I'd like to thank mike (#11) for his detailed, yet simple, explanation of what .mkv files are.
Just as a few other people out there, though I had heard about them, I wasn't aware of what they were. Through your article I even came to understand what 'demux' really means.
Instead of arrogantly dismissing everyone else's "ignorance", you chose to share your knowledge, a stance that, in fact, is part of the real internet original spirit.

Thanks again.

I have run into the .MKV file format frequently when looking for HD movies, where a Blu-Ray rip can be reduced from a near 25GB size, to a 6GB - 11GB size, and still display excellent 1080p quality with Dolby 5.1,7.1 and DTS, AC3, or plain Stereo audio, and even some English and other language subtitles. In the part of the internet I surf in, MKV is in the MAJORITY. These Matroska files as they are called, display great 1080p quality, and was adopted as the standard for the propreitary "DivX Plus HD" movie file container in 2009. Those files would only play in a registered Div X player device where the user had purchased a license to view them, such as with iTunes content. On the other hand, plain .MKV files made by Blu-Ray rips will play in many media players, including Apple Tv or Windows Media Center, and if played on a computer, they will be recognized by most new codecs like K-lite, Shark, and players like Media Player Classic - Home Cinema, and Windows Media Player, just to name a few, KM Player, there are many others as well. People like the .MKV file type for it's small size, and ability to play files ripped from blu-ray such as AVCHD with half of the gigabytes and maintaining the HD resolutions 720p and 1080p. Again, I don't know why one would want to convert .MKV to other file types, but I will install MediAvatar MKV Converter just in case, I can always uninstall it later if it doesn't serve a purpose.

I have run into the .MKV file format frequently when looking for HD movies, where a Blu-Ray rip can be reduced from a near 25GB size, to a 6GB - 11GB size, and still display excellent 1080p quality with Dolby 5.1,7.1 and DTS, AC3, or plain Stereo audio, and even some English and other language subtitles. In the part of the internet I surf in, MKV is in the MAJORITY. These Matroska files as they are called, display great 1080p quality, and was adopted as the standard for the propreitary "DivX Plus HD" movie file container in 2009. Those files would only play in a registered Div X player device where the user had purchased a license to view them, such as with iTunes content. On the other hand, plain .MKV files made by Blu-Ray rips will play in many media players, including Apple Tv or Windows Media Center, and if played on a computer, they will be recognized by most new codecs like K-lite, Shark, and players like Media Player Classic - Home Cinema, and Windows Media Player, just to name a few, KM Player, there are many others as well. People like the .MKV file type for it's small size, and ability to play files ripped from blu-ray such as AVCHD with half of the gigabytes and maintaining the HD resolutions 720p and 1080p. Again, I don't know why one would want to convert .MKV to other file types, but I will install MediAvatar MKV Converter just in case, I can always uninstall it later if it doesn't serve a purpose.

I don't have much need to convert MKV files now, but I could really have used something like this for my old machine. I've used AllToAvi before which did a fairly good job. I can now use FormatFactory which handles practically everything. This program really needs to handle multiple formats to be most useful.

This program does have a feature during install to install a Bing toolbar so one needs to be careful.

PS And I apologize for the above when I meant to say I do not like it when something tries to make me install the Bing tool bar etc, so when I click no does that mean the license is not valid, because they say clicking this shows you spprove the license or whatever, I clicked I do not agree, so let's see. I need some time off from all of this I'm overwhelmed. Thanks to the many informative people who are so willing to share.

Live inside of an egg #6? Well a search on my system only showed MKV files in ads for DVDX and as .dlls in other programs, so I'm not sure why you say "all movies and video's" whatever all come in MKV I have many downloaded, rented, purchased and are they supposed to be labeled as an MKV file? Mine are not and I'd appreciate not being called an idiot or other things, I think most of us try to understand and learn and I'm very happy with the movies, etc, and how they play on my computer and to my TV, and nothing says MKV so I am learning something new. I did look it up and all I could seem to find were things like this
The Matroska Multimedia Container is an open standard free container format, a file format that can hold an unlimited number of video, audio, picture or subtitle tracks inside a single file.[1] It is intended to serve as a universal format for storing common multimedia content, like movies or TV shows. Matroska is similar in concept to other containers like AVI, MP4 or ASF, but is entirely open in specification, with implementations consisting mostly of open source software. Matroska file types are .MKV for video (with subtitles and audio), .MKA for audio-only files and .MKS for subtitles only.
So I don't know if I need this or not but I will try it, not all of us are experts on all subjects please be kind.

To those wanting to convert to mkv, it really makes no sense, as most of what you likely want to convert is lower quality, and mkv isn't all that well liked anyway. It would be like converting a 64k mono mp3 to a 320k stereo mp3. It just wastes space, even further degrades the data, and reduces playback options. Just because you have heard that 320k stereo is much better than 64k mono, it doesn't mean that you can make anything any better by doing such a "conversion". And I suspect that some mkv files being distributed exhibit just this issue, done by people who want mkv but don't understand the issues. Still, if you do have a high quality source file that you for some reason want to put into a mkv container, the free program HandBrake will do it (and my also convert them out of mkv containers). Keep the original though, as some things don't like mkv or m4v files (My LG bluRay player, for example).

That's really the only problem I see with today's software offering. It addresses only a very narrow niche of files, and I would have expected the people using those files to be knowledgeable enough to know where all of the good free tools can be found to do the job, so I wouldn't expect much success for a paid version of this code (although not bad for a give-away). Maybe I wrong about that, based on other comments I've read here.

I've been looking for something that will convert only the DTS audio in the MKV file into AC3 instead. To clarify I do want to keep the whole movie and I do want to keep it in MKV format. My TV allows me to connect an external hard drive to it and plays just about all combinations of codecs, except it can't handle MKV with the DTS audio unfortunately. Most 1080p Blu-Ray rips are always done in this format obviously which leads me to end up downloading XviDHD in 720p, AVI files with AC3 audio instead. They still look pretty good, but if I could have full 1080p I would prefer to be taking advantage of my TV's full potential.

Does anyone know if this program can do what I'm looking for or any other software out there right now that can?

For those people that have older, single core PCs, for which VLC Player struggles to play MKVs, then you might appreciate this program - converting to AVI, MP4 or MOV will give better performance and mediAvatar MKV Converter produces good output quality.

Pablo Senzanonna:
NOT ALL TV SHOWS ARE DOWNLOADED IN THAT FORMAT. I use Beyond TV 4 and it does not download them in that format, only AVI and MPG, so don't be so critical of other people who have other configurations on their PCs. I have a new PC and my video TV card does not download MKV files. I have NEVER used an MKV file because they ARE in the minority,

@mike - #11
Thanks for the meaningful, concise info.

@Pippasmum - #9 : You might also try Cucusoft software.

VLC and MPC are two players that handle MKV's very well and will playback subtitles if the subtitle file (SUB/IDX,.SRT,SUP,SSA,SMI,TXT)is in the same directory. Works on my PPC (Pocket PC)anyway.

To all those who make useless comments, and especially those who do so with hostility, Why waste your time and ours? For example, if you do not even know what an MKV file is or have not used one, then what can you POSSIBLY comment about... except your ignorance? It is okay not to know but, then, SHUT UP and learn! Your other issues are best addressed to your therapists.

Again, Thanks to the "mikes" who make reading these comments worthwhile.

Installed & registered fine BUT ... will only convert 179.9MB of a 1.5GB MKV file to AVI. Tried this two times with same result using slightly different settings. Most definitely the results I anticipated with this program.

I use MakeMKV. It's free and it works great.

#4: "I am much more interested in a way to convert other HD formats to mkv."

Check the videohelp.com Tools page -- categories like "Blu-ray to AVI/MKV/MP4", "All In One MKV to MP4/AVCHD/TS", &/or "All In One Video Converters" might give you a jump-start.

* * *

#10: "It makes logically no sense to go from other from other formats to mkv. Since mkv is mostly used for higher resolution recordings; you would end up encoding non-exsistent data into a higher resolution file; ending up with alot of artifacts. "

As .mkv is a container you ideally should be able to move your content into whatever other container without re-encoding so no loss of quality, & vice versa. IOW if your app or method calls for re-encoding, look for another. ;-) As far as rez goes, .mkv works equally well I think holding HD as it does with std. YouTube -- that's not to say one tool or another won't insist on re-sampling up or down. You can find info here http://goo.gl/FhBfG & here http://goo.gl/Zx7e

* * *

#15: "#11 mike, AVI can contain as many audio channels as you like to add... You can add more audio streams to an AVI file manually using virtualdubmod!"

You're right -- it's just not universally accepted by software. I think a lot of those sorts of things died down a bit when .mkv started becoming more popular [e.g. why stuff an even somewhat non-std avi when there's mkv] -- the latest VirtualDubMod (last I looked) is dated 2/21/06. WinMedia Audio looked promising for multi-channel, just like the MS tool for audio-only .avi files, but personally never saw really widespread use of either develop. In the mean time there were all these projects adding capabilities so that you could use formats like DivX & Matroska & have DVD features without the DVD. IMHO it boils down to being not so much about whether they're better or worse than .avi, but what the specialized players that could do all that stuff were designed to work with.

Now I think a lot of companies didn't like Matroska because some company didn't own it, there was not this licensing board etc... FWIW that seems to be changing. Another hurtle to or for .mkv is the often needed splitter, & popular implementations haven't always been trouble free.

At any rate, whether you use .mov or .avi or .mkv [&/or a host of others like.m2ts, .mp4 etc.] they're all just containers, & support in any app is a matter of what the devs decided to support in their app(s). If an app or device works with whatever you've got as-is, great. When it doesn't you either transfer the contents to something else that does work, or use another app/device.

* * *

#16: "... if you don’t have an Nvidia card in your computer, is the output of lesser quality than if you do, or is it just a matter of speed in processing?"

Speed processing... it can be like adding extra processing power to your CPU. Far as quality goes, **Depending** on the extra code, it can sometimes hurt quality, if/when the dev was mainly interested in increasing speed & took a shortcut or three. That goes for NVIDIA or ATI graphics.

* * *

#19: "... is ‘Format Factory’ as good as #7 says and will it do what mediAvatar MKV Converter will do? IF anyone can/will answer this, I’d appreciate it. "

Check out the comments on it at videohelp.com, & optionally check their forums too. Lots of folks like it -- I don't, but that's me & my likes/wants aren't the same as everyone else, so see what others have had to say.

Well, installation went flawless on an XP SP3. Interface was basically the same as most of the other converters I've tried from here in the past. Although, I've found a couple of odd things during my test run:
I was converting 3 MKV files to AVI. The first strange thing that I noticed was that the MKV files which were between 1.2GB and 1.87GB showed an output of 3.5GB. If I remember correctly files are supposed to reduce their size when converting from MKV to AVI I was expecting an output of 700-800MB per file! Second, I usually leave conversions overnight since they notoriously take long and utilize a big chunk of my resources to complete, when I checked, 10hrs later, it was still choking on the first 2 files! I have a dual core processor so it had one file with 65% and the other with 67%! It should have been done within 3-4 hrs max, at least that's what I'm used to.

Well, I can't say how well it converts 'cause I obviously stopped the conversion. I just couldn't tie up my PC for 10 more hours so, I can't comment on that but, if the developers can work on the time it takes to do its job this converter could probably be useful.

My favorite choice for converting video files: Xilisoft Video Converter Ultimate.

mediAvatar MKV Converter is a one trick pony that is slightly more difficult to use, & *compared to older video converters* slightly faster than average -- ffmpeg-based converters have been moving to QT programing for sometimes surprising speed increases, but while MKV Converter is faster [I assume] from using QT, it's not faster by much. mediAvatar MKV Converter imports, & *only* imports .mkv files -- the media formats inside a .mkv file that it'll work with depend at least partly on what you have installed in Windows... it would not work with a VC1 .mkv file in win7 64, but installed to a XP Pro VM with a different ffdshow configuration it would transcode the same file [ffdshow is a (sometimes troublesome) multiple codec setup]. Advanced settings are available in an extended window, & that's where you can set duration to trim a video clip before transcoding -- it was a bit of a PITA in practice, & manually setting the output frame size [to 854x480 for Droid] in that same window resulted in a pillar-boxed video [it looked good, but the 16:9 picture was shrunken]. All 4 cores were used, but cpu use hovered ~58 % -- got 100% in the VM, but that's not saying too much. While it does include a Help file, it doesn't always match the application.

I personally wasn't impressed installing mediAvatar MKV Converter, but that's me -- I look at it the same way I do grocery shopping, comparing store brands to the big name ones, deciding if the benefits are worth the extra cost. Those are pretty much individual, subjective decisions, whether I'm talking about software or a can of beans -- installing software, how much you're willing to pay has a lot to do with how much you really need an app's capabilities. In this case the benefits are being able to directly convert .mkv files, mostly to smaller hand-held or cell phone sizes, & the costs are a IMHO more complicated than necessary setup, accompanied by a program folder with 1360 files, 59 folders, taking up ~87 MB [& that's without the optional Real Media codec support -- you're given the option during setup]. Setup includes "vcredist_x86.exe from Microsoft [2008 C++ runtime redistributable], which adds several files & folders to Windows\ WinSxS\ & quite a few registry entries -- monitor setup in win7 [e.g. using Regshot or Regshot2] & you may be surpised by ~61k new entries... BTW that HKLM\Schema key with most all of them will not be there after re-boot. Setup has a file [msvcr71.dll] for Windows' system folder, & adds folders to All Users\ Application Data & User\ Application Data in XP, while in win7 they're added to User\ AppData\ Roaming & All Users\. That covered, mediAvatar MKV Converter appears to need [& run well with] 2 main registry keys, [for me & IMHO] putting the 550 new registry entries recorded in XP somewhat in perspective.

In the end, despite getting mediAvatar MKV Converter up & running well with just the 2 new keys in the registry, I didn't see anything to justify keeping it around. I don't do many .mkv conversions to held-held or cell phone formats, so it would have to do something out of the ordinary &/or accept more than .mkv. As far as I can tell it doesn't, nor does it have an awful lot of profiles, & while what's there is customizable, it was a bit of a pain making those settings as the text boxes didn't behave as I'd expect. OTOH if you really need .mkv to hand-held or cell support & don't have any good tools to do that right now, you could do far worse than mediAvatar MKV Converter, with what I consider warts & all. If you already have a decent toolkit & just need .mkv support, look at the tools to get content out of .mkv & into something else like .avi at videohelp.com -- they also have tools like XMedia Recode that'll accept .mkv.

This only converts FROM .mkv and not TO it ? Wow.. that's really useless, as all the major media players support .mkv directly. When would you ever need to use this?

Dr. Z

Downloaded and tested. It does what it says... I will find this handy, as I have converted almost all my movies to .mkv and to find that sometimes I need to convert to other formats so I can watch on my iPhone if I'm traveling. I do wish that it also converted other formats to .mkv, allowed you to convert a DVD to .mkv or the other formats, AND allowed you to burn a movie to DVD.

Thanks #11.
I'd heard of MKV but have never used (or understood) it. I admit, I rarely ever watch any type of movie on my PC and when I do I use a DVD. After reading your comment, I mow have a better understanding of MKV and will do more research. I do have a ?, is 'Format Factory' as good as #7 says and will it do what mediAvatar MKV Converter will do? IF anyone can/will answer this, I'd appreciate it. Thanks to all & GAOTD for the many fine products they offer each day.

I have installed it on 2 computers and on one of them the program crashes during start (Core 2 duo, Win7 32bit). It is running fine on the other system: strange... strange... (similar config but desktop not laptop).

I'm really hating MKV. There's a group of encoders out there that intentionally try to use obscure codexs for MKV that will only work on VideoLan, and won't convert properly to anything else. (They've stated that on some of their releases.)

Since NONE of my other devices will play MKV, I have to convert if I'm going to watch when not sitting at my desk.

That and for some reason my other conversion softwares has a really hard time getting the subtitles to convert are the reasons I've come to despise MKV.

The big question for me: Does this software handle subtitles well?

This seems to be one of those types of programs to have "just in case". I can't remember the last time I came across an .mkv file in my downloads, so I really don't think it's going to be useful for me - I don't even have an .mkv file on my computer to test it on.

Just a question for those of you who have downloaded it and used it, if you don't have an Nvidia card in your computer, is the output of lesser quality than if you do, or is it just a matter of speed in processing?

Sounds like good software. I just got some MKV TV series and it's in MKV. I'll give it a try. Thanks for sharing!

Easy to activate. Works well.

@Arturo
you do did not run into any MKV files in a long time? where do you live, inside an egg? Please refrain from adding stupid and/or nonsense comments, ALL TV series and movies to be downloaded come in MKV now.

Just leave us in our egg. I too have never heard of this format, nor do I pirate TV series and movies like you obviously do.

If it helps, .mkv is a video/audio container like Windows .avi & Apple's Quicktime .mov. It's popular as a container format that can hold more kinds of content than just one video & one audio track like .avi. That said, while it is popular [you'll find lots of content in .mkv on-line, & see plenty of references to the format], it's I guess you could say "Home Grown", meaning it wasn't developed by some company (or group of allied companies) so most apps & players, particularly commercial ones, won't recognize or handle .mkv at all.

Because it's just a container there are tools to strip out the content [demux] &/or put that content inside a regular .avi file to make it easier to work with [see the Tools page at videohelp.com] -- many [most?] are based on &/or are a front end for mkvtoolnix... One that I like is MKVcleaver simply because it works without problems for me, which many of these sorts of apps don't. [Please note however that when creating .avi files with a content format like .h264 it will create however many 2 GB .avi files rather than a single large one -- VirtualDubMod does a good job of putting them together using "Direct stream copy", writing a new .avi file without doing any encoding or altering the video at all... that step takes as long as it takes to copy all the files on your PC/laptop from one place to another, since that's all it's really doing.]

Of course it's both easier & quicker if you can skip those steps altogether & just use .mkv files as-is... mediAvatar MKV Converter is a video converter [like you're used to seeing] that does just that. Having just downloaded it I can't say more about it than that.

* * *

Changing topics slightly, the mediAvatar folks heavily advertise their use & support of CUDA to make conversions go faster by using NVIDIA GPUs to do some of the number crunching alongside your PC's/laptop's CPU. Often with other video apps that support CUDA you'll read quite a range of user reports, from complaints that things actually move slower to claims of lightning fast speeds. If you've got NVIDIA graphics hardware, & if you want to find out if [or make sure] it's being used, there's a handy [& free] utility called GPU-Z http://goo.gl/j9R8 that will show you -- just fire this small, one file app up, go to the "Sensors" tab, & make sure the box is checked for "Continue refreshing...", then start up mediAvatar MKV Converter & do a test, watching GPU-Z to see what happens [similar to the way you'd check the performance graph in Task Mgr. for your CPU].

This is just fine. It makes logically no sense to go from other from other formats to mkv. Since mkv is mostly used for higher resolution recordings; you would end up encoding non-exsistent data into a higher resolution file; ending up with alot of artifacts. That's like jumping from an mp3 into a FLAC file.

I have yet to download it, but the fact that it can convert mkv to avi is enough for me to try it out. I have several mkv files on my computer, but have not been able to find anything to successfully convert to avi - so thank you to MediAvatar and GAOTD - I will certainly download and give it a go.

I have no idea what an MKV file is or what device or product uses them and viewing this companies website does not tell you either. They might shift more product and show up in more search engines if they included a description what products use the file and say they wont play on abc and with this wonderful software you can convert to play files on your xyz

Not a bad piece of software, though it's merely the fact that it actually converts well that sets it apart from most of the competition.

Output from .mkv to .xvid looked as good coming out as going in.

However, it is my opinion that without the ability to add subtitles (.srt and .ssa etc) any mkv converter is pointless.

Btw, while this application does indeed utilize CUDA to expedite conversions, it is not requisite.

Format Factory does all this does and more for free, every day.

Win 7 Pro 64bit
HD-5770

@Arturo
you do did not run into any MKV files in a long time? where do you live, inside an egg? Please refrain from adding stupid and/or nonsense comments, ALL TV series and movies to be downloaded come in MKV now.
This is a fine piece of software, for those that for some weird reasons , want to ocnvert from MKV to something else.

@Lou2
Yes CUDA is for Nvidia users, and it is being placed in almost ALL conversion or playing software....what do you mean?

#3 I just downloaded an MKV last night. This is perfect timing.

Like #2 I am much more interested in a way to convert other HD formats to mkv. My WDTV-HD and other mediaplayers support mkv perfectly and play them right from a harddisk.
I don't see any interest for playing HD vids from small devices with ridiculous small screensizes.

I'm really looking for a soft that turns AVCHD to mkv.

Seems to me the proper usage or design would be mkv to mp3 not the other way around.

Don't know about anybody else here but I haven't run into an mkv file in a long time and I seriously doubt I will anytime soon.

While it might be nice, MY preference is to go TO MKV, not FROM. ALSO... Please note... the CUDA software REQUIRES an NVIdia card. Pass, for me.

Nice to see Windows Phone 7 support. Thanks dev!