Need help with changing .mkvs to .avis and then to VCD

[FF123456789AND10]

I'm trying to convert some mkv files to VCD so I can watch them on a stand-alone DVD player, and I seem to have run into some trouble.

First, I used Gordian Knot to try and convert the mkvs directly to VCD. Turns out Gordian only converts .avi files. I then tried to use VirtualDubMod to convert the mkvs to avi, but I received an error saying "Only handle [S_TEXT/] subs for the moment. Seeing as how that didn't work, I then used OGMDemuxer to try and extract the video and audio seperately so I could demultiplex them later with Virtual Dub mod. Unfortunately, I couldn't extract the audio for some reason, and now I've reached the end of my rope...

I read the guides, but they weren't really specific as to these kinds of problems (unless I didn't read hard enough...) Anyway, can someone help me? Perhaps give me some step by step way to solve my problem? Please forgive my ignorance, this is the first time I ever tried video converting...

Thanx in advance...

[Cobra]

Firstly, welcome to VideoHelp! I hope you have a pleasant stay here.

https://www.videohelp.com/guides.php?tools=&madeby=&formatconversionselect=MKV+to+VCD&h...or+List+Guides

If you look at the left-hand side of your screen, you'll spot a section called "Convert" under the "How To" heading. There's a really useful menu in there that you will see on the link I provided (and if you were to click "Convert"). It allows you to search guides depending on your source and target format.

I'm afraid I don't know much about the conversion of .MKV files, but I hope the guide will help you. Failing that, I am sure others will have more to offer you.

Best of luck to you!

Cobra

[Stormin Norman]

Try and look at: http://www.matroska.org/index.html

[FF123456789AND10]

I did, and it didn't really help much.

I just want to convert mkv to vcd. Isn't there a program that does just that?

[Baldrick]

ogmdemuxer is not for mkv. try use MKVExtractGUI.

I can open mkv directly in tpmgenc and convert to vcd...i have only installed the matroska codec pack.

[FF123456789AND10]

I tried using MKVExtractGUI but the audio didn't get extracted properly.

[FF123456789AND10]

Well, I have discovered the problem. My .mkvs have s_Vobsub in them and MKVExtractGUI doesn't demux them. Anyway to get around this?

[celtic_druid]

I thought that mkvextact now supported vobsubs? What version are you running?

[FF123456789AND10]

1.5.0

[celtic_druid]

I don't think that is possible as mkvtoolnix isn't upto 1.5.0 yet. Latest version I think is 1.4.2.

[FF123456789AND10]

My mistake, I was thinking about something else.

Anyway, I've loaded the mkv file into mkvtoolnix:



What should I do to convert it to VCD?

[midnightsun]

celtic druid: mkvtoolnix is at 1.4.2 but the GUI for mkvextract is 1.5.xx indeed.

FF: what happens if you load the mkv in mkvextractGUI and deselect the subs (i.e. you only extract the video and audio streams?).

In this case mkvmerge is of little use since what you want to do is the reverse: extract instead of multiplex.

Anyway I've read of problems with vobsub's muxed into mkv. I'd much rather use srt's which have been working very reliably for me.

[FF123456789AND10]

The video is extracted perfectly, but the audio isn't.

[celtic_druid]

Yes, I know, but mkvextract follows mkvtoolnix's versioning scheme not the GUI's.

You could always decode the audio to wav since you are converting anyway. Don't recall hearing any issues about vorbis extraction though.

[ChristianHJW]

Extracting vobsub subtitles from MKVs should work perfectly with mkvextract.exe from mkvtoolnix 1.4.2 ( using CLI ). The mkvextractGUI has just recently been udated again to also support vobsubs fully, but please drop a bug report to matroska-users AT lists DOT matroska DOT org if it doesnt.

However, for VCD creation this wont help you a lot, as to my knowledge Virtualdub will bot support vobsubs for video hardburning into an AVI ( becoming the basis for the VCD creation ). Or dont you need the subs at all ? Nothing easier than that, simply load the MKV into mkvmerge/mmg.exe ( as you did already ) and untick all the streams you dont need/like, and tehn create a new MKV from that.

In case you want to see a subtitle language in your VCD, the only way of doing that i new was
- extract the right vobsubs track from the MKV ( .idx/.sub )
- run subrip on it with its OCR machine to create a SRT text subtitles track
- convert the SRT into SSA using SubStationAlpha, so that Virtualdub's sub reader can read the subtitles for hardcoding them into the picture ( VCD doesnt support softsubs )
- encode an AVI from that, maybe using the DV codec from Panasonic ( dont care about the size, its just an interims file ), so that you can feed the final video into any DVD encoder app for VCD conversion

Christian
matroska project admin
http://www.matroska.org