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Transcoding MKV files, 1 movie 6 hours?

O

orestes1984

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jun 10, 2005
1,000
4
Australia
There must be a better way of going about this. I have a few MKV formatted movies I want to encode to play on an Apple TV3 on my server. I'm using my MacBook Pro to do the conversion on my server using Handbrake with Apple TV3 settings.

Would I be better off just copying the movies to my MacBook and then copying them back to my server when I'm done? This seems like an extremely slow process as it is.

To clarify it's on a 2.3ghz I5 PowerBook, and the data I'm encoding is on the server over a Gigabit ethernet connection.
 
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you don't need to bother converting them at all.
assuming the MKV is h264 (and almost all are), you just need to remux it.
 
Try using Subler to convert the MKV to MP4. If the MKV contains h264 video (and most do), you don't need to re-encode, so Subler will be much quicker.
 
stordoff said:
Try using Subler to convert the MKV to MP4. If the MKV contains h264 video (and most do), you don't need to re-encode, so Subler will be much quicker.
Click to expand...

that's not converting, that's remuxing.
no conversion is taking place, all that is being done is the container being changed.

of course if the MKV contains a DTS sounds track, then the audio would need to be converted for AppleTV playback.
 
Let met get this right; subler for quick remuxing unless you have a 5.1 system (in which case you'd use handbrake for the 5.1 DTS?)
 
I've got an optical 5.1 system, is there a quick way to change the container or do I have to handbrake them? I've done 2 movies so far at 6 hours, this really is a PITA.
 
musio said:
Let met get this right; subler for quick remuxing unless you have a 5.1 system (in which case you'd use handbrake for the 5.1 DTS?)
Click to expand...

Subler can also convert DTS - at least on x86. Dunno about the PPC version - if it can't, just demux the DTS track, convert it with another app to AC3 or AAC and mux it back with Subler. No need to use the no-video-passthru HB at all.

----------
musio said:
Let met get this right; subler for quick remuxing unless you have a 5.1 system (in which case you'd use handbrake for the 5.1 DTS?)
Click to expand...

Subler in your case too - see my post above.

Alternatively, you can also give a try to MP4Tools, which may also be PPC-compliant and will also convert DTS. Make sure you start with the beta: http://www.emmgunn.com/betadownload.html
 
Alright, I'm going to give Subler a go. I'm getting sick of this after muxing my entire DVD collection with Handbrake :rolleyes: That alone was a tough overnight job. This is what you get for buying an Apple TV 3 that can't be jailbroken.
 
Menneisyys2 said:
NP, and feel free to report back on your progress. I'm also interested in how Subler can be used on PPC's.
Click to expand...

I tried using subler and the save as option which outputs an M4V file, but I couldn't actually get the video to play in any of my players. Not VLC, or Quicktime with Perian. It refused to play and came up as a grey icon that wasn't recognised for the file type it should have been. I tried 2 or 3 videos before I gave up.
 
orestes1984 said:
I tried using subler and the save as option which outputs an M4V file, but I couldn't actually get the video to play in any of my players. Not VLC, or Quicktime with Perian. It refused to play and came up as a grey icon that wasn't recognised for the file type it should have been. I tried 2 or 3 videos before I gave up.
Click to expand...

Is it a >4 GByte video? If it is, did you enable the topmost 64-bit checkbox upon saving?
 
Menneisyys2 said:
Is it a >4 GByte video? If it is, did you enable the topmost 64-bit checkbox upon saving?
Click to expand...

I'll have to take another look, but I don't believe that I did and, yes I'm pretty sure they're all over 4GB. This is the first time I've used subler, so forgive me if I'm a bit of a noob.
 
orestes1984 said:
I'll have to take another look, but I don't believe that I did and, yes I'm pretty sure they're all over 4GB. This is the first time I've used subler, so forgive me if I'm a bit of a noob.
Click to expand...

This is the checkbox you must enable:

3e018d0856b2dbf13018b8af48bf9625-438x241.png
 
Menneisyys2 said:
...
Click to expand...

Ok so I just did a test run with the 64bit checkbox enabled, it works. I should note that I'm doing the transmuxing in this case with a 2.3ghz I5 intel 13" MacBook pro. I'm just using the servers (dual 2.3ghz Xserve G5) hard disk as that's where my storage drives are located. So, the MacBooks CPU is doing the dirty work for the Xserve G5s disks. I could probably set it up directly on the server and let it go if I could find a PPC version of Subler, but I'm sure its faster this way anyway. This is much less of a pain in the arse than it was to Mux all my DVDs or reencode MKVs which was a complete and utter nightmare.
 
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orestes1984 said:
Ok so I just did a test run with the 64bit checkbox enabled, it works. I should note that I'm doing the transmuxing in this case with a 2.3ghz I5 intel 13" MacBook pro. I'm just using the servers (dual 2.3ghz Xserve G5) hard disk as that's where my storage drives are located. So, the MacBooks CPU is doing the dirty work for the Xserve G5s disks. I could probably set it up directly on the server and let it go if I could find a PPC version of Subler, but I'm sure its faster this way anyway. This is much less of a pain in the arse than it was to Mux all my DVDs or reencode MKVs which was a complete and utter nightmare.
Click to expand...

1. Greta to hear it works! In my practice, I got the best results with Subler by using separate high-speed storage disks. For example, in my MBP 17" I have both a Vertex 4 SSD and a 1TB HDD in the DVD bay. The former can be written to at 150 Mbyte/s and read at 220, the latter read at 90 Mbyte/s. I got the fastest execution with reading from the HDD and writing to the SSD, NOT from both reading and writing from/to the SSD.

2. DVD's must be reencoded (they're iOS-unfriendly MPEG-2) so you haven't lost any time by reencoding them.
 
Menneisyys2 said:
1. Greta to hear it works! In my practice, I got the best results with Subler by using separate high-speed storage disks. For example, in my MBP 17" I have both a Vertex 4 SSD and a 1TB HDD in the DVD bay. The former can be written to at 150 Mbyte/s and read at 220, the latter read at 90 Mbyte/s. I got the fastest execution with reading from the HDD and writing to the SSD, NOT from both reading and writing from/to the SSD.

2. DVD's must be reencoded (they're iOS-unfriendly MPEG-2) so you haven't lost any time by reencoding them.
Click to expand...

Yep, it would be wise to have a third drive in the Xserve, I have a 120gb SSD in there and a 1.5tb storage drive. I'm in the process of procuring a third drive tray for my Xserve, but most people want $35+ for one and then the majority of them are overseas and want another $40 to ship it to Australia. when your copying to the same disk it really does slow down the process.

As for the DVDs yes, but 40 or so DVDs was a tough overnight process :mad:
 
i use AnyVideo Converter HD from the app store.. i turns my .mkv files into Apple tv files in a few minutes.

it even automatically pushes it to your itunes when its done...
 
Thanks... I'm just wandering what people use to tag their movies with now, I just tagged them all with MetaX and only the ones I manually tagged myself stuck when I imported into iTunes :mad:
 
orestes1984 said:
Alright, I'm going to give Subler a go. I'm getting sick of this after muxing my entire DVD collection with Handbrake :rolleyes: That alone was a tough overnight job. This is what you get for buying an Apple TV 3 that can't be jailbroken.
Click to expand...

Additionally, because the video isn't decompressed and then re-compressed, the final quality is much better.

Subler rocks.
 
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