avi to mp4/mkv

[yusuo]

So stupidly i bought a roku2 and for the ones who don't know the roku only plays mp4's or mkv's.

So what i have to do now is convert all the avi's i have into these formats, i don't want to re-encode them all as that would take ages on my torrent pc (its a pentium 4) so what i am looking for is something that can re-package these files into mp4's or mkv's.

Can anyone help me find a program that can help me accomplish this

 

[FAST6191]

Odd, most things usually support AVI if they support the more modern formats.

Anyway if you only want them in the MP4 or MKV containers then it is as fast as your hard drive will work.

For MP4 container fiddling I like MP4box, it has GUIs in the form of things like YAMB (yet another MP4box UI)
http://www.videohelp.com/tools/mp4box

For MKV then there is little reason to not use MKVtoolnix
https://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/

Doing it in batch might involve making your own batch file, though such things should not be too hard. If you have a freeware/open source video conversion tool on there you may already have the programs and maybe also an option to batch convert.

Alternative, I know you may download/encode deliberately for your roku now but you might also consider something like tversity. How well it will work with H264 if you have a P4 handling it I do not know (I would not put money on it being good) but it is worth considering none the less.

 

[yusuo]

Odd, most things usually support AVI if they support the more modern formats.

Anyway if you only want them in the MP4 or MKV containers then it is as fast as your hard drive will work.............................................

Thanks fast, its not for me its for my son and he lives with his mum so tversity is outta the question, might be a little too complicated for a 7 year old, plus i got him a hard drive for the box so when he goes and sleeps over friends houses or comes over here he can bring all his tv shows and movies with him.

I got a wdtv live, it plays everything bar wmv/wma, thought i'd get the cheaper option for him as he is just a kid and tbh i half expect him to break it, but now it means a hell of a lot more work for me, my own fault i guess for cheaping out and not doing some proper research before hand. i'll give the programs you mentioned a go see how they work out. Do you know if they're quick, I say that cause I used handbrake for a few kids tv shows it done 8 episodes over night, I used to have a program before though that instead of re-encoding just changed the container for them and it done 50 movies in 16 hours, which again isnt ideal but its still a hell of alot better than handbrake managed, just can't remember the name of it.

 

[FAST6191]

If you are just putting the files into the containers then it should literally be as quick as your hard drive can manage (in this case probably limited by USB 2.0 on the external hard drive) -- it is effectively no different to putting something in a zero compression zip file. It is when you start wanting to convert formats (xvid to H264 and the like) that the video/audio is actually encoded in that it takes the time. Both MP4box and MKVtoolnix should be able to read avi files and put their contents into the MP4 and MKV containers respectively.