Convert MKV/OGM to AVI the easy way

[Lord Raiden]

Alright, I've taken from this forum long enough, so I though it'd be right to give back a little. Here's a quick and dirty way to convert from MKV to AVI. It sure beats the old way of doing things.

MKV/OGM to AVI:

1. Download the open source video converter All to AVI. This is a video converter project done by an anime fan for anime fans. So he's done a lot of work to make your lives easier.

2. Click on "add file" (or inversely "add folder" if you're doing a whole series at once for example). Select your file and click ok. An error about h264 might come up. If it does, click "yes" and then "ok."

3. In this next window, click on the drop down menu for "choose your bitrate" and select middle (700kbps) as that's average for most anime videos. You can go higher or lower if you want, but that's the standard.

4. For subtitles, select "0 eng" for english. You can choose others if there are more in there, but you can only choose one at a time.

5. Click on "Change font" and choose the highest font size possible from the list, which should be Ariel 28, if you're going to view this on a TV or a PMP. You can choose a smaller font if you'll be viewing this on your PC. Currently the program only supports Ariel, but future versions will allow for you to pick from any font you want. (if you want to speed up the work, volunteer as a developer or tester)

6. Now, before you go on, there's a second window open behind your job window. Click it and select "24000/1001", then click ok.

7. Now click "add job". You should now see the new job in your joblist in the main program. From this point you can continue adding more jobs until you've added everything.

Once you've added all the jobs you want, click convert, then walk away and go do something for a while. When you come back, all your MKV's or OGM's will now be AVI's with hard coded subtitles. You may want to consider testing your work first with smaller MKV's and OGM's before getting into converting the big stuff, or large batches. It'll save you a lot of headaches later. Also, don't forget to check all your files after conversion to make sure they all got converted right. Simply opening them up and viewing a few seconds to see if the subtitles stuck

As a reminder, this program *is* beta, so it may hickup once in a great while. But overall it's stable enough for full time use.

Well, I hope that was helpful to you. Let me know if you have any questions.

[Generic Asian Guy]

Thanks

I've had some trouble converting MKV files to AVI (or MP4), so I'll give this program a try!

[Lord Raiden]

You're welcome. Glad I could help.

[guest]

I tried it but, where is the general setting? You know, where can I change the location to save files etc?
I see. Setting can only be changed after you add the job. Is there a way to change it even when you don't add a job?

[Lord Raiden]

Not that I know of. Although I do admit that's a good idea to have. You could submit a bug report and ask for that and other features that you may want.

[-KarumA-]

question how do I get Eng subs to work if there isn't any named Eng (The file certain has Eng subs in it and is not extrernal)?
Here's a screenie



file extension is MKV from [Triad]

[TheFluff]

Originally Posted by -KarumA-

question how do I get Eng subs to work if there isn't any named Eng (The file certain has Eng subs in it and is not extrernal)?
Here's a screenie



file extension is MKV from [Triad]

triad is kind of gay and hardsubs their mkv's so the subtitle is burned into the picture. it will show up regardless of what you select in that dialog box.

on a tangentially related note, this program is retarded. convert x264 -> "high bitrate" xvid -> portable? yeah, gg.

[Branded Guts]

hey i use a diff program, but i need help, beacasue, when i convert from mkv to avi the subtitles never show up in the file, im confused beacause i use vlc player for the mkv files, i wanna burn animes so i can watch on the t.v but they never have subtitles...

is there any way you can put subtitles that are already on the mkv file to the avi converted?

thanks!!!

[Emess]

How well would this cope with say, VFR. I'd hate to think it just randomly dupes or drops frames. Seeing as I'm a linux user (and just need to makexvid input.ext output.avi) I can't exactly test it and see.

I'm going to agree with Fluff-chan, converting from x264 to massive XviD to make it portable is stupid and a waste of time. There is no valid reason at all to use XviD anymore.

Originally Posted by Branded Guts

hey i use a diff program, but i need help, beacasue, when i convert from mkv to avi the subtitles never show up in the file, im confused beacause i use vlc player for the mkv files, i wanna burn animes so i can watch on the t.v but they never have subtitles... is there any way you can put subtitles that are already on the mkv file to the avi converted? thanks!!!

The program you are using requires a subtitles plugin or something to do it. Go browse the fansubbing forum, doom9, and avisynth's wiki and figure out TextSub, or VirtualDub can do it too. Whats happening in your encode is that the subtitles are not activated. As they are a separate track in the file, they aren't on by default unless the decoder is set to display them by default.

E~

[martino]

I'm sure it CFRs, just like all the others...

[Branded Guts]

i found a way to do it but it reqires the anime to have a srt file to add the subtitles, im trying to find a way which does it without. most of the animes dont have rt files and you can choose a subtitle under the options on vlc player, whenever i convert the file no subs ever show up

thanks for your respose, i really wanna watch this one anime but i cant get it to convert with subs

i dont like watching animes on the computer lol

thanks again!!!!

[-KarumA-]

Originally Posted by TheFluff

triad is kind of gay and hardsubs their mkv's so the subtitle is burned into the picture. it will show up regardless of what you select in that dialog box.

on a tangentially related note, this program is retarded. convert x264 -> "high bitrate" xvid -> portable? yeah, gg.

aah okay thanks for letting me know
but what program would you recommend if you find alltoavi retarded, just curious

[Sides]

Originally Posted by Emess

I'm going to agree with Fluff-chan, converting from x264 to massive XviD to make it portable is stupid and a waste of time. There is no valid reason at all to use XviD anymore.

I can give you one reason why some people will/want to do it, although i find it stupid myself, old stb DVD player with mpeg4 sp support. Maybe those people should just get something like the WD TV, unfortunately no ssa/ass support.

[TheFluff]

Originally Posted by -KarumA-

aah okay thanks for letting me know
but what program would you recommend if you find alltoavi retarded, just curious

I don't know, I never do these conversions, if I had to do one I'd probably just use Avisynth and Virtualdub. Maybe one day I will write a real magic oneclick conversion program.

[AceD]

if i ever need to convert owt...i just use avisynth and virtual dub to, ive tryed this program before and it wasnt to good

[Lord Raiden]

Well, you don't have to convert a high bitrate to a low bitrate in AlltoAVI. You can choose what bitrate you want. I simply prefer the lower bitrates as I don't need HD quality.

[Makkusu]

I'm giving this a go now, hopefully it'll work, other programs just result in failure.

There's loads more options you have to chose from though, I just guessed them because I don't know an awful lot about this stuff.

[sa547]

Sorry for "Frankensteining" this thread a bit, but I'm gonna give this odd program a try, as I've recently got a portable media player and would like to have something watch while on the go (and besides it'll take some time until there's a PMP with full Matroska support). I also read some MKV-to-"n" conversion methods and most of them seem to require several utilities to go through until the video in question is done.

Go for high bitrates if quality is needed; low bitrates if disk space is a major concern. Besides, there are some people out there preferring "old-school" Xvid.

The lowdown: too bad the user interface had some unnecessary junk, should be slimmed down, be more intuitive and professionally redesigned.

[mako1138]

I used to convert files with batch scripts when I watched stuff on an old laptop. Not as "easy" as a GUI program, but once I got them working, it was an easy drag-drop process. Perhaps they may be useful to somebody. To use them, you'll have to change the drive letters and paths to programs. The utilities I used are MKVtoolnix, mp4box, avisynth, and avs2avi. avs2avi has its own process to set the xvid parameters; read the docs.

The main concept behind these scripts is that the streams get demuxed to the same filenames every time, so the avs doesn't have to change.

Spoiler for drag_batch_down.bat:

i:
cd reduce

j:\dvd\MKVextractGUI-1.5.5\mkvextract tracks %1 1:vid.264 2:aud.ogg 3:sub.ass
mp4box -fps 23.976 -add vid.264 vid.mp4
rem pause
j:\dvd\avs2avi down.avs -p 0 -l xvid.txt
j:\dvd\MKVextractGUI-1.5.5\mkvmerge -o "%~nx1" -d 0 -A -S i:\reduce\down.avi -a 0 -D -S i:\reduce\aud.ogg --track-order 0:0,1:0
del vid.264
del vid.mp4
del aud.ogg
del sub.ass
del down.avi

Spoiler for down.avs:

SetMemoryMax(16)
#LoadPlugin("vsfilter.dll")
directshowsource("i:\reduce\vid.mp4",fps=23.976)
LanczosResize(704,400)
textsub("i:\reduce\sub.ass")

Spoiler for drag_batch_hardsub.bat:

i:
cd reduce

"C:\Program Files\MKVtoolnix\mkvextract" tracks %1 1:vid.264 2:aud.ogg
mp4box -fps 23.976 -add vid.264 vid.mp4

j:\dvd\avs2avi hardsub.avs -p 0 -l xvid.txt
"C:\Program Files\MKVtoolnix\mkvmerge" -o "%~nx1" -d 0 -A -S i:\reduce\hardsub.avi -a 0 -D -S i:\reduce\aud.ogg --track-order 0:0,1:0

del vid.264
del vid.mp4
del aud.ogg
del hardsub.avi

Spoiler for hardsub.avs:

SetMemoryMax(16)
#LoadPlugin("vsfilter.dll")
directshowsource("i:\reduce\vid.mp4",fps=23.976)
#LanczosResize(640,360)
#textsub("i:\reduce\sub.ass")