The VideoLAN Forums

I have searched posts for anything about this, but cannot find any posts quite like my problem.

I am trying to convert MKV files to M4V without success. I tried this on various computers with the same result - an unreadable file.

1. On a 2009 iMac running Mac OS El Capitan and VLC version 2.2.2
2. On the same 2009 iMac running El Capitan and VLC version 3.0.10
3. On a 2014 Mac Mini running Mojave and VLC version 3.0.6
4. On a 2016 MacBook Pro running Catalina and VLC version 3.0.10

All resultant files are unplayable by VLC and no duration is provided - with the exception of the conversion made on VLC version 3.0.6 on the 2014 Mac Mini which showed the correct duration, but gave an error message to the effect that VLC could not decode a Windows Media Video VC-1.

The MKV files I tried to convert were all created from DVDs and Blu-rays using MakeMKV. File sizes ranged from 300 MB to 35 GB. I can convert these using Handbrake, but that takes some 12 hours for convert the Blu-ray files. I was under the impression that VLC could convert faster as it simply stripped away the MKV container leaving the original video and audio intact, i.e. not compressed. In fact, it does complete its operation much faster than Handbrake, but as the results seem to be useless, maybe I cannot use VLC after all.

Does anybody else have this problem or does anybody know what I might be doing wrong.

Thank you.

Hi, VLC can not transcode any faster than Handbrake can, and in general its probably a better idea to use Handbrake as it has a interface made solely for the purpose of transcoding with lots of options for that and easily supports batch conversion of a lot of files.

ePirat, looks like you right about using Handbrake. But, back to VLC as this is a VLC forum, I also tried to carry out the conversion on my 2014 Mac Mini using a virtual Windows 10 machine and running a Windows version of VLC. I converted the same 35 GB movie that I had ripped from a Blu-ray disc which had previously taken 7 hours on the Mac version of VLC, on the VM it took 50 hours even though I had assigned almost all of the Mac's resources to the VM. When it had finished, I still couldn't play the movie getting the same message that VLC cannot decode a VC-1 encoded movie. Even Windows Media Player gave the same error message and VC-1 is a Microsoft codec.

I thought that VC-1 encoding was very common on Blu-rays therefore VLC needs to be able to handle it, in fact VLC can play the MKV file it created without a problem, but not a file which VLC has re-encoded from MKV to an MP4 file. That seems strange and I wonder whether anybody else has come across this and the developers know about it. VLC seems like such a powerful tool, so its sad to have to go elsewhere.