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Help
As discussed on the Tools page, MKVtools is an Applescript Studio application that acts as an interface for a number of UNIX commandline applications. So if you encounter problems with MKVtools, chances are that it's an issue with one of the UNIX applications.
To help evaluate causes of strange behavior, you can choose to keep the log files that are created during processing. This option is found in MKVtools Help menu. Examining these log files may give you some hints regarding what the Unix applications are having issues with. The web sites for the individual Tools could prove helpful.
Probably the best resource would be a useful Mac video forum found here. You'll find lots of people there willing to help and with more knowledge about general video issues than I have. Also, I periodically read this forum and can chime in with specific MKVtools issues.
Known Issues
- Mencoder won't covert to aac audio on older machines: The version of mencoder used will convert to aac, it's just that for some reason, it doesn't want to set the complexity to low which is what is required for playback of .mp4 videos on ipod/iphone. MKVtools will still convert videos to .avi files.
- Can't pass through AC3 Audio for .mp4 files: MKVtools uses mp4box to put together the individual tracks from you .mkv video into and .mp4 file. Currently, mp4box does not support AC3 audio.
- DTS audio can't be converted: The version of mencoder used in MKVtools does not support DTS audio. This won't be fixed until a newer, pre-compiled binary of mencoder becomes available.
- 5.1 audio is not maintained for .mp4 files: The current tools used by MKVtools does not allow for 5.1 sound to be preserved when creating .mp4 files. All audio is converted to stereo
Common Problems
- The output video is missing, smaller than it should be, or is not playable: Probably due to a codec problem. The version of mencoder used in MKVtools is old and has various issues (e.g., DTS audio is not supported) that may effect your output. Try looking at the log files as mentioned above, to look for error messages from the various tools used. Chances are that your video has some codec that mencoder does not support. Also make sure you keep the Show Codec Warnings option checked for warnings about possible incompatible combinations of codecs.
- Closing the mplayer window using the close button in the title bar will cause an error : This is a bug in mplayer used by MKVtools. Use "q" instead to quit mplayer
- MKVtools bogs down when converting large files (>2GB) to .mp4: MKVtools uses mp4box to create the .mp4 file and unfortunately this application can bog down on very large videos. The work around is to split the .mkv file, process the parts and then join the results into one .mp4 file. There have been reports of sync issues with this workaround.
- Subtitle preferences are ignored during conversions and/or playback: There seems to be a bug where mencoder and/or mplayer will sometimes use the mplayer default subtitles regardless of user settings. These default subtitles are only on your computer if it was installed by some other program. There is a work around if this is an issue for you, though it involves digging around in hidden folders.
Here's what you need to do:
There are different ways of accessing hidden files/folders so I’ll leave that up to you (Google is your friend). Once you have access to hidden files/folders, you need to find mplayer’s “font” folder. I found it in “My Startup Disk”/usr/local/share/mplayer. Mplayer documentation says it is typically in the .mplayer folder in you home directory. It could be elsewhere so you might have to do some exploring.
The font folder should contain other font folders (probably arial fonts which you can leave alone), and, what you’re looking for, some font information files including “font.desc”. These are the default files that mplayer/mencoder uses. If you move these files to a new location, your subtitle settings should work. Note there are no guarantees on how this will effect other applications that use mplayer.