Script to Convert mkv to mp4 for your PS3

[ASULutzy]

I noticed that a lot of the HD video content I find on the internet is usually a .mkv file. Unfortunately, the PS3 won't natively play these files, and reencoding HD video takes forever, but luckily we can convert to .mp4 with no quality loss and no video reencoding.

This script assumes you already have all the necessary tools for converting mkv files and dealing with aac audio. (gpac, unstripped libs, mkvtoolsnix)

Anyway, here's the script. It will convert all mkv's in the current folder and all subfolders to mp4's, deleting the mkv's and cleaning up all the temp stuff. It currently deletes the original mkv file, but if you don't want it to do that or you think I suck at writing scripts, just comment out the if statement and the rm -f line.

Let me know if you encounter any problems while using it.

#!/bin/bash

find . -type f | grep .mkv$ | while read file
do
 directory=`dirname "$file"`
 title=`basename "$file" .mkv`
 AC3=`mkvinfo "$file" | grep AC3` #check if it's AC3 audio or DTS
 AAC=`mkvinfo "$file" | grep AAC`
 order=`mkvinfo "$file" | grep "Track type" | sed 's/.*://' | head -n 1 | tr -d " "` #check if the video track is first or the audio track
 if [ "$order" = "video" ]; then
  fps=`mkvinfo "$file" | grep duration | sed 's/.*(//' | sed 's/f.*//' | head -n 1` #store the fps of the video track
  if [ -n "$AC3" ]; then
   mkvextract tracks "$file" 1:"${title}".264 2:"${title}".ac3 
   ffmpeg -i "${title}".ac3 -acodec libfaac -ab 576k "${title}".aac
 #  mplayer -ao pcm:file="${title}".wav:fast "${title}".ac3
 #  faac -o "${title}".aac "${title}".wav
  elif [ -n "$AAC" ]; then
   mkvextract tracks "$file" 1:"${title}".264 2:"${title}".aac
  else
   mkvextract tracks "$file" 1:"${title}".264 2:"${title}".dts
   ffmpeg -i "${title}".dts -acodec libfaac -ab 576k "${title}".aac
  fi
 else
  fps=`mkvinfo "$file" | grep duration | sed 's/.*(//' | sed 's/f.*//' | tail -n 1`
  if [ -n "$AC3" ]; then
   mkvextract tracks "$file" 1:"${title}".ac3 2:"${title}".264
   ffmpeg -i "${title}".ac3 -acodec libfaac -ab 576k "${title}".aac
  # mplayer -ao pcm:file="${title}".wav:fast "${title}".ac3
  # faac -o "${title}".aac "${title}".wav
  elif [ -n "$AAC" ]; then
   mkvextract tracks "$file" 1:"${title}".264 2:"${title}".aac
  else
   mkvextract tracks "$file" 1:"${title}".dts 2:"${title}".264
   ffmpeg -i "${title}".dts -acodec libfaac -ab 576k "${title}".aac
  fi
 fi
 MP4Box -new "${directory}/${title}".mp4 -add "${title}".264 -add "${title}".aac -fps $fps
 rm -f "$title".aac "$title".dts "$title".ac3 "$title".264 "${title}".wav
 if [ -f "${directory}/${title}".mp4 ]; then
  rm -f "$file"
 fi
done

[frustratednerd]

Whenever I try this, the script tries to import a .aac file with an identical filename of the .mkv that I'm trying to convert, but it can't find it, so it stops right there. What do I do now?

[rubylaser]

Can you run mkvinfo against your mkv file and paste the results in here? I'm guessing that you have either a weird audio codec, or the mkv file has the tracks in a different order than video, audio. Looking at this script it should work in most situations.

[divinebovine]

I was running into the same problem that frustratednerd mentioned above. I had to change the libfaac to aac and I had to add a -strict experimental flag on the ffmpeg lines.

ASULutzy or rubylaser, did you compile ffmpeg from source? If so, maybe thats why it doesn't work for us. I know I just installed it from the repos. Just a thought.

[ki3456]

thank you, that was really helpful. I didn't need to convert the audio since it was all aac. One suggestion. mkvextract automatically overwrites files with the same name. So instead of extracting to

$Title.264 and $Title.aac

you can just extract to video.264 and audio.aac. then in mp4box mux -add video.264 -add audio.aac When it comes to demuxing the next mkv in the folder video.264 and audio.aac will be overwritten and the file names reused.

[inobe]

why not just use DeVeDe and maintain the high resolution .mkv offers?

just choose the divx option.

the ps3 will play this file, so would divx home players if the file is burned as a data dvd.

[ki3456]

Here is a cut down version of the script I used. There is no conversion, no checking that video is first stream, and no deletion.

#!/bin/bash

find . -type f | grep .mkv$ | while read file
do
 directory=`dirname "$file"`
 title=`basename "$file" .mkv`
 AAC=`mkvinfo "$file" | grep AAC`
 fps=`mkvinfo "$file" | grep duration | sed 's/.*(//' | sed 's/f.*//' | head -n 1` 
 mkvextract tracks "$file" 0:video.264 1:audio.aac
 MP4Box -new "${directory}/${title}".mp4 -add video.264 -add audio.aac -fps $fps
done

[ki3456]

It just occured to me the other problem with PS3 is it won't attempt to play video higher than level 4.1. Some encoders accidentally set the level to 5.1 Since the tracks are already demuxed might as well set the level to 4.1, so at least the PS3 will try to play the file.

To do that you need to hexedit raw video file. Hexalter will do the job from the command line.

#!/bin/bash

find . -type f | grep .mkv$ | while read file
do
 directory=`dirname "$file"`
 title=`basename "$file" .mkv`
 AAC=`mkvinfo "$file" | grep AAC`
 fps=`mkvinfo "$file" | grep duration | sed 's/.*(//' | sed 's/f.*//' | head -n 1` 
 mkvextract tracks "$file" 0:video.264 1:audio.aac
 hexalter video.264 0x7=41
 MP4Box -new "${directory}/${title}".mp4 -add video.264 -add audio.aac -fps $fps
done

link for hexalter

http://www.kuwanger.net/hexalter.zip

[Zilioum]

I was fiddling around for a long time with this .mkv to .mp4 problem, and now I've finally written a little program to take care of it. Here is the URL of the projects page on github:https://github.com/Basphil/MKVToMP4Converter.
Turning an .mkv file in an .mp4 file works well, it does check for the order of audio/video streams and chooses the right fps. Depending of the orignal audio format it also changes the volume a bit, becuase in my experience aac tends to be louder in an .mkv than in an .mp4 file.
You can additionally have it watch a directory for new .mkv files, and then it automatically converts them. I'm still working on this part, but for single .mkv files it works reasonably well.

There are still improvements to do (like delete the temp files etc.) but I hope that it can be of use for you.

[x0lani]

ASULutzy's first script in this worked really well for me, though it needed some tweaking. For example, if track 1 is AAC and track 2 is video, the extraction will output to the wrong files.

The AAC encoding bitrate seems really high at 576k. Why not use 320k? Or am I missing something?

A further improvement might be to use the Nero AAC encoder, since the libfaac one seems to have a bit of a bad reputation.

@Zilioum, I was never able to get your converter to work.

I'm a noob on these forums. Where would be the best place to create a HOW-TO on this topic. It seems to come up a lot with all the PS3's out there.