Jkx@home

#!/usr/bin/python
# Little script to depack Matroska file, and repack them
# in a AVI + subtitle format.

import sys
import os

def message(msg):
    print "=" * 78
    print "= %s" % msg
    print "=" * 78

def usage():
    print "Mastroka repacker script"
    print "  Usage: "+sys.argv[0]+ " filename"

if __name__ == "__main__":
    if len(sys.argv) < 2:
       usage()
    else:
       filename = sys.argv[1]
       basename = filename[:-4]
       message("Unpacking file: %s" % filename)
       os.system("mkvextract tracks %s 1:temp_video.avi 2:temp_audio.ogg 3:%s.srt" % (filename,basename) )

       message("Repacking file: %s.avi" % basename)
       os.system("ffmpeg -i temp_audio.ogg  -i temp_video.avi  -vcodec copy  %s.avi" % (basename) )

       message("Cleaning files")
       os.system("rm temp_video.avi temp_audio.ogg")

27 Responses to “How to convert matroska MKV to AVI on Linux ?”

1. # Anonymouson 10 Jun 2007 at 3:48 pm

   This script depends on package mkvtoolnix

2. # Rafael31on 25 Sep 2007 at 8:18 pm

   i have a problem with this…
   built on Jan 28 2007 22:48:38, gcc: 4.1.2 20070106 (prerelease) (Ubuntu 4.1.1-21ubuntu7)
   temp_audio.ogg: could not find codec parameters
   Cleaning files
   root@desktop:/Potter
   When it finish remove the file .ogg and .avi
   Please.
   what i need?

3. # Descoreon 01 Dec 2007 at 2:57 pm

   Cool script, thanks for that !!!

4. # bretton 08 Jan 2008 at 12:22 am

   Tried the script but then fell foul with the ffmpeg params.

   After checking out the ffmpeg site I found the latest version as of 8/1/2008 supports .mkv:

   ffmpeg -i cobra.mkv -target vcd cobra.avi

5. # Albatrosson 13 Apr 2008 at 5:09 pm

   Thanks for that update, Brett, it was exactly what I needed.

6. # Kevinon 16 Apr 2008 at 8:52 am

   Thanks,

   Very useful…

7. # Keith Hanlanon 19 Apr 2008 at 4:57 am

   I’m new to this so I’m a bit confused. I tried this on a 1.1GB 720p x264 encoding and wound up with a 26MB audio file with no video. The sound quality was seriously degraded as well. I commented out the temp_video.avi file, which looks to be about the right size, but I couldn’t find anything that could play it.

   What am I missing here?

   Thanks,
   Keith

8. # adminon 19 Apr 2008 at 12:53 pm

   Keith, check the mkv contains a ogg file. It’s perhaps something else. (try the file command)

9. # Keith Hanlanon 20 Apr 2008 at 11:07 pm

   Thanks for your reply “jkx”.

   “file *” returns the following:

   keithh@pvr [106]: file *
   temp_audio.ogg: ATSC A/52 aka AC-3 aka Dolby Digital stream, 48 kHz,, complete main (CM) 3 front/2 rear, LFE on,, 384 kbit/s reserved Dolby Surround mode
   temp_video.avi: JVT NAL sequence, H.264 video @ L 51
   XXXXX.hdtv.x264-bia.avi: RIFF (little-endian) data, AVI, 0 x 0, >30 fps,
   XXXXX.hdtv.x264-bia.mkv: Matroska data

   It managed to extract a decent sized ogg file but the file command gives no indication of whether or not it is an ogg file. It probably isn’t since it’s video. Am I barking up the wrong tree here? Was your script only intended to extract the audio?

   keithh@pvr [105]: wc -c *
   139198464 temp_audio.ogg
   1012791223 temp_video.avi
   25978426 XXXXX.hdtv.x264-bia.avi
   1153155923 XXXXX.hdtv.x264-bia.mkv
   2331132311 total

   I mispoke when I said I commented out the temp_video.avi file. I meant to say that I commented out the *removal* of that file in your script.

   It looks like the tools are willing to do what I need. Perhaps I need some different options. Any more suggestions that you might have would be very welcome.

   Thanks again,
   Keith

10. # adminon 20 Apr 2008 at 11:53 pm

    Hum, take care the ogg file is a 5.2 stream. I’m quite sure you need to resample (or tweak) ffmpeg to handle this.

11. # jonon 22 May 2008 at 1:53 am

    Hi -

    Does the conversion decrease the quality of the video/audio?

    Thanks

12. # adminon 22 May 2008 at 8:06 am

    No, the quality remains the same. In fact, it’s only a repack, not a real convert

13. # Yoshiion 16 Jun 2008 at 9:54 am

    Hi i got an error when i tried this script,
    I put this script into a file called mkvtoavi and made it executeable
    then in bash#

    ./mkvtoavi
    File “./mkvtoavi”, line 9
    print “=” * 78
    ^
    IndentationError: expected an indented block

    And i am not really good with scriptprogramming. but it seems it’s something thats missing :( please reply to my email as soon as you can :)

14. # earthforce_1on 01 Jul 2008 at 5:53 pm

    Ok, figured out an answer to my own question, and got it down to one line with no intermediate files. Your modified .py script becomes:

    #!/usr/bin/python
    # Little script to depack Matroska file, and repack them
    # in a AVI + subtitle format.

    import sys
    import os

    def message(msg):
    print “=” * 78
    print “= %s” % msg
    print “=” * 78

    def usage():
    print “Mastroka repacker script”
    print ” Usage: “+sys.argv[0]+ ” filename”

    if __name__ == “__main__”:
    if len(sys.argv) < 2:
    usage()
    else:
    filename = sys.argv[1]
    basename = filename[:-4]
    message(”Converting file: %s” % filename)
    os.system(”mencoder %s -ovc lavc -oac lavc -o %s.avi” % (filename,basename) )

15. # Stevenon 13 Jul 2008 at 6:19 pm

    To Yoshii, this script needs you to tab in some things to work…

    #!/usr/bin/python
    # Little script to depack Matroska file, and repack them
    # in a AVI + subtitle format.

    import sys
    import os

    def message(msg):
    TAB—>print “=” * 78
    TAB—>print “= %s” % msg
    TAB—>print “=” * 78

    def usage():
    TAB—>print “Mastroka repacker script”
    TAB—>print ” Usage: “+sys.argv[0]+ ” filename”

    if __name__ == “__main__”:
    TAB—>if len(sys.argv) TAB—>usage()
    TAB—>else:
    TAB—>TAB—>filename = sys.argv[1]
    TAB—>TAB—>basename = filename[:-4]

    message(”Unpacking file: %s” % filename)
    os.system(”mkvextract tracks %s 1:temp_video.avi 2:temp_audio.ogg 3:%s.srt” % (filename,basename) )

    message(”Repacking file: %s.avi” % basename)
    os.system(”ffmpeg -i temp_audio.ogg -i temp_video.avi -vcodec copy %s.avi” % (basename) )

    message(”Cleaning files”)
    os.system(”rm temp_video.avi temp_audio.ogg”)

16. # Daniel P. Clarkon 02 Aug 2008 at 3:19 pm

    What about importing the subtitles into the target avi?

17. # adminon 02 Aug 2008 at 3:26 pm

    To import the sub you can use Avidemux. I used this software a couple of times without issue.

18. # Martinon 16 Sep 2008 at 3:47 pm

    ::SIGH::

    I realize that people tend to “think” in their favorite language, but isn’t using python for this sort of like swatting a fly with a sledgehammer?

    #!/bin/bash
    [[ -z "$1" ]] && echo “usage: $0 filename” && exit
    mencoder $1 -ovc lavc -oac lavc -o `basename $1 .${1#*.}`.avi

19. # Timoon 07 Oct 2008 at 11:58 pm

    Martin: that also re-encodes the streams, better use copy. Also, basename matches first ‘.’, which means that foo.bar.mkv becomes foo.avi..

    Maybe use best of both approaches, and modify the original to just have:

    message(”Converting %s to %s.avi” % (filename, basename))
    os.system(”mencoder %s -ovc copy -oac copy -o %s.avi” % (filename, basename) )

20. # Everton 13 Oct 2008 at 6:35 pm

    So which is better/quicker to use? ffmpeg or mencoder? 8-)

21. # DaveCon 24 Oct 2008 at 12:39 am

    mencoder has long been the most flexible OSS tool for producing and repacking AVI’s … ffmpeg is more useful at low level stuff where you need to re-encode.

    using -ovc copy is both better and much faster, as it avoids re-encoding the video …. also mencoder’s default settings for video encoding are designed around non-HD quality and internet streaming, and you’ll end up having to dink around. I’m sticking with -oac lavc and leaving it to re-encode to the default non-Dolby “DVD style” audio (2 x 48kHz) since I don’t have surround sound set up yet and the file sizes are about 10% smaller.

    My goal is to get stuff to play on the Sony PS3 which has become our DVD player - it happily plays files from CD-R and DVD-R (and presumably BD-RE though the blanks are kind pricey :-) and it will play AVI’s in HDTV formats, but it does not (as of the latest PS3 OS build) speak Matroska and likely never will (Sony being pro-proprietary)

22. # Davidon 08 Dec 2008 at 9:41 am

    This is very helpful, thanks!

    I am able to use mencoder to convert mkv file to avi but it does not have audio. I read some sites online. They are saying it is because multple audio. I wonder if anyone has solution for it?

    Thanks in advance!

23. # None 1on 19 Apr 2009 at 11:22 am

    Cannot find the site to download mkvextract

    Your request for http://corecodec.org/projects/mkvextractgui could not be fulfilled, because the connection to corecodec.org (69.45.6.150) could not be established.

24. # None 1on 19 Apr 2009 at 11:47 am

    I did this manually. However, I have missed something (the python script only gave errors)

    $ mkvextract tracks down-ltroi-720p.mkv 1:temp_video.avi 2:temp_audio.ogg 3:down-ltroi-720p.srt
    $ mkdir temp
    $ cd temp
    $ mkvextract tracks ../down-ltroi-720p.mkv 1:temp_video.avi 2:temp_audio.ogg 3:down-ltroi-720p.srt
    Extracting track 1 with the CodecID ‘V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC’ to the file ‘temp_video.avi’. Container format: AVC/h.264 elementary stream
    Extracting track 2 with the CodecID ‘A_DTS’ to the file ‘temp_audio.ogg’. Container format: Digital Theater System (DTS)
    Extracting track 3 with the CodecID ‘S_TEXT/UTF8′ to the file ‘down-ltroi-720p.srt’. Container format: SRT text subtitles
    progress: 100%

    $ ffmpeg -i temp_audio.ogg -i temp_video.avi -vcodec copy temp_video.avi
    FFmpeg version SVN-rUNKNOWN, Copyright (c) 2000-2007 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
    configuration: –enable-gpl –enable-pp –enable-swscaler –enable-pthreads –enable-libvorbis –enable-libtheora –enable-libogg –enable-libgsm –enable-dc1394 –disable-debug –enable-libmp3lame –enable-libfaadbin –enable-libfaad –enable-libfaac –enable-xvid –enable-x264 –enable-liba52 –enable-amr_nb –enable-amr_wb –enable-shared –prefix=/usr
    libavutil version: 1d.49.3.0
    libavcodec version: 1d.51.38.0
    libavformat version: 1d.51.10.0
    built on Mar 17 2009 21:37:49, gcc: 4.2.4 (Ubuntu 4.2.4-1ubuntu3)
    [mp3 @ 0xb7ec6110]Could not find codec parameters (Audio: mp2, 112 kb/s)
    temp_audio.ogg: could not find codec parameters

25. # Steveon 26 Apr 2009 at 7:14 pm

    sh -x conversion.sh
    hangs on “import os”

26. # Chrison 15 May 2009 at 4:43 pm

    Sweet script, once I got the tabs sorted out it worked great! I’ve got 6 seasons of Ranma 1/2 to convert with this now!!! Thanks for the handy script.

27. # adminon 15 May 2009 at 5:04 pm

    I fixed the tab issue, and pushed the file on the SVN …

Leave a Reply