All-Purpose Multimedia Format: Everyone Needs an MKV Converter

“All-purpose multimedia format”, if someone told me this years ago, I was gonna tell you, “It’s bullshit!” But today, I’m gonna tell you, it’s true, and it’s called MKV – the real all-purpose multimedia format.

I don’t know how others get uptake of the format, but as an anime lover, I’ve got recognition for this multimedia container format from Daiphyer.com, an anime forum where I used to download animes. And one day when I was getting into the forum and looking for new animes, I found some new extensioned in .mkv.

It’s a brand-new format unacquainted to me. So I downloaded some and tried them out. In the very beginning, I thought there were no specials until I visited the MKV official site and read the specifications.

What exactly is MKV?

MKV file is a Matroska file for Videos with audios and subtitles, and if you noticed there are two sentences outstanding at the MKV official homepage: “It is NOT a video or audio compression format (video codec); It is an envelope for which there can be many audio, video and subtitles streams, allowing the user to store a complete movie or CD in a single file.”

In simple words through my understanding, it’s saying the format significantly features combination-only and envelope without file internal structure rebuilding and data recompressing. In other words, it’s a pure multimedia container format just as I mentioned above.

Lets move on to the structure of the video media file enveloped by MKV plainly. MKV file is combined with two main parts. While the primary part is storing the video and audio tracks which playback needs, the secondary part is also divided into two parts including multiple types of subtitle tracks embedded in MKV file for onscreen appearing and unlimited numbers of attachments. Designed for particular needs users requested, the attachments can be the image files, the text files, the compressed packages or any other kind of files.

So, is it enough? Of course not! You still need something like “paper knife” to unpack the envelope, the plugin.

We know that MKV has only offered one standard for the container enveloping. That means if you want to open up the MKV file under the operating system you are using, you should have it coupled with particular correlative plugins. Go a little further, it means if you want to playback the video and audio tracks of the MKV file with players you are holding, you have to make sure the particular plugin has been installed, which firstly enables the player to support the MKV container standard and secondly includes the correlative CODECs for the video and audio tracks.

Strongpoint

• Assuming that all above has been done, MKV format would behave as well as any other format does to be the all-purpose multimedia format.
• As the MKV format supports containing multiple audio tracks, it is available to add one or more dubbings in various languages into just one MKV file.
• With a DVD-like menu system integrated, MKV format supports Chapter management to help you customize segments with “bookmarks”.
• Being capable of containing subtitles differing in language and type, MKV format also allows subtitles to be changed or hidden.
• If there are more than one video tracks inside, you could alternatively switch them into current playing just like angle changes of DVD.

Drawback

• As we said, the only offered MKV container standard with no detail on video and audio encoding makes it possible to be the all-purpose format. But, it also brings out some inconveniences, such as you might probably spend so much time on looking for a fit plugin for your MKV file.
• Due to the unlimited definition of the header of MKV file, it would be very likely to spend a lot of time on file loading for the huge size of header file.

Regardless what shortages left, the improvement and optimization are still in progress. Anyway, MKV format stands for a new direction on multimedia researching, and I firmly believe in the near future, everyone needs an MKV converter. And there’s a guide for how to convert MOV to MKV you can see.

I got a question where someone asked me how to do a QuickTime MOV to MP4 conversion using QuickTime Pro 7. The answer to this depends on what MP4 file you want.

Someone may ask, “why it’s counting on the MP4 file I want? If you are a real Apple aficionado, you must not be unacquainted with QuickTime’s export function!”

Uh-huh, it’s easily to open up QuickTime “Export” option from the “file” menu and easily to select converting “Movies to MPEG-4”, and click “Save”. And even, you can just directly modify the file extension from .mov into .mp4 to do the conversion. Yes, these are somewhat MOV to MP4 change. But is it enough?

For some QuickTime newbies who are new to the process of MOV to MP4 creation, things can be quite confusing. In some cases, they did the conversion just as above, but found the output MP4 files cannot be played on the PSP or other MP4 players.

Let’s go back to the scene before “Save” click. Press the “Options” button right-hand “Export” box to pop out the “MPEG-4 Export Settings” dialog. Under the dialog, you’ll find there are 2 choices for “File Format” selection: MP4 ISMA and MP4.

ISMA (Internet Streaming Media Alliance) is an early alliance with representatives from all points of the streaming work-flow. Therefore the MP4 ISMA is especially better for streaming media over Internet and cellular phones with a low resolution. So if you are trying to get an MP4 movie in common or in HD, take the “MP4” file format.

Likewise, there are more than one options out there for “Video Format”. “None” means you can just get music or audio off the original movie without any image frames. “MPEG-4 Basic” defined the normal MP4 videos in some kind of low compression ratio. “MPEG-4 Improved” offers you HD MP4 video output using MPEG-4 codec, while “H.264” also gives you the high definition video quality with H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC either) codec. “Pass Through” is interesting. It just changes the MOV video container to be the MP4 video container without any interchanges, and this, is what I mentioned above, the “extension modification”.So that’s it. All the left is just to keep the default parameters or do some changes, and then, click “Save”.

OK, if there are still confusions about conversion from MOV to MP4, and MOV to HD MP4, please go to MOV Converter and see this guide: How to convert MOV to MP4 and MOV to HD MP4 with QuickTime Pro 7?

DVD is great. It can store movies, music, and even backup data with a DVD burner like Nero. Of course, all the stored can be also conversely ripped out with DVD ripper software like ImTOO DVD Ripper Ultimate. But, with the introduction of high-definition TV (HDTV) to the world, DVD storage capacity showed to be insufficient to this application.

DVD supports a resolution up to 720×480 pixels, while HDTV works with resolutions as high as 1920×1080 pixels. Just to give you an idea, two hours of high-definition video with data compression requires 22 GB of storage space. Keep in mind that the maximum capacity of a DVD is of 17 GB, if a DVD-18 disc is used (a dual-sided dual-layer disc).

So how to provide a higher data storage capacity for high-definition contents? Here are the two DVD successor candidates: Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD.

 In fact, a Blu-ray Disc or a HD-DVD is just a DVD disc with a higher storage capacity to store high-definition contents. The main motivation to the creation of a DVD successor was the introduction of HDTV, which requires a higher disc storage capacity, feature a regular DVD cannot provide. But how a Blu-ray Disc or a HD-DVD is able to store more data than a regular DVD disc?

Both Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs have the same physical size of DVD discs (and CDs), with a diameter of 12 cm (120 mm, around 4 ¾”).

 The key to both Blu-ray and HD-DVD technologies is the use of a blue-purple laser to read and write data from the disc. This laser has a smaller wavelength with higher recording density compared to the red laser used by DVD players.

During the recording of a Blu-ray or HD-DVD disc a high-power blue-purple laser is used to burn pits on the disc surface. The areas than weren’t burned are known as lands.

During the reading of a Blue-Ray or HD-DVD disc a blue-purple laser with lower intensity is thrown on the disc surface. When the light reaches a pit it is reflected back with a lower intensity compared when it hit a land. As the pit height corresponds to ¼ of the laser wavelength, the reflected light reaches the photosensor found on the Blu-ray or HD-DVD player half wavelength dephased (¼ on its way in + ¼ on its way back = ½). This is how the Blu-ray or HD-DVD player can recognize if an area is a pit or a land: the amount of light reflected by a land is higher than the amount reflected by a pit.

You could think that each spot where the light is reflected with a higher intensity (land) equals to a “1” bit while each spot where the light is reflected with a lower intensity (pit) equals to a “0” bit. However Blu-ray and HD-DVD players use the transition between pits and lands or lands and pits to represent a “1” bit and the absence of such transitions to represent a “0” bit.

Each bit read this way is called an optical bit. They still do not represent directly a data “0” or “1”. A process known as modulation is still required to convert optical bits into data bits. HD-DVD uses a modulation technique called ETM (Eight to Twelve Modulation), which converts each group of eight data bits (one byte) into 12 optical bits. Blue-Ray uses a modulation technique called 17PP that converts a variable number of optical bits in data bits based on rules defined by the modulation algorithm.

Just like what happens on CDs and DVDs, on Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs pits and lands are organized into a single spiral track that starts at the center of the disc and ends at the border of the disc. The smaller the distance between the spiral tracks, more data can be stored on the disc. On Blu-ray discs this distance is smaller than on HD-DVD discs (0.32 µm vs. 0.40 µm, respectively).

 Also, on Blu-ray discs each pit measures 0.13 µm, while on HD-DVD discs they measure 0.20 µm.But why do HD-DVD discs use bigger pits compared to Blu-ray if both use a laser with the same wavelength? The answer is the distance between the recording layer and the lacquer layer. On Blu-ray discs the recording layer is only 0.1 mm distant from the lacquer layer, which allows a higher recording density (HD-DVD discs use the same distance as DVDs, 0.6 mm). On the other hand Blu-ray discs must be handled more carefully, as any scratch on its surface can easily reach the recording layer, compromising the recorded data. That is why some Blu-ray discs come inside a caddy in order to avoid physical damage.

As we can see, technologically speaking Blu-ray and HD-DVD are very similar, the main difference between the two being the storage capacity.

A single-layer Blu-ray disc can hold up to 25 GB, while a single-layer HD-DVD disc can hold up to “only” 15 GB. A dual-layer Blu-ray disc can store up to 54 GB, while a dual-layer HD-DVD can store only up to 30 GB.

As we saw, on the storage size Blu-ray has a better advantage over HD-DVD, even though Blu-ray discs are more expensive. A single-layer Blu-ray Disc can hold up to 25 GB while the same disc using HD-DVD technology can store only 15 GB. A dual-layer Blu-ray Disc can store up to 54 GB, while the same disc using HD-DVD technology can store only up to 30 GB.

In terms of compatibility, both Blu-ray and HD-DVD players are capable of playing CDs and DVDs, but it won’t be possible to read a Blu-ray disc on a HD-DVD player and vice-versa (it is technically possible to create a player that can read both formats, but it will probably cost almost twice, as it will need two separated circuits inside the unit, one for each technology, and someone are trying to…).

 For now, DVD discs continue to be a good choice for the average Joe. If you are not a technology freak, why not just keep going with your Nero and ImTOO? BTW, I recommend an Xbox 360 HD video converter for your Xbox HD.

From official site for XboX, we learned information as to the XboX360 that it supports such a bit of video formats as WMV, HD-WMV, H.264, and MPEG-4. It’s been said that if you got an Xbox 360 Component HD AV Cable connected to your high-definition or HD-ready television or monitor, you can view DVD movies in 480p and HD-DVD movies in 480p, 720p, or 1080i, and view both DVD and HD-DVD movies in any supported resolution up to 1080p with an Xbox 360 VGA HD AV Cable. So we are informed with the resolutions support.

Back to the purpose of this article, I would give you a technical way to convert video files unsupported by XboX360 into an XboX360 supported HD-WMV file in 1080p, and you can totally Do-It-Yourself with ease. Due to my personal buy, I will show you the whole process with a useful software tool – Xilisoft Video Converter (also, there is Xbox 360 converter now).

When the installation’s been done (you can download the software from http://www.mov-converter.com/xilisoft-video-converter-ultimate/x-video-converter-ultimate-91467.exe first), just get into the folder where you installed it (the path is usually specified at “C:\Program Files\Xilisoft\Video Converter 3” in default). Keep going into the “profile” folder, you will find a lot of files extension in .pf. That is what we are looking for. Open anyone of them using EditPlus (a tool of text editor, you can get one from http://www.editplus.com) or with Notepad, the extra editor of Microsoft, all secrets and mysteries for video and audio conversion exposed in our eyes!

Then, the next action is a snap I bet everyone can do it easily. Just right-click your mouse, select the sub-option “Text document” of “New” to make up a new file in the “Profile” folder. Rename it as the extension in .pf, and open it up. The last thing you’re gonna do is just to paste all offerings bold below into the new .pf file, and save the changes.

[Main]

Name=Xbox360 WMV 1080pTV Movie

SName=WMV

Format=xwmv

ExtName=wmv

IsSysProfile= yes  [Parameter]t=0, “”, “”

ss=0, “”, “”

title=0, “”, “”

author=0, “”, “”

copyright=0, “”, “”

comment=0, “”, “”

album=0, “”, “”

year=0, “”, “”

genre=0, “”, “”

composer=0, “”, “”

origaritist=0, “”, “”

url=0, “”, “”

encodedby=0, “”, “”

id3v2=0, “”, “True”

vcodec=0, “”, “wmv3x”, {”wmv1x”,”wmv2x”,”wmv3x”}

s=0, “”, “1440×1080″,{”640×480″, “720×480″, “1280×720″, “1440×1080″ , “1920×1080″}

b=0, “”, “2000″, { “1000″, “2000″, “3000″, “4000″, “5000″}

r=0, “”, “”

aspect=0, “”, “4:3″, {”4:3″, “16:9″}

sameq=0, “”, “”

vn=0, “”, “”

acodec=0, “”, “wma7x”, {”wma7x”}

ab=0, “”, “128″ar=0, “”, “48000″, {”48000″,”44100″,”32000″,”22050″}

ac=0, “”, “2 (Stereo)”, { “2 (Stereo)” }

an=0, “”, “” 

Surprisingly, there would be a new output profile named Xbox_mpeg2_1080pTV come out in the Video Converter with set of parameters available like video size and bit rate, and audio sample rate. Is that amazing? Be proud of yourself? Yup, you can Do-It-yourself!

Why said so? I bet everybody have ever experienced watching and listening to movies and music on a portable media player like an iPod, a PSP, a mobile phone, or a Zune and so on. When you are enjoying your colorful and fantastic video and audio entertaining, have you noticed that almost all of them support playing the .mp4 video files? And another question would pop out if you keep going, which may be asked as “what is the MP4?”.

Actually, the word “MP4″ was derived from MPEG-4, and the MPEG-4 comes from an abbreviate of Moving Picture Experts Group, a working group of ISO/IEC charged with the development of video and audio encoding standards which also issued MPEG-1 and MPEG-2.

There are two key parts of MPEG-4 aware to be the general MP4 file: MPEG-4 Part 2 and MPEG-4 Part 10. MPEG-4 Part 2 has been called MPEG SP/ASP as an Advanced Simple Profile used by codecs such as DivX, XviD, Nero Digital and 3ivx and by Quicktime 6 as well. MPEG-4 Part 10 mainly refers to the MPEG-4 AVC (Advanced Video Coding) or H.264, which being used by the x264 codec, by Nero Digital AVC, by Quicktime 7, and by next-generation DVD formats like HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc. A unique part that should be mentioned either is the MPEG-4 Part 14, which has being used to commonly store digital video and audio streams, some other data like subtitles and static images, and some audio-only MP4 files called M4A.

Admittedly, there are still a lot of other formats fill in the Internet. No matter an AVI file, a WMV file, or an MOV or RM file, each of them plays prominent on the stage of information medium. But with more and more MP4 files generating and increasing, we are also calling more software applications in MP4 playing and converting.

Like iTunes from Apple and Media Player from Microsoft, we do have so many choices on MP4 conversion applications also, which can be freely chosen from different sorts of brands like Xilisoft, ImTOO, CUCUSOFT, and MP4Converter, etc. They are capable and professional of converting most popular video and audio formats into MP4 files for your iPod, PSP, or other portable players supported.

Wanna know more about MP4? Why not try some software yourself? It will make you the real expert on MP4!

For those who bought or gotten a Zune 2.0 player as a Xmas’ present, it’s gonna be a little bit vexatious for some kind of video conversion troubles if they want to play a DVD movie on their Zune.

As we all know, the new Zune supports video and audio formats M4A, M4V, MP3, MP4 (MPEG-4 and MPEG-4 AVC/H.264), WMA, WMV. But the whole marketing of DVD ripper software cannot keep up with its update, coz most of them were still employing the former video and audio codecs with their programming while the new Zune’s compatible of more codecs.

Right now, new software has been released as a complement for this scarcity – Xilisoft DVD Ripper Ultimate.

It’s designed so user-friendly and multi-functional that you can easily find the output file fit for any media device or portable media player you want. For example, you are looking for the new Zune set, just press on the “Profile” block, and move your mouse on the “Portable Media”, appropriate outputs like Zune MPEG-4 AVC Video Format, Zune MPEG-4 Video, and Zune WMV – Windows Media Video, and other maybe you want are listed. That is way handily, isn’t it?

What’s more, this DVD ripper full in creative plan has also been enhanced with some great new functions beating all of us. You can choose to output any area of the original DVD movie, adjust transparent and position of subtitles showing in the output movies, set video brightness, contrast and saturation, and even snapshot any image of a DVD movie. And of course you can clip and merge any segment of the whole DVD movie.

Just imagine that, when you enjoy a holiday travel or relax on shuffle, you can watch and listen to the DVD movies and music all the time! What are you waiting for, hurry up!

So what is PS3? It is the successor of PS2 manufactured by Sony. Being the third member of the Sony PlayStation series, the PS3 is much more sophisticated and advanced than its predecessor. And like the Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Nintendo’s Wii, PlayStation3 is aiming to dominate the video gaming world by its luxuriant and significant functionalities.

Playstation3 has been recognized to be the first gaming console with next-generation primary storage media - Blu-ray Disc, while it also supports CDs, DVDs, HDDs and certain models of SACDs[1]. It supports sets of video formats, including MPEG-1, MPEG-2 (PS[2], TS[3]), H.264/MEPG-4 AVC, MPEG-4 and numerous other audio formats, including ATRAC[4], WAV (.wav). MP3 (.mp3), and so much more image file formats like GIF, PNG, JPEG and TIFF. The most brilliant fact about the PS3 is that it is capable of playing back content at a maximum bit rate of multiplex 48Mbps from Blu-ray Disc according to the BD (Blu-ray Disc) standards.

If you got a video file in 1080p resolution and at 48Mbps bit rate for 2hours, it’s obvious that it would cost more than 80GB space. So much same can be said for high-definition source movies, and it’s weird to consume such mass of space for just only one copy of HD movie. There are a lot of software PS3 video converters out there for choosing.

PS3 Video 9 is a free PS3 video converter deserving to download. It’s developed by Red Kawa, and allows you to convert your computer video files like AVI, DivX, MPEG, etc. into the specific video formats playable on PlayStation3. The other one I found worthy to own is PS3 Video Converter from MP4Converter.net. It contains all functions PS3 Video 9 have and more formats supporting. And even some MP4 video files such as a .mp4 clip (H.264, 1080p, 8145kbps, size of 56.4MB) that PS3 Video 9 is unable to handle can be converted into a smaller one (H.264, 1080p, 2198kbps, 15.2MB).

It’s hard to judge the pros and cons for each of them impersonally. Anyway, many of us are looking for the high quality behaving rather no-fee taking, although no-fee taking gets a little attractive.

Additionally, I commend an article which tells you how to convert videos to full HD 1080p and transfer to PS3 if you wanna be going any further.

[1] SACD (Super Audio Compact Disc): a high-resolution digital multichannel audio standard developed by Sony/Philips that uses DSD (Direct Stream Digital) audio encoding

[2] TS (Transport Stream): one type of the audio-with-video synchronization which are aimed for communication and broadcasting applications.

[3] PS (Program Stream): one type of the audio-with-video synchronization which can be used for storage applications such as DVD.

[4] ATRAC (Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding): a family of proprietary audio compression algorithms developed by Sony.

How to transfer music from iPod to Computer 

It’s been known that iTunes is management software released by Apple to match the applications of their unique portable multimedia player – iPod. Unfortunately, this real matched management tool doesn’t allow you to rip music off iPod and transfer to your local disk.

I was blown up with a kind of accident like this once. One day before three months, I’d just installed my iTunes after my operation system rebuilt. When I connected my iPod to my computer, calamity happened. All my music purchased on iTunes Store was removed from my iPod! Jesus! What a crash!

To Apple users, I have to say this function-lacking is sucks indeed! There must be a wondering why Apple doesn’t want to include something so obvious in their iTunes. What I thought is that they have a reason for not including it. Maybe it’s legal issues, maybe for marketing targets, or maybe they just can’t achieve this user requests more far away.

Ok, let us down to reality. Now, the most important is to find a solution which can completely fix this problem. For a long time searching, I got a good one which has easy ways to deal with my transferring troubles – Xilisoft iPod Rip!

The main usages are:

1.       Copy music and movies from computer to iPod

2.       Rip music and movies out of iPod, and backup them from iPod to computer locally

3.       Sync music from iPod to iTunes

I guess you may not be interested in the 1^st function which has been offered by iTunes and merely played well in lots of other programs. And the last two functions are what I’m emphasizing.

You know if I’ve held this software with the music backup function from iPod to computer, I would never be so mad at the iTunes for my purchased music lost. And it’s so easy to use, just check all the music and movies in playlist you want to export, and click the button in the middle of the user control panel, then you’ve had your iPod music and movies dig out!

The 3^rd function is more useful to kill the long time waiting for iTunes transfer. All you have to do is opening up the Xilisoft iPod Rip with iPod connected, checked all files, and one pressing on the 3^rd button can make your Sync from iPod to iTunes done in just a few minutes!

One attention: you need have iTunes installed first before using Xilisoft iPod Rip, otherwise the iPod cannot be recognized by this iPod manager.

Now we get total advantages and disadvantages from this iPod management tool of Xilisoft.

The beauties: multi-functions, easy to use, fast speed in importing and exporting, and iPhone support.

The shortcomings: don’t support photos importing and exporting temporarily, unable to execute the edition on music Tag info.

There’s also an premium feature deserved to mention, the maximum quantity is up to 500 for music and movies importing/exporting, which is allowed in the beta version as gift for you! For me, it’s the easiest way to rip music out of iPod, why not have a try? BTW, there’s an iPhone ringtone maker which can help you make iPhone ringtones and put the song to iPhone ringtone. That is also a useful iPhone ringtone creator!

According to the Wikipedia figures, more than 25 million units of PSP has been shipped worldwide already. Lots of PSP users who are hungry for more content to put onto their PSP have to admit that downloading movies onto PSP via the internet is the easiest and fastest way.

The only problem is the PSP can only support MP4 video formats (H.264/MPEG-4 AVC) while most movies and videos on the internet are the format of WMV, AVI or DivX. Chances are you have at least a small collection of videos on your hard drive – and those videos probably won’t be supported because PSP essentially does not have “WMV playing” or “AVI playing” supporting features!

Therefore, you will need a PSP video converter to convert the videos to be compatible with the PSP.

I’m using the ImTOO PSP Video Converter but other PSP conversion software should do the job as well.

Due to its wide LCD screen, playing video on the PSP is a little different, and, to get the best quality, you are supposed to follow certain settings.

For video settings, you will need to make video resolution at either 368×208 or 480×272. The video bit rate should be at 400, 512 or 768 kilo bits per second (Kbps). The frame rate should be at least 29.97 frames per second so there is no shuttering when playing video.

For the audio specification, it is almost a criterion selection. The sample rate should be at 24 KHz and the audio bit rate at 64, 96, 128 or 160 kbps.

And also, it provides a free tool for your movies to PSP transfer - PSP Video Manager, which can be handled more simply than iTunes did for iPod video transfer.

I would highly recommend downloading a PSP video conversion tool rather than use a generic video converter software to do the conversion as it is easier and you do not need to remember these technical parameters.

Downloading movies onto PSP is a lot easier when you use tools such as ImTOO PSP Video Converter. Now you can put movies on your PSP unlimitedly.