mkv support

Anyway, iTunes basically supports .mp4, .m4v and sometimes .mov, which can be kind of a hassle. Also, with the direction that Apple it going, I can't see them ever adding native support of formats like .avi and .mkv to iTunes. That doesn't fit into their totalitarian goal. I have 3 different kinds of video cameras for different occasions like parties and holidays and they all record different formats. Plus, .mkv lets me get 1080p quality videos without taking complete control of my hard drive space.

There is a program called Kodi which a lot of people use for illegal stuff, but can be amazing if you use it the right way. A year ago, I bought a bunch of Blu-Ray movies and recorded them into my laptop so I'm not always switching through cases and cases to find one movie, but my encoder converted everything to .mkv. I wasn't about to spend another week trying to convert all of those movies to mp4 to put them into iTunes, so I found a better optio

The great thing about Kodi though, is that you can download scrapers that download all of the metadata of the movies off of IMDB and other websites like it so you don't have to manually do it like you have to do in iTunes and it also does it for my music and movies as well. Plus, I don't have to convert them and ruin the quality with poor quality video converters like Quicktime or Handbrake.

So, consider using a program like Kodi. It's open to 3rd party developers which means that there is a lot of content that you can download, but it would be best to stay away from the illegal ones that stream movies and tv shows. It's a great program that is completely customizable and would be great if they incorporated that software into a phone OS instead of just being an app.

Anyway, I hope you found this info to be helpful. Apples aren't the best computers in the world, but they certainly are the prettiest. Who doesn't love looking at those Rose Gold iPads and Macbooks?
<Edited by Host>

I can't see them ever adding native support of formats like .avi and .mkv to iTunes. That doesn't fit into their totalitarian goal.

Not about totalitarian goals. AVI is so old even it's creators (M$) don't use it anymore and mkv is the choice of thieves.

the way to decode video is called a codec H264 is an example of that

avi and mkv not, they are containers and can contain all sorts of different codecs so if a computer program say it can play avi or mkv it has no real meaning and may not be able to play the file you try to use at all

you can read more https://www.encoding.com/blog/2014/01/13/whats-difference-codecs-containers/

to claim to have native support for avi and mkv and it being true rather then meaningless marketing would require native support for all codecs used in those 2 containers many of which require royalties

I really wish iTunes had the support for .mkv format.

Since the content is already in H264/AC3, is there a simple way to make it playable by iTunes/ATV2?

Spider_mann wrote:
I have a bunch of movies in H264 format in a .mkv file/container. I cannt play these files using iTunes. I dont want to re-encode these files into mp4 .m4v format as it would for ever. Since the content is already in H264/AC3, is there a simple way to make it playable by iTunes/ATV2? I really wish iTunes had the support for .mkv format.
By the way, I have a PC AMD Athlon XP2 and it takes be for ever to re-encode these .mkv files to .mp4.

Since the content is already in H264/AC3, is there a simple way to make it playable by iTunes/ATV2?

Made this along time ago hope it helps

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2657240?start=0&tstart=0

If you don't want to go through the hassle of re-encoding (which Handbrake is excellent at, but takes forever, and results in a loss of quality), then you can use a simple MKV to AppleTV converter script that I made. It can be found here:

http://www.tvmutiny.com/threads/watch-mkv-videos-on-appletv-without-re-encoding. 5/

It's the script I actually use myself (it's modified from one I made to get avi files to play on the AppleTV 1 (sadly, avi files don't play on the ATV 2 or 3). It's dead-simple to use, you just drag and drop your MKV and a MOV gets made automagically. You can then import that into iTunes and it will play great on your AppleTV, iPhone, iPad, etc.

There's quite a bit of Mac and AppleTV expertise there, so feel free to join up and ask more questions.

Cheers!

Thanks for the Subler, good tip. Worked fine at repacking .mkv to .m4v. Tried a sample file with .mkv @ 234.3 MB, saved it as .m4v, with audio, video, subs, and chapters included. The resulting container is only 192 MB. There is no apparent quality loss, so why a smaller size? Does anyone know if it is simply a better compression format, or the .m4v cuts corners on quality?