Matroska on Wimpy's World

MKV to MPEG-4 conversion script

martin@wimpress.com (Martin Wimpress) — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 20:48:58 +0000

The PlayStation 3 can’t play MKV files. Therefore I’ve written a script that creates a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 compatible MPEG-4 from Matroska providing the video is H.264 and audio is AC3 or DTS.

Xbox 360 compatibility requires that audio is forcibly downmixed to stereo with --stereo. AAC 5.1 audio will have the correct channel assignments when transcoding from AC3 5.1 and DTS 5.1. If neroAacEnc is installed then it is used in preference to faac for encoding the AAC audio, as it produces better quality output. neroAacEnc is optional.

The script does as little re-encoding as possible, only the audio and subtitles are re-encoded or converted. The script can detect profile 5.1 H.264 and patch it to 4.1 in under a second. Any subtitles in the Matroska are preserved. If mp4creator is used the subtitles are extracted stored in a seperate file. If MP4Box is used (default) the subtitles are converted to GPAC Timed Text and muxed into the resulting MPEG-4. The PlayStation 3 can’t display these subtitles but some software players can.

The script can optionally split the Matroska if it is greater than 4GB to ensure PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and FAT32 compatibility. This script works on Ubuntu and should work on any other Linux/Unix flavour and possibly Mac OS X providing you have the required tools installed.

MKV-to-MP4

MKV to M2TS conversion script

martin@wimpress.com (Martin Wimpress) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 17:00:58 +0000

The PlayStation 3 can’t play MKV files. Therefore I’ve written a script that creates a PlayStation 3 compatible M2TS from a MKV, assuming video is H.264 and audio is AC3 or DTS with as little re-encoding as possible. Any subtitles in the MKV are preserved in the M2TS although the PlayStation 3 can’t display subtitles in M2TS containers. Optionally splits the M2TS, if it is greater than 4GB, to maintain FAT32 compatibility. Unlike other MKV to M2TS solutions, this script doesn’t create any intermediate files during the conversion.

The PlayStation 3 can’t play DTS audio streams in M2TS containers, therefore DTS audio is transcoded to AC3.

This script works on Ubuntu, should work on any other Linux/Unix flavour and possibly Mac OS X providing you have the required tools installed.

MKV-to-M2TS

Converting Matroska to M2TS for PS3 and Mediatomb

martin@wimpress.com (Martin Wimpress) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:19:24 +0000

It has been a while since I last posted, mainly due to not having Internet access at home for a month. Anyway, I’m online again and I have been tinkering with various projects the most recent of which is Matroska conversion (again).

Matroska to MP4

For sometime I have been converting Martoska files to MPEG-4 with AAC 5.1 audio so I can stream them via Mediatomb to my PlayStation 3. The conversion process works well although there is some overhead in transcoding the audio and the AAC 5.1 audio is not as good quality as the original AC3 or DTS.

If you are interested I’ve put my code in GitHub, the script automates the whole process.

MPV-to-MP4

Matroska to M2TS

A little while back I read it was possible to convert those same Matroska file to M2TS files which, so long as the audio is AC3, so takes much less time to convert. As the PlayStation 3 can’t play DTS audio streams inside a M2TS container there is still a requirement to transcode DTS to AC3. That said the conversion to M2TS requires less file I/O than converting to MPEG-4 and is therefore it is generally a quicker conversion method, typically just 2 or 3 minutes on my workstation at home.

Plus the audio quality of the AC3 or transcoded DTS is better than that of transcoded AAC 5.1. I’ve created my own script to fully automate the conversion process. The script has been tested on Ubuntu 8.10 64-bit but there is an outside chance it will work on Mac OS X if you can get the required tools installed. Again, you can find my script on GitHub.

MPV-to-M2TS