Adobe Premiere Alternative That Imports MKV & MP4

[TheRandomOne]

What is a good easy to use program for editing MKV & MP4

[smrpix]

Simple trims or complex editing?

[TheRandomOne]

Simple

[smrpix]

VideoReDo and TMPGenc Smart Renderer can do it almost losslessy. Neither are free but both have substantial trial periods.

[racer-x]

Simple: Virtualdub via ffmpeg input driver, Avidemux.

Complex and powerful: Aviutl

all are free....

[TheRandomOne]

With the input driver. Can we output direct stream

[TheRandomOne]

Okay guys I need a easy full on editor. Something like Premiere. Where I can import MKV / MP4 & edit with separate audio tracks. Cant do that with TMPGEnc etc

[LMotlow]

So you're not "editing", you're re-encoding? Premiere is "simple"? Your copy of Premiere can't import mp4 or mkv? How are those mp4's and mkv's encoded? What codecs were used? You sure you really want to "edit" lossy formats? http://telestreamblog.telestream.net/2012/04/save-yourself-frustration-use-editing-for...hen-editing-2/

[TheRandomOne]

I am editing. As in I import a music track & I edit video matching the music beats & cuts etc & no Premiere can not import MKV. At least CS6 & the older version I use can not. The MKV container is not supported in Premiere & as far as Im aware codecs are H264. But Premiere does not support MKV once so ever

[LMotlow]

You're not editing. What you described is going to be re-encoded to death. It'll look stomped down and chewed up by the time you're finished.

Yeah CS6 takes mp4 as QuickTime. If you have that much cash to dump into a "simple" app and then use it like a $50 Walmart push-button NLE, that's your privilege. There's plenty of free software around that can decode those various vids into a common format that any NLE can use, including CS6. This is just another depressing case of money down the drain and getting into a high-end app that's over the owner's head. People use CS6 all the time 24/7/365/Everywhere with common lossless and near-lossless video in CS6 to do exactly what you want to do. There's a long list of other h264/mkv/mp4 editors in the Tools section. https://www.videohelp.com/software/sections/video-editors-h264-avc. Search to your heart's content, start with AviDemux or something -- but none of them are so simple that you won't have to learn some basic stuff about video. You might want to consider learning something that can help you get your money's worth out of CS6.

[smrpix]

What you're doing is more than simple trimming. Stick with Premiere. Convert your source material to an editable format like Cineform, Grass Valley HQX, DNxHD or ProRes at a sufficient bitrate to minimize loss.

The trick is finding an app that will both accept mkv and output a "pro" codec.

Here are some sample ffmpeg command lines for the conversion:

-i myvideo.mkv -vcodec prores -profile:v 2 -acodec pcm_s16le myvideo.mov
-i myvideo.mkv" -vcodec dnxhd -b:v 145M -acodec pcm_s16le myvideo.mov

[TheRandomOne]

Well I have been using the old Premiere 6.0 for years. For me its easy editing with 6.0 so I call it easy. I am tired of converting clips & wanna see if I can find something where I can edit straight from the source. But sadly my HD videos mix from MKV to MP4

[smrpix]

A lot of editing around here is simply joining clips or removing commercials, so that's what I'm referring to as "simple." What you're doing is more sophisticated.

Take a look at Aviutl and TMPGEnc Video Mastering works for free and non-free timeline editing that accept mkv. But my bet is you will find the convert-and-edit workflow with Premiere ultimately more satisfying and faster overall. Long-GOP mkv and mp4 files cut into short clips are going to bog your system down very quickly -- even if you have a top-of--the-line machine.

[TheRandomOne]

Ah okay I get it now. I recently tried out CS6 after years of using 6.0 & damn that was hard to learn & after finding out the hard way that it did not support even MKV. I guess I will just stick with 6.0 in the long run. Will try those out. But thanks for the help guys

[poisondeathray]

Using and editing codec like cineform etc... as suggested above is probably the best idea - high performance / "very snappy" on the timeline . Negatives are re-encoding (negligible quality loss), takes longer, lots of HDD space required (filesize will increase a few times)

But if it's 8bit h264 in MKV, using compatible settings, you can probably re-wrap it into MP4 container and import it into PP as another option . Much faster than re-encoding , no quality loss, but editing performance slower than I-frame editing codec (assuming your MKV uses "typical" long GOP settings)

You can also frameserve into PP with avisynth using avisynth virtual frame server (AVFS), but performance will be even slower on the timeline than the re-wrap. But this is a way to get any file into PP without re-encoding, even non compatible formats like HEVC, 10bit AVC etc...