How to Convert mp4 to mkv

So a friend gives you a really nice home movie that they shot in HD and also in 5.1 audio.  Then they kindly compressed it all into an mp4 file with aac audio so that it would be simple for you to play.

Except....your surround system doesn't know what to do with aac, and all you hear is 2 channel stereo audio.  Not the end of the world, of course, but a bit frustrating.

To fix this, you need to change the audio to ac3 (Dolby® Surround) so that you can enjoy the full experience.  The problem is that mp4 files do not support ac3 audio!  Now we turn to our old friend mkvmerge gui, and we can remux that mp4 into a nice mkv file in short order.  On a modern PC this should take less than one minute.

Now you have a nice new and shiny mkv file, but your audio is still in aac.  Using Popcorn MKV Audio Converter, you can change that aac 5.1 to glorious ac3 5.1 in less than 5 minutes.  Now you can finally enjoy your friend's creativity in the manner in which it was intended.

Please note that this could also be accomplished on pro video conversion tools that are available, and also on great freeware programs such as Handbrake.  However, a conversion process is quite processor intensive, and would take a much longer time (possibly more than one hour) to accomplish what these 2 pieces of freeware can in only a few minutes.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Surviving Starlink Beta

 I was approved for the Starlink beta at the beginning of March 2021, and have been using it not quite daily since.  It was very simple to set up, just as advertised.  I am not yet using it as my main service, as I ordered a mount to put it up on my antenna pole.  The speed is quite good, although there is a little noticeable drag as it switches between satellites.  One thing I found amusing was as I was testing the speed, I was testing on dslreports, and it allows you to set the type of service.  However, when I set it to satellite, the server said my response time was too fast for me to be on satellite, and I had to set a different service type.  I hope the speed lives up to the promises, and I am happy that this service has come out for my location, as I doubt fibre will ever happen here.
Read more

Leaving LastPass for Bitwarden

 Now that LastPass is beginning to charge for logging in on more than one device many are leaving the service.  I must admit I have been a stalwart LastPass user for several years, and was dreading the change to a different service.  However, I have moved over to Bitwarden, and even though they don't include as many things as the old LastPass did, they are still quite good, and I plan on staying there.  Since they are more open-source some things aren't quite as well integrated as LastPass was, and I still have not been able to get their Chrome extension to work.  Nevertheless, I am happy with the offering, and, ironically, I may start paying for some of their premium services! Have you switched away from LastPass, or are you wondering what I'm talking about?  Let me know in the comments! 
Read more

ATSC 3.0 or NextgenTV

Image
In case you've missed it, changes are coming to our beloved broadcast TV!  After several years of great HD content, with the best signals available, it was apparent that the local stations were getting left behind in the push to UHD, or 4K.  To remedy this situation, several markets in the US have already started to rollout the new channels, and over the next couple of years, this service will be in most major markets.   In order to receive these new signals, you will either require a UHD TV with an ATSC 3.0 tuner built in, or purchase an external tuner.  If you don't have a UHD TV yet, and your HD TV is working fine, you may want to wait until all of the manufacturers have added them.  So far, only a couple have added them to their higher end sets.  I will be following up with more on this over the next few weeks.  So stay tuned!
Read more