Problems converting .h264 to .avi (video extracted from Matroska file)

[Sommunist]

Ok, here's the story:

I recently downloaded a .mkv file from BitTorrent. It has .h264 video, .ac3 audio, and VobSub subtitles (.idx if I recall correctly.) I can watch the video just fine in WMP.

However, when I extract the streams to convert it to a DivX movie, I run into problems. I can't play the video file (.h264 format) in ANY player, even though I recently installed the codec. I'm trying to use ImTOO MPEG Encoder to convert it into something VirtualDubMod can handle, but that doesn't seem to work either. I can preview the .h264 file in ImTOO, but it claimsto have a length of 0:00:00 and a bitrate of 0. I inevitably get an error while trying to convert it. Since VDubMod doesn't like .h264 video or .idx subs, I'm using MKVExtract to extract the streams (it's available on the matroska website, along with a convinient GUI for it.) I know it's not a problem with that program because I used it earlier to extract the streams from some other .mkv files and the only problem was a slight loss of quality.

I'm at a loss for what to do. Any help at all will be appreciated. I'm not posting the torrent file here, but I can provide it on request if you want to look at the files yourself.

EDIT: On second thought, I'm not going to provide the torrent. Good ting I reviewed the rules

[celtic_druid]

Not a lot of apps handle raw AVC streams well. Better to just leave it as an mkv and convert that.

Also mkvextract does not cause any quality loss. All it does is extract streams. For native AVC streams it extracts to raw AVC. For streams using VfW compatibility it extracts to avi which is probably what happened with the other mkv files.

If you really want to you can use avc2avi to remux the raw stream to avi. Will still be AVC though, not DivX.

[Sommunist]

I'm not sure how to directly convert .mkv to .avi, especially with multiple audio streams. However, I think ImTOO handles raw AVC video. I'll try renaming the file to .avc and see what happens.

I'll also try and find avc2avi and see how that goes. Thanks.

[celtic_druid]

Correct extension is I believe *.264.

Yeah from recollection ImToo is ffmpeg based which means it can handle raw AVC streams. Could end up with 25fps as default though. Should also support mkv input anyway since libavformat can also handle that..