[Matroska-users] help

[Ivan Kowalenko]

On Dec 7, 2007, at 17.56, MARYFER OÑATE wrote:

[snip]
> In english:
> I got a good movie and it´s in mkv format and aI want to convert to  
> avi or dvd format, can you help me please? thank you so much.

DVDSanta seems to be the preferred method to burn MKVs to a video DVD,  
though it is for-profit software, so you'll have to pay for it. There  
is probably an open source solution if you're running Linux, and if  
you've got a Mac OS X system, ffmpegX can dump out a VIDEO_TS for you.

As far as converting to an AVI, it's not recommended. Usually files  
are in MKVs for a specific reason. When it comes to High Definition  
content, it tends to be because Matroska allows keeping H.264 (AVC)  
and A52 (AC3) in the same file, where are AVI does not. When it comes  
to foreign material, it's usually because Matroska supports embedding  
(but not re-encoding) subtitles, or even multiple audio tracks. MKVs  
also sometimes contain chapters and additional content (images,  
documents, and there's a specification for menus, but I've never  
actually seen one). If you convert your video to an AVI, chances are  
you might lose that content, and have to jump through a few hoops to  
get it back.

If you're having trouble playing the MKV back on your system, try  
downloading VLC. It's an open source video player with a wide variety  
of localizations. It plays a huge variety of videos, and you'll likely  
never need to download another video codec ever again. Furthermore, it  
tends to be vastly more efficient than Windows Media Player. It can be  
found at http://www.videolan.org

If you need an AVI because of hardware reasons (like a network enabled  
DVD player) there is no graphical way I know of to repackage an MKV.  
The simplest instructions are cross-platform. Just go to http://mplayerhq.hu 
  and download MPlayer. It comes with a tool called MEncoder, which we  
will use. Install the app (Windows users may have to make a direct  
path reference) and then open up a terminal and go (cd) to the  
directory where your video lives, and enter the following command:

mencoder (input video here) -ovc copy -oac copy -o (output name  
here).avi

MEncoder will copy the video information into an AVI, avoiding  
recompression and any loss of quality. If the audio and video codecs  
are incompatible in an AVI, you'll get a big fat warning. You won't  
get any warning if there are subtitles in the Matroska source file,  
however. This only works for one audio track, so you'll likely lose  
the others.

If you want to extract additional audio tracks or subtitle tracks,  
you'll have to get MKVTool (or MKVtoolNIX) and use the mkvextract tool  
(all documentation on the use of this tool is provided either on the  
web site or in the man pages, please read them). I don't know of a way  
to mux secondary audio tracks or subtitles into an AVI (it's supposed  
to be possible, but I haven't a clue how to make it work), so you're  
on your own if you need that.