So I have a mkv file that I would ultimately like to try and get onto a writeable DVD that can perhaps be played in a standard DVD player. I have tried several pieces of software to would presumably at least allow me to transcode the mkv file to avi and therefore make it more "playable" on various HTPCs. For example, my PS3 won't play mkv but will play most avi. So can anyone help. Time really isn't of essence here, I've been working on this on and off for 6 months already.

I keep reading page after page that allegedly link to programs like mkv2ps3 and others but eff me if I can even find download links some times.

Does This Help? (for local use)

How To Play MKV Files On Playstation 3

or This

PS3 Media Server

Or for DVD's for others

Have you looked at DVD/Video Help?

MKV to DVD - VideoHelp.com

DVD-Guides.com - How to convert any video format to DVD using DVD Flick

Try Virtual Dub Mod 1.5.10.2 (build 2540/release) which is a modification of the "normal" VDB. A friend recommended it to me. It's available from here and managed to convert some of those "difficult" videos for me. You can enqueue several tasks after editing (if needed) and setting the codecs preferences.

Grahame,

Thanks, I'll try to look at some of that later. My issue really isn't getting the file to play on my PS3, I'm semi-savvy enough to be able to do that most days but ultimately what I'd like to do is get the mkv to the point where I can create a custom DVD from it. From what I understand none of the dvd authoring programs that I have access to are going to be able to handle the mkv format.

Maybe the VDM can help you to transcode it into a format you can use for your authoring software. Let us know the results, please.

DVD Flick looks like it'll work, but takes enough system resources that I'll have to wait till after work to let it run and check the results tomorrow morning.

If that doesn't work, there's several freeware converter proggies that'll do it. SUPER is one of them, it is also a system hog at times, but has a ton of conversion options.

I found Super's site, can't for the life of me fingure out how to download it.

SUPER - Video software and downloads - VideoHelp.com

Edit: Someone on some forum said SUPER is iffy so here are some more links:

http://www.any-video-converter.com/products/for_video_free/

http://handbrake.fr/downloads.php

Super's site is the most poorly designed site I've ever seen.

MEncoder is like the swiss army knife of video format conversion...

mencoder(.exe) "/path/to/video.mkv" -oac copy -ovc copy -o "/path/to/video.avi"

And if you need to change what codec is used for the audio or video, just change "copy" to the name of the codec (oac for audio, ovc for video).

Ok, I need to resurrect this thread. I've tried several ways to convert the file to DVD and while I've been able to get something playable I'm continuously running into audio sync issues (even though the native file plays just fine and is synced). Is there anyone out there who could have a go at doing this who's more skilled in the ways of video manipulation? I can provide the mkv file on CD (about 1GB so uploading would be problematic for me) and would be eternally grateful.

Okay, I'm sure this has already been tried, but for the heck of it I'll ask - have you used a recent Handbrake version to transcode from .mkv to h.264 .mp4/.m4v (with an extremely high bitrates to minimize secondary artifacts), then author a DVD (which will use another transcoding step to older MPEG-2) with Sonic/Roxio/etc.?

I've got a friend of mine who's been ripping a ton of br. I'll ask him if he has any suggestions. Had him rip a br for me.

I've also been ripping a ton of BR. To me, its a lot easier I think then taking an MKV and transcoding it for DVD on a PC it seems (I'm a fan of just taking direct stream rips and only encoding the audio). I'm also interested in good ways to do this, AVI2DVD seems like a good choice.

http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/convert_mkv_to_dvd_with_freeware.cfm