From Matroska to MP4

Problem

Transform the container from Matroska to MP4.

Solution

ffmpeg             \
-i input_file.mkv  \
-c:v copy          \
-c:a aac           \
output_file.mp4

Command syntax

ffmpeg

starts the command

-i input_file.mkv

path, name and extension of the input file

-c:v copy

re-encodes the video stream using the same video codec

-c:a aac

re-encodes the audio stream using the AAC audio codec

output_file.mp4

path, name and extension of the output file

Discussion

The extension for the Matroska container is .mkv.

The video codec is specified by -codec:video, which is usually abbreviated as -c:v (-codec:v or -c:video are also possible). We advise to avoid the alias -vcodec.

The audio codec is specified by -codec:audio, which is usually abbreviated as -c:a (-codec:a or -c:audio are also possible). We advise to avoid the alias -acodec. As sadly MP4 cannot contain sound encoded by a PCM (Pulse-Code Modulation) audio codec, we use AAC (Advanced Audio Coding): aac is FFmpeg’s native AAC encoder. For silent videos you can replace -c:a aac by -an.

The extension for the MP4 container is .mp4.

2024-11-29