|
|
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 select to keep the log files that are created during processing by the . This option is found in the MKVtools Help menu. Examining these log files should give you some hints regarding what the Unix applications are having issues with. The web sites for the individual Tools could also 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.
- Conversion of 5.1 audio is not maintained for .mp4 files: The current tools used by MKVtools are not capable of converting into 5.1 aac audio. So unless passtrhu is used, 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 (i.e., how the original file was encoded). 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.
- 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: This should no longer be an issue for intel processors running 10.5.x.
- The resulting video is out of sync: For mp4 conversion, the problem is probably with the frame rate (fps). Some videos report an incorrect frame rate, which will result in out of sync video. The mp4 convesion drawer in MKVtools lists what it thinks is the correct fps. If your video is out of sync, try a different value.
- 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 they were 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, though the Mplayer documentation says it is typically in the .mplayer folder in your 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.