avi's or whatever is in there. You get to pick which audio/subtitle track you want in the mix, and pops the avi's right out of MKV. Maybe it'll be of some use.

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/24872/mokgvm2dvd

P.S. Does quicktime allow for soft subtitles??

If you have Perian installed to play MKVs in QuickTime, yes. There's also some support in QT for MP4's "TTXT" soft-subtitles, but there's no good way to create them or mux them into MP4's in OS X. I played around with it once, but it's kind of a bitch. I think it might get easier as "closed captioning" on iTunes video material gets more common though. In fact, I'm wondering if that's what they're using to accomplish that at the moment. Haven't bought anything that's captioned/subtitled off iTunes recently, so I'm not sure.

EDIT: Perian (or QuickTime) also currently has a bug where MKVs with soft-subtitles will play back with their embedded fonts displaying correctly when you're just playing them, but if you try to export to another format, all formatting disappears. It's bizarre.

 

[hevaKmaI]

Try this quicktime component www.perian.org
It was recommend to me in another thread, not had chance to try it out yet but worth a go.

I'm surprised it took 23 posts for someone to actually mention perian. It's the best solution if you want to play your movies in frontrow, although I'm also a big fan of VLC on the mac, it's much better than its windows counterpart.

 

[michaelverdin]

guys i tried mokgvm2dvd but it seems to give me this error since i upgraded to leopard

applescript error

pid tt stat time command (1)

any help?

 

[twoodcc]

guys i tried mokgvm2dvd but it seems to give me this error since i upgraded to leopard

applescript error

pid tt stat time command (1)

any help?

i got the same error in leopard also

 

[Eidorian]

MKV mostly exists because it got relatively popular in the anime fansubbing community due to its ability to contain soft-subtitles and do mixed frame rates. But that's about it. Why it's gotten popular in other circles is beyond me.

Back in my day we used OGM.

I'm surprised it took 23 posts for someone to actually mention perian. It's the best solution if you want to play your movies in frontrow, although I'm also a big fan of VLC on the mac, it's much better than its windows counterpart.

The thread was started last year.

 

[TheStu]

Back in my day we used OGM.

The thread was started last year.

And last year although Perian existed, it was not the shining example of Apple codec goodness that it is today, not by a long shot. The 1.0 version is leaps and bounds better than the old .76 that they had posted for the longest time.

 

[Eidorian]

And last year although Perian existed, it was not the shining example of Apple codec goodness that it is today, not by a long shot. The 1.0 version is leaps and bounds better than the old .76 that they had posted for the longest time.

I remember 0.5 but I don't think it supported .mkv.

 

[ricoisacsson]

How to play MKV files in Mac OSX!

The trick to viewing MKV files in Mac is that you have to convert them into a format that is compatible.

Use VisualHub (v 1.23) to convert the files into a better format. I prefer MP4 so I can play them in my iPod.

Then open the file in for example Mplayer OSX 2.... and Voila..

Please note that this has worked with all the files that I have tried... But I'm not promising anything.

 

[TheStu]

The trick to viewing MKV files in Mac is that you have to convert them into a format that is compatible.

Use VisualHub (v 1.23) to convert the files into a better format. I prefer MP4 so I can play them in my iPod.

Then open the file in for example Mplayer OSX 2.... and Voila..

Please note that this has worked with all the files that I have tried... But I'm not promising anything.

The trick to viewing MKV files is to use Perian or VLC as others have mentioned. There is no need to re-encode them unless you want to put them on your iPod. MKV is a fine format, since it is open and uses x264 it produces quite high-quality rips. I personally prefer h264 mp4 since that is immediately compatible with Quicktime (ergo Front Row) and is more easily transfered to other macs that might not have perian or vlc.

 

[chaos86]

I know I risk sounding like a fan boy by saying this but why the heck can't everybody just realize that h.264 is the best codec out there? It has the best quatily per byte and it scales the best so why does anyone even bother with this other crap? The only players that can't play it are older ones that don't have the processing power, and in those cases people should fall back to the previous best standard which was mpeg4. I know nobody pikes a monopoly, but there are cases where one standard should be universally accepted, like h.264, aac (for lossy compression), usb, dvi, imap, etc. I shouldn't have to deal with real media format, ogg vorbis, usb-b and mini-usb, apple display connector (thank god), etc just because some random company wants to make their own standard. I know there are some good alternatives (xvid, ogg) but come on, give up, you lost.

Sorry i ranted in your thread. Bring on the flames.

 

[Eidorian]

I know I risk sounding like a fan boy by saying this but why the heck can't everybody just realize that h.264 is the best codec out there? It has the best quatily per byte and it scales the best so why does anyone even bother with this other crap? The only players that can't play it are older ones that don't have the processing power, and in those cases people should fall back to the previous best standard which was mpeg4. I know nobody pikes a monopoly, but there are cases where one standard should be universally accepted, like h.264, aac (for lossy compression), usb, dvi, imap, etc. I shouldn't have to deal with real media format, ogg vorbis, usb-b and mini-usb, apple display connector (thank god), etc just because some random company wants to make their own standard. I know there are some good alternatives (xvid, ogg) but come on, give up, you lost.

Sorry i ranted in your thread. Bring on the flames.

MKV isn't a codec it's a container format.

Oh look, h.264.

 

[chaos86]

MKV isn't a codec it's a container format.

Oh look, h.264.

well I think you can tell from my post that its not mkv I hate, its people and companies who choose to use non standard stuff when the standard is free, superior, and available to all. Codec or container, Mkv is clearly not a good choice and companies who use it will be on my personal boycott list.

They should have used h.264 in mp4.

 

[Eidorian]

well I think you can tell from my post that its not mkv I hate, its people and companies who choose to use non standard stuff when the standard is free, superior, and available to all.

I believe that the use of .mkv in the fan subbing community comes from the fact that it's GNU LGPL and it supports soft subs. OGM was the previous standard for multi-audio video and subtitles even if it was a hack job.

Can you think of any other free and standard solutions?

Codec or container, Mkv is clearly not a good choice and companies who use it will be on my personal boycott list.

Quite true when dealing with proprietary and even open source formats.

 

[Cave Man]

I like that I can use Handbrake to rip an mkv H.264 file from a DVD and preserve the AC3 Dolby Digital 5.1 audio for playback with VLC (with my Onkyo system). I wish there were an easy way to do the same with QT-compatible files - does such a method exist? It'd be nice do easily generate DD files for the Apple TV, even if it meant pulling its drive to install Perian or something.

 

[kolax]

I remember when I downloaded Lost in Hi-Definition it was a .mkv file. The file was about 1.07GB's, but the detail was amazing.

My old HP laptop couldn't play the file smoothly, was very stuttery. My Mac plays it smooth and fine. I used VLC Player to play it.

I don't know what codec it is though.

 

[Eidorian]

I remember when I downloaded Lost in Hi-Definition it was a .mkv file. The file was about 1.07GB's, but the detail was amazing.

My old HP laptop couldn't play the file smoothly, was very stuttery. My Mac plays it smooth and fine. I used VLC Player to play it.

I don't know what codec it is though.

More then likely h.264.

 

[kolax]

AVC1 is the video codec, 1280x720 resolution.

 

[stupidregister]

well I think you can tell from my post that its not mkv I hate, its people and companies who choose to use non standard stuff when the standard is free, superior, and available to all. Codec or container, Mkv is clearly not a good choice and companies who use it will be on my personal boycott list.

They should have used h.264 in mp4.

Then you should be arguing for Apple to support the Ogg container and its free codecs by default. H.264 is patented and requires possible fees. And thus if free and standard are the criteria, Ogg would be the better choice.

 

[bija]

MKV plays on Mac

I was using VLC to view MKV videos but it could be jerky and problematic. I discovered that with the MPEG2 plug-in with QuickTime Pro, I am able to open MKV video in QuickTime and Save as a MOV. What I often do then, is transfer the MOV video to my TiVo which converts it to MPEG2 and it looks great on the big screen. I haven't had any viewing problems with MKV video doing it that way, but I admit it takes longer to transfer the video to the TiVo than it does to watch it.
Linda

Hi,

I notice that MKV files are getting more and more popular around us.
But it looks that these files are not supported very well on MAC.
Maybe it's because many MKV files use ReadVideo9 as video codec, which is not popular in MAC world.
As far as I know, the only software to decode Real Media File is RealPlayer, and RealPlayer do not support MKV files. So ...!!

Does anyone have an idea to deal with MKV files?

Thanks in advance.

Elitward

 

[illegallydead]

I was using VLC to view MKV videos but it could be jerky and problematic. I discovered that with the MPEG2 plug-in with QuickTime Pro, I am able to open MKV video in QuickTime and Save as a MOV. What I often do then, is transfer the MOV video to my TiVo which converts it to MPEG2 and it looks great on the big screen. I haven't had any viewing problems with MKV video doing it that way, but I admit it takes longer to transfer the video to the TiVo than it does to watch it.
Linda

Haha wow way to resurrect a year and a half old topic. LOL.

 

[Jmouse]

Sorry had to bring out an old thread.

Recently ive got some .mkv file movies. i tried to play them on my Powerbook G4 1.67 2g Ram.

Its very jerky, now ive did my research and found out a few solutions.

VLC setting
Mplayer ( which i cant get it to play mkv file at all, it wont play. avis are fine.)
Got the Quicktime plugin Swiss knife.

none of those helps. It is still very jerky.

Now im thinking whether if my powerbook G4 is too slow to handle HD movies.
But i can watch HD movies in Mp4 format. ( still heavy load if i tries to do something else at the same time.)

So is there anyway to fix this problem?
Or should i convert the .mkv into .mp4 or .avi. ( will the quality of the movie reduce by converting it to a different format?)

Thanks in advance guys for your help.

 

[kuwisdelu]

It's difficult to say without know what the codec of the video is inside the mkv. Both mkv and mp4 are both just movie containers for video and audio. That said, many players on Macs tend to handle mp4 containers better.

If the video codec inside the mkv is using H.264 or some other MPEG video codec, you should be able to use a program like Subler of MKVTools (I'm sorry, I don't remember if these have PPC binaries) to remux the video and audio into an mp4, which may improve playback. This won't lose any video quality.

There are a few different MPlayer front-ends for OS X. Which are you using?

That's a pretty old Mac for playing HD video, though, and I have no idea if the tools I generally throw at mkv's are available for PPC hardware. :/

 

[Jmouse]

It's difficult to say without know what the codec of the video is inside the mkv. Both mkv and mp4 are both just movie containers for video and audio. That said, many players on Macs tend to handle mp4 containers better.

If the video codec inside the mkv is using H.264 or some other MPEG video codec, you should be able to use a program like Subler of MKVTools (I'm sorry, I don't remember if these have PPC binaries) to remux the video and audio into an mp4, which may improve playback. This won't lose any video quality.

There are a few different MPlayer front-ends for OS X. Which are you using?

That's a pretty old Mac for playing HD video, though, and I have no idea if the tools I generally throw at mkv's are available for PPC hardware. :/

First of all, thanks for your input.

Id like to know if there is anyway to find out what codec the actual file is?

Im using 10.5.8. on PPC G4, used to be on Tiger but ive updated it recently.

Mplayer that im using on PPC is Mplayer 2.0 OSX, It will play most of the other files but when i drag my mkv movie in it , it wont play at all.

can i use program like Handbreak to reconvert?

 

[chaos86]

In my experience, any G4 will have trouble with 1080p HD video. The minimum for smooth 1080p is about 2ghz dual core/processor.

 

[Jmouse]

In my experience, any G4 will have trouble with 1080p HD video. The minimum for smooth 1080p is about 2ghz dual core/processor.

well technically the file i was trying to play is 720p

i guess my "top of the range g4" isnt good enough ahha.