[Matroska-devel] mkv conversion

[Christian HJ Wiesner]

Hi Dave,

we are actually very interested in adding more MKV file conversion tools 
to our homepage, because this is one of the most asked questions from 
our users. Conversion into AVI files is nonsense, and should not be 
attempted. AVI is too old and not powerful enough to hold the same 
content as MKV, that was the main reason for us to start the MKV project 
in the first place.

However, conversion of MKV files - especially hi-res HDTV files 
containing h.264 (AVC) encoding, requiring strong CPUs for realtime 
playback - into high quality DVDs is one of the most asked tasks, and 
also well possible.

Before we can help you, we need more information :

- Is your tool freeware, opensource, or a commercial project ?

- what output formats will your tool support ?

- did you consider to add MKV output to your tool also ?

- what licenses do you expect from those libs ? More specifically, will 
they be part of a commercial project ?

As a sidenote, the great Videolan player from http://www.videolan.org 
can open and play most MKV files out there (besides those with Realvideo 
RV9/RV10 and On 2 VP 6/7 video compression), and can also convert them 
into MPEG2 already. Unfortunately, it has no video resizing filter, and 
also no stream selector (e.g. to select the right audio stream/language 
from a multi-language MKV file).

Another alternative is to do the same as DVD Santa is doing, i.e. to use 
a DirectShow based input plugin. Doing so, your tool will be able to 
convert all files that can play in Windows Mediaplayer and other DShow 
based players. The suitable MKV demuxer filters are available on 
http://haali.cs.msu.ru/mkv/. The same homepage will also hold the most 
comprehensive list of supported video and audio codecs in MKV files : 
http://haali.cs.msu.ru/mkv/codecs.pdf . Bear in mind, MKV is currently 
the most powerful container existing, a MKV file can basically hold 
everything under the sun ;-) .....

Best Regards and Happy New Year

Christian


Dave schrieb:
> I am a programmer wanting to develop a conversion for the MKV 
> extension to change to orher video formats. I am intested in what 
> tools or libraries you have to help me accomplish this. I have seen 
> other programs available that do this.
> Thank you,Dave