Convert .MKV

Former Member

I've got some files which are at least an hour long that are in MKV format, I've been googling to try find a FREE MKV converter (Windows/Mac)

But they're all coming up with rubbish trials,

Has anyone had experience in dealing with MKV files?

Former Member

Why did you want to convert it?

.mkv is a container file, you would need to decode then re-encode to your desired format. Far easier to get the .mkv splitter and ffdshow codecs and just watch it

Former Member

ShyBoy wrote: »

Why did you want to convert it?

.mkv is a container file, you would need to decode then re-encode to your desired format. Far easier to get the .mkv splitter and ffdshow codecs and just watch it

Thing is, I was using VLC Media player to watch the file, and it stutters as it plays which is really bad

Indrid Cold

Maybe you should look into ffmpeg. I'm not sure if it works with mkv though (personally, I've never heard of mkv before).

Former Member

Media player classic / MPC plays .mkv files really well as alot of my movies are HD mkv files,

I've noticed VLC isn't as good as it once was

Former Member

The problem with VLC is that rather than installing codecs to your PC and letting Windows media player use the codecs (or any media player), it has all the codecs bundled inside it. From an ease of use point of view, this is good because you can stick it on a USB stick and you're ready to play any media on any pc at any time!

The problem comes in with high definition content, because there is so much information that needs to be processed so quickly, having it done in a software layer slows it down, you may notice your CPU usage spikes as well. As such, you will get stuttering.

The first, easy fix, is to download the latest VLC. It will have the latest codecs built in and should work a bit more efficiently. But you are working with limited returns.

The better fix, is to install the codecs you need individually. I recommend ffdshow which includes decoding for h264 (the most common high def codec) already:

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/FFDshow.htm

You should be able to play off the bat. I just have haali media splitter installed personally: http://haali.cs.msu.ru/mkv/ but ffdshow is a compilation of the best and latest common formats.

Former Member

Indrid Cold wrote: »

Maybe you should look into ffmpeg. I'm not sure if it works with mkv though (personally, I've never heard of mkv before).

mkv is just a container file, basically you get your audio stream and your video stream and encode them and then just dump them inside the mkv file for the media player to open them up again. It's pretty much the same as avi etc. except for the fact that nobody owns it, so there aren't and never will be any rules about how you can use it, there will never be any sort of DRM lock out, it's a free as in free speech format.

Former Member

This is going to be harder than I thought

Former Member

CoolMe it shouldn't be hard, just try installing the new VLC and see if that works. If it does not, download and install ffdshow, then just play the .mkv file through a normal media player like windows media player.

Any probs, you know where I am! I'm lucky this year as my housemate is an audiophile so downloads music in flac or something then re-encodes it, so knows everything under the sun about codecs and told me when I was complaining about exactly the same problem, just to install ffdshow, and it worked!