No problem MKV to AVI. But how to convert to MP4...on a Mac?

[noodlehead]

Since ffmpeg does such a great job converting the MKV's to AVI, surely it can do the same into MP4 or DV. No?

FFMPEG has been great converting MKV's to Avi, for me anyway. But I want to get them into either DV or MP4 format. I've been doing it by taking the converted avi and re-encoding that, but it's tiersome, and degrading.
I've searched through the forums and unfortunately all tips and links lead to Windows only apps. None of these offer solutions for Mac users.
Can anyone help me with possible settings in ffmpeg?
Thanks

[redwudz]

You would get better answers in our Mac forum. Moving you.

[terryj]

for DV, open ffmepgx. Drag and drop the .avi onto the window.
On the right choose DV. The default settings for NTSC should be fine.

For Mpeg4, again drag and drop the avi onto the summary window,
and on the right choose Mpeg(mp4) ffmpeg. Set Autosize to
what you desire, set audio to 192kbps, 48000khz.
hit encode.

[noodlehead]

terryj
Thanks for trying but it's not avi files I am having trouble with, it's the MKV files.
I can convert MKV to AVI.
I cannot convert MKV to anything else. That's what I want to do. MKV to DV. Or MKV to MPEG4.

[WhoisGeorgeBush]

MKV files are pretty rare to convert them to MPEG or DV you need to convert them to avi first PAIN IN THE ASS but it has to be done i think correct me if i'm wrong anyone because MKV files are not as familiar to me

[DanSlagle]

MKV - The founders talk a good game but no mention of Macs on the site nor in their goals. I have never even heard of that extention before!

[TugBoat]

Mountain out of...
MKV is just a container, just like AVI, MOV, etc.
Most MKVs contain an Xvid track and some weird audio track.
You shouldn't re-encode to AVI, well maybe the audio track should be re-encoded. Anyway..

Open the MKV in ffmpegX, go straight to the video tab and select 'Passthrough'. Select the Audio tab and choose AC3 stereo. I chose to re-encode the Audio because the MKVs I tested had some weird audio that ffmpegX couldn't classify.

I got an AVI container that contained the exact Video track that was in the MKV container, it was not re-encoded. The Audio track wasn't seen correctly in Quicktime, so I chose to open the new AVI in ffmpegX and choose Passthrough for both Video and Audio. The new AVI worked fine in QT and still had the original, unaltered Video track from the MKV container.

That last AVI can be used by most anything to convert it to most anything.
What's the problem?

[noodlehead]

I don't seem to be able to communicate this...It is NOT an avi file that I want. I can do that. I want DV or MP4.
TugBoat: I appreciate your tip on using Passthrough. But, to answer your question - the problem is it is still an avi.
(Reason: nearly impossible to edit an avi; much easier to move through a DV or MP4 video).

[TugBoat]

You don't seem to understand that there is absolutely NO DIFFERENCE between converting that Xvid video to whatever you want from an AVI container verses a MKV container. It is the EXACT SAME VIDEO TRACK. It takes what, 2 minutes to change it to an AVI container? Sorry, I don't see your point

[noodlehead]

Okay. I appreciate you're making the effort to help me so let me try explaining what I see as a problem. I can get where I want to right now but it is a two step process. MKV to avi. Avi to DV r MP4. I simply can't edit the video track when it is in an avi container. Nor can I do it when it is wrapped in an MKV. But I can when it is DV or MP4. For example, if I drag a slider in Quicktime, or on a scrub bar in iMovie or other video editing app, it is extremely sensitive to the slightest touch and jumps all over the place. Also, it pixelates when trying to fast forward. Not so once I have encoded the avi into DV or MP4. Then it is smooth and workable. So all I want to do is eliminate the step that takes the MKV to avi. I want to go directly to DV or MP4. Make sense? I understand about containers. Though I don't know exactly how (or if) that changes when turned into DV or MP4. I just know it works.

[TugBoat]

You are not going to be able to go from MKV to DV. It takes a couple of minutes to change containers then go to DV. Changing containers the way I instructed has absolutely no detrimental effects to the quality of the video track as the video track is merely shuffled from one container to the other. It's that simple 8)

Or maybe you can. I just tried my sample file with ffmpegX ver.U, not expecting it to work, and it worked;
Input #0, matroska, from '/Volumes/Programs/Downloads/mewmew-vorbis-ssa.mkv':
Duration: N/A, bitrate: N/A
Stream #0.0, 1000.00 fps: Video: mpeg4, yuv420p, 640x480
Stream #0.1: Audio: vorbis, 48000 Hz, stereo
Output #0, dv, to '/Volumes/Programs/Downloads/mewmew-vorbis-ssa.mkv.ff.dv':
Stream #0.0, nan fps: Video: dvvideo, yuv420p, 720x576, q=2-15, 25000 kb/s
Stream #0.1: Audio: pcm_s16le, 48000 Hz, stereo, 1536 kb/s
Stream mapping:
Stream #0.0 -> #0.0
Stream #0.1 -> #0.1

So what happens with your version of ffmpegX? I got a ton of errors, but QT opened/played it fine. I'd still rather use QT to convert that AVI to DV though.

[noodlehead]

When I set target format to Mov-mpeg4 or MP4-mpeg4 - or video codec to MPEG4, (various different audio specs) and encode, it either clunks right away and gives me a failed message or goes to work for about ten seconds and I get a ding-finished. But it is not producing anything other than an icon.
I have tried encoding using DV in the quick presets and in video. And...hey, wait a minute. It is presently seeming to be busy working. Up till now it has always ding finished and produced nothing. Right now I am looking as the progress bar and it is SLOWly moving. Audio I let default. It defaulted to PCM (DV). I don't have great expectations of that.
*I'm not savy enough to fully understand most of what you wrote. I.e. duration; stream0.0; output0 etc. Are these settings you put in manually? Where. Or is this output message?

[TugBoat]

Or is this output message?

That's the output message from the ffmpegX Progress App. Click on the little blue button in the Progress Window. It's probably moving so slow because it's spending most of it's time writing error messages :P Those error messages are directly related to the MKV container. You wouldn't be getting as many if you were converting an AVI. If it were me, I'd use Quicktime to convert the AVI to DV. It's been awhile since I tried using ffmpegX to convert to DV, it use to not work at all...

[noodlehead]

Well, just to close this out. The encode to DV turned out fine. Including the audio. It's huge but at least I can now edit it without it jumping and jerking and pixelating. A fast edit gets me down to a reasonable size. More detail and then I use QT to bring it to a DivX or an MP4. Depends. But this did work. MKV direct to DV using ffmpeg. Now if I can only get it to go from MKV to MP4...

[terryj]

If it went using ffmpegx, then it should do the same for MPEG4.
You may have to noodle around in the settings, but it may/may not work.

In any event, to eliminate "noodling" go mkv to avi then to mpeg4.
Yes, it is one extra step, but do you spend a few minutes noodling,
or a few minutes on a tried and true extra step, as Tug ( and I, to some degree) suggested?

Try using the quick presets in the "summary" tab first,
before noodling...50/50 either way it will work or won't...
I've had some luck with the h2.64 mencoder setting on
some things, but have since moved on to QT Pro to do this...
good luck!

[babgolis]

VLC can transcode to matroska .MP4 or .mov files, but quicktime seems to choke on them. Not very helpful. Also you can't extract subtitles or which audio stream you want.