Media files in general - converting MKV/WMV/etc to MP4: Suggestions?

General Discussions
1

Hello all,

I’m undergoing the quest of converting my older existing media from various formats to MP4, as my ecosystem is mainly Apple-based, and it works natively with this format (so as little transcoding as possible ). My ultimate hope is to end up with HEVC content (for space reasons, but only when necessary, or I have the original in an incredibly high bitrate)

I was wondering if any of you had some examples of converting your files to MP4.

MKV: Currently, for MKV I use Subler to take the existing MKS and mux it to MP4, with the added convenience of adding metadata to it. The file then thumbnails, displays, and even Quick Looks perfectly. There are some limitations with high-end audio types, but it’s been the friendliest so far.

WMV/others: I use a nightly build of Handbrake with some custom settings to make it macOS/iOS compatible, and transcode to HEVS at the same time as putting the end result into an MP4 container. It’s pretty manual (for me) because I either I’m doing something wrong, or the Audio/Subtitle defaults don’t work properly (It won’t automatically do AAC/AC3 passthrus, for example)

Sometimes I use Don Melton’s scripts to do Convert-Video, but I believe is messes with some settings. I’ve used Transcode-Video quite a bit in the past, with mostly successful results, but I’ve had poor results so far with the x.264 experimental setting.

Any other ideas to share? I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty if it can be automated somewhat.

2

I use iFlicks for this stuff and it works perfectly. You can even setup different rules for different kind of media and configure iFlicks to watch folders etc. to do almost everything automatic. I personally don’t use HEVC but i’ve read that the current beta version of iFlicks supports it. iFlicks does muxing and converting if necessary.

Edit: Forgot to mention that it’s macOS only. And keep in mind that mp4 containers don’t really support high end audio formats.

3

It sounds like the OP is on a MAC??

If not try vidcoder a free app that uses the handbrake backend but much easier to do bulk converts.
Remuxing I use MCEbuddy and Shanaencoder
To remux a tv show it takes 1-2 minutes

4

Thank you all for your suggestions - apologies for not making it clearer that I was using a mac as my server (although my Plex previously lived on a FreeNAS box, and before that, Windows, so I’m open to all suggestions)

5

Other suggestions here: https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/205832/batch-mkv-to-mp4-on-a-mac

6

@NewPlaza said:
Other suggestions here: https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/205832/batch-mkv-to-mp4-on-a-mac

Thank you very much @NewPlaza !

7

On Windows there is also XMediaRecode
http://www.xmedia-recode.de/en/index.html