Convert .MKV to .M4V (or .MP4)

Posted by Dan Israel on Nov 28, 2015 in Video

I’ve struggled to use Handbrake for conversion of .MKV to an Apple/iTunes aware format (either .M4v or MP4).  It’s easy enough to do, but the file size would grow exponentially.  And scaling Handbrakes “Constant Quality” would reduce the file size but create an inferior playback.  Through research, I became aware that possibly the wrapper was all that needed to change.  And that is indeed the solution I landed on.

I am using a program called Subler (https://bitbucket.org/galad87/subler/wiki/Home).  With this, I am able to open the file, and click SAVE AS and select File Format “Movie-MPEG4”.

It quickly rewrites the container.  And since the video is not transcoded or re-encoded, the image quality is the same as the MKV container.