Enough With the MKV Rips, or How Can I Create Another Terrible Thread?

[FanIn80]

It's all good. I probably deserve everything I get after this debacle of a thread.

[Lego Man]

ok guys:

i have been using mkv2vob on pc to get all my mkv's to play on my playstation3.

now that i have bought a mac, i have discovered that there is no mkv2vob for mac. How do i get a mkv downloaded onto my mac muxed into vob so i can put it on a harddrive for my viewing pleasure!?!?!?

i would rather not go the media server way. i like to store and watch my videos without having to play with my computer.

[MickMcGeough]

Originally Posted by mpaca

ok guys:

i have been using mkv2vob on pc to get all my mkv's to play on my playstation3.

now that i have bought a mac, i have discovered that there is no mkv2vob for mac. How do i get a mkv downloaded onto my mac muxed into vob so i can put it on a harddrive for my viewing pleasure!?!?!?

i would rather not go the media server way. i like to store and watch my videos without having to play with my computer.

I haven't done this specifically but for most video conversions on a Mac, start with Handbrake.

[Bill Bumface]

WD TV Live.

That is all. You'll never have to worry about source formats/protocols or anything ever again. Wireless 1080p. Booyah!

[Lego Man]

Well, to be honest I would rather mux files than pay 150 for the WD TV. I have been doing it trouble free on windows for a few years already. All i'm looking is to do the same thing on the mac. From what I understand, handbrake actually does something other than only mux the file...

[SebC]

Originally Posted by mpaca

Well, to be honest I would rather mux files than pay 150 for the WD TV. I have been doing it trouble free on windows for a few years already. All i'm looking is to do the same thing on the mac.

Turn your Mac into a PC. Problem solved.

[BlackEleven]

Originally Posted by MickMcGeough

I haven't done this specifically but for most video conversions on a Mac, start with Handbrake.

Handbrake actually re-encodes the video -- a lengthy process. Mkv2vob just takes the streams (audio and video tracks) that are already in a mkv and puts them into a vob, which is just a different container than PS3 understands. This is a very quick process.

He's looking for something similar on Mac, and Handbrake as far as I'm aware only re-encodes video.

[Lego Man]

Originally Posted by SebC

Turn your Mac into a PC. Problem solved.

HAHAHAHA

See, I'd rather buy a copy of Windows 7 and install a partition of windows on my mac than get a WD TV.

But I don't want Windows 7 in the first place. This mkv2vob program is literally the ONLY thing that I need from Windows. Installing Windows 7 for a 1mb program might be borderline silly.

[FanIn80]

Do believe the WD hype. Yes, it plays a lot of formats but there were a few I found it didn't play.

That's not why I hated it, though. The UI is terrible, clunky and riddled with bugs. I'm a network guy, but even I had to continuously babysit this thing anytime I wanted to watch something on it. Whether it was doing a full factory restore just to get it to register the same USB drive it had been using 5 minutes ago (but now wouldn't recognize if its life depended on it), or spending oodles of time monkeying around with the network settings, because it kept dropping my shares.

Of course, there will be lots of backlash from people about this comment, but whatever. I'm pretty picky about quality and efficiency. I used mine for two months and then sold it. I decided to go back to only having half the formats on a device that works properly, over the WD Live which doesn't.

[Russic]

So has anybody successfully used handbrake to create a complete movie file with subtitles using an mkv file and a subtitle file? I've never managed to do it.

[OilKiller]

I have NEVER had a single issue with my WDTV media player. Not one. Plug USB in, play file. It's that simple. Firmware upgrading was a breeze as well.

The interface is easy to get around, makes sense and I've never found a bug.

Were you perhaps using an old version of the firmware?

[FanIn80]

Newest firmware, but I had the HD Live which is different than the just the HD.

[OilKiller]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

Newest firmware, but I had the HD Live which is different than the just the HD.

Fair enough. I've never used the live version. Really have not had a single problem with this second generation model at all though. No wifi, but really, how hard is it to load something on a flash drive and plug it in?

I have AppleTV for streaming radio/my music collection/YouTube/etc.

[FanIn80]

It's not hard to do the USB thing at all. I just prefer to stream. Efficiency is king.

Again, though, the one I had kept refusing to recognize my devices. I'd unplug the thumb drive, copy some stuffs onto it, plug it back in and then spend 15 minutes fiddling with the device to get it to work. Shutting it down, unplugging everything, swapping the wireless stick and the USB stick, clearing settings, etc etc etc. Couple times I had to do a full factory restore to get it to work.

Eventually, I gave up on the USB stuffs and just decided to leave my laptop running and stream everything rather than watch it from a USB drive.

I don't know anything about a 2nd generation device, though. I had mine about 6 months ago, so maybe it was an older one... or it could have just been faulty... I don't know. I chalked it up as "working as intended, but buggy."

[Bob]

I've found UI's for HTPC boxes to be almost uniformly terrible. AppleTV is still the best I've ever seen, but it's too inflexible for me. Most media player skins seem to be about cramming the most amount of bling into the smallest space. I've gotten used to Plex over time, but I still long for the elegance of Front Row.

Mostly what I want is an AppleTV that will stream from a NAS, acellerates VC-1 and H.264 up to 1080p, but still gives access to the ITMS and carries with it a lovely Apple interface. But such a device will never happen so long as Jobs is in control over at Apple, so the next best thing is a third-party box with a pretty interface.

[FanIn80]

I read something in the PS3 Media Player forums that makes me think it works for AppleTV, but I haven't tested it. That would be insanely awesome.

[Bob]

Originally Posted by mpaca

ok guys:

i have been using mkv2vob on pc to get all my mkv's to play on my playstation3.

now that i have bought a mac, i have discovered that there is no mkv2vob for mac. How do i get a mkv downloaded onto my mac muxed into vob so i can put it on a harddrive for my viewing pleasure!?!?!?

i would rather not go the media server way. i like to store and watch my videos without having to play with my computer.

There are good MKV remuxing tools for Mac now, but I'm not sure if any can output to VOB. Most will do MP4 just fine, so if you don't mind transcoding audio to AAC you could go that route. I think it's mkvmerge or mmg or something. Supposedly it will play raw MPEG-2 Transport Stream files (M2TS), which can house everything under the sun (they're used for Blu-Rays, so support is a given). If there's a Mac-equivalent of tsMuxer that might do the trick.

[FanIn80]

Hmm... Is there a good muxing tool for MKV -> MP4?

Edit: For Windows 7, I mean.

[Lego Man]

Originally Posted by Bob

There are good MKV remuxing tools for Mac now, but I'm not sure if any can output to VOB. Most will do MP4 just fine, so if you don't mind transcoding audio to AAC you could go that route. I think it's mkvmerge or mmg or something. Supposedly it will play raw MPEG-2 Transport Stream files (M2TS), which can house everything under the sun (they're used for Blu-Rays, so support is a given). If there's a Mac-equivalent of tsMuxer that might do the trick.

Thanks! I'll look into those options right away!

[ZedMan]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

Hmm... Is there a good muxing tool for MKV -> MP4?

Edit: For Windows 7, I mean.

I've used GOTSent before, works pretty well. Took about 2 minutes for an 'hour' long 720p TV show.