Tech Tip Tuesday: Troublesome MKV files Work Around

So yesterday's blog posting was on
MKV (Mastroka) Video files, and
using my friend emmgunn's MKV Tools
to create a usable format (.avi or .mp4)
file that used less system resources,
so that you could easily edit in
MpegStreamclip, (avi) or just drag
and drop to your iPod or Apple Tv.
(.mp4)

But this assumes that the video can be
transcoded, and isn't using a properitary
codec ( audio or video) that would prevent it
from being transcoded into a useable format.

Let's say for the sake of this post you have an
.mkv file, that for audio has standard AAC
audio, but for the video has a weird variant of
.h264 for the Video portion of the file.

You try to process it with MKV Tools, but
it is having a hard time trying to process the
video, transcoding it to XVID. You already
tried to open it Quicktime Pro Player, and
it opens, but scrubbing through to
edit it causes nothing but spinning beachballs,
and the same is true for MpegStreamclip.

To add insult to injury, it is only 30mins in length,
and MKV Tools is taking at least twice that in
just getting to 50% of the file transcoded!

Well, there is another option you can try to get
something useable at this point.

First, let's stop everything and start simply.
First let's see if we can play it without
it stuttering or giving any beachaballs.
For that, we'll use VLC Player.

So we open VLC Player, and we try and open our
troublesome MKV file. Success it opens,
and we can play it start to finish.
We also notice while in VLC, it has English
subtitles turned on, and they display
while playing. Perfect!

So we know we can view our video intact using VLC.
Armed with that, we know we can capture it.
So for that we'll use my favorite app,
iShowU.

Launch iShowU, and set it to a capture window
as large as Normal size in VLC. For instance,
if the normal playing window of the file is
640 x 480 pixels, we'll set it to that in
iShowU.

Next, we set iShowU to capture system audio,
and to capture the video as a DV Stream file
to our disc destination ( the Desktop is fine).
Set it to not follow the mouse cursor,
and click record.

Play the video again in VLC, and let it play
for the entire length of 30 minutes.

When it is done, stop VLC, and stop recording in
iShowU. A few minutes later, iShowU will have
a complete version of the mkv file,
subtitles hard encoded, as a DV Stream file.

This file is now ready for you to use in MpegStreamclip,
or iMovie, FCE, and FCP, and to edit to your
heart's content.

But let's say for a moment, that back when we
tried to play it in Quicktime Pro Player, that
it actually did not give us beachballs, and that
we could scrub through without much hassle.

You could then try something much easier:
Try exporting from Quicktime Pro Player
as a DV Stream file, and let it make the attempt.
The file should be intact audio and video wise,
but may or may not embed the subtitles
if they are present.

So I would recommend first the option of "capturing"
the playback of the .mkv through iShowU to
get the fast, most usable file (with hard coded
subtitles if present) into your NLE.

But if you have time, you can try the Quicktime Pro Player
option, which may take up to double the amount of
runtime of the file ( 1 hour for a 30min file) and
may or may not embed the subtitles.

Mac App Monday: Spotlighting Great Little Know Apps

Apple Events often are REALLY, REALLY boring things.
You'd expect some great magical Steve Jobs-ian type
of moment where, you get introduced to something really
really cool, that would help you with your productivity,
or at the very least, help you get through a project
in iMovie or Garageband that your stuck on.

Instead you are often given 6 hours of butt to the chair,
non stop PR talk about how great Apple is doing,
how great Apple will be doing, and how you can
be a part of that by buying more apple product.

But occasionaly, you do get something cool for
coming, and not just the free can of soda that
comes with the boxed lunch.

And at this event, not only did we get to see something
cool from Apple, but then they gave it to us
( in attendance only) for FREE.

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I Present the little app
that changes the game: Screen Capture.


Screen Capture, we are told leverages the power of
Core Video in Quicktime, and enables something
really cool: You can, for free, screen capture your
mac and save it to a quicktime movie file.
You can even record your voice while you work on screen,
annotating the event you are doing, and once done,
you can turn that into a podcast, or share it
as is with collegues to show them how to do
that which they have been stumbling around on
in their Mac app of choice. ( which is what I've
been doing of late)

The results are impressive: On an MBP Intel Core Duo 2.0,
I can capture 1440 x 900 at 5fps in Best mode
to Mpeg-4 with AAC audio at 1080 x 675 and
at 950 x 594 at 15fps in Better Mode to
Mpeg-4 with AAC audio as well, and yet it
was very watchable and played back quite nicely.

Now, it's no iShowU ( my favorite app of this type),
but it is two things: (1) FREE, and (2) leverages
both the built in iSight Camera and Quicktime
to put something together that costly apps can
only do one of ( iShowU does the video, but doesn't
leverage the isight Camera to record audio).

Word is now that Apple is incorporating this tech
into Snow Leopard going forward. The app that
was given to us at the even for FREE works only
on Leopard and only on Intel based Macs
( sorry PPC and Tiger).

If you get to go to an apple event, show up with a flash drive,
and be prepared to get at lest something for showing up;
while I didn't expect anything this cool, it was worth
the 6hours of butt in a chair aerobics I had to endure.