Extracting .MKV cabinet to .AVI?

[Gew]

Hiya!

So, 'mkvextract' is kinda neat. However, I can only "extract" the streams as seperate video/audio, which is kinda dull. So, my question is regarding the possibility of extracting MKV -> sort of original .AVI file, with audio/video streams as of original. To make myself even more clear, "re-extract" them in the matter that even the checksum of the "new compiled" .AVI matches the original AVI. Is this possible?

Or is the only possible way on doing this - still - first extracting audio/video seperately, and then re-joining them with a tool like VirtualDubMod? I've read forums for an hour, containing this question on posts from like ever since y2k4, with no real exhaustive answers.

So, _if_ you still need to make it a-step-at-the-time, which application is the best one out there nowadays for rejoining audio/video streams to a new target AVI? I mean since VirtualDubMod is halted for like >2 yrs.. Something better when it comes to format support etc, since (from those old posts I read) there was some difficulties on the support for some Matroska files with VDubMod.

Thanks for all the answers.
And still,, best thing would be if I could get the audio/video joined instantly already from the beginning! ;>

[poisondeathray]

When you say "audio/video joined" - I'm going to assume you do not mean several segements, rather 1 segment of audio and video.

Assuming your audio and video streams are complaint with the .avi container, you can extract them with mkvextractgui, and put them into the .avi container with avi-mux gui.

If you have something incompatible (e.g. like AAC audio, or h.264 video) you will get problems

[Blue_MiSfit]

I think AVIDemux could do what you want. This (somewhat misnomered) application is a lot like VirtualDub, but with native support for MKV and MP4 (plus old AVI).

I think you might be a little bit confused when you say things like "the original AVI". There's nothing special or inherently original about AVI. It's a pretty standard container, but there's nothing wrong with extracting elementary streams from an MKV and remuxing them to an AVI (provided the AVI supports the a/v formats in question)! If the file plays, who cares if the original AVI structure is now slightly different?

~MiSfit

[roozhou]

If you have something incompatible (e.g. like AAC audio, or h.264 video) you will get problems

AAC and h264 are compatible with avi

[Gew]

Okey..

Well, now I've come to the conclusion..
The _not_ included feature in mkvextract for joining the audio/video output parts to one final product .AVI is _not_ an issue of compitability or something like that, but really just about trademark concern. MKVExtract will produce the video in the .AVI format just because it's the easiests way to do, but we're not talking an actual container, but just a elementary AVI video stream. The Matroska team will - of course - not in any way encourage people to use the old .AVI container, which they would sort of be doing if they inplanted a full-extraction-to-avi-container feature.

It's taking me the whole night to figure out this "political aspect", so I'm pretty pleased with myself :-)

Anyways, I've found a simple was to reach my goal. I'm using MKVExtract to extract the streams from the MKV container, then I use this wonderful (yet ~2yrs since halt in dev. :Z) application: "AVI-Mux GUI". It will insert my Xvid/MP3 into a fully consistent AVI container. Just wonderful! Also tried using avidemuxgui aswell as VirtualDubMod. Both these apps resulted in defects in the AVI structure though, like unrecognisible strings; causing the file to be unrecognisable without the correct file extention. One other time I had this bad sync issue, plus the third time the audio flew in 200MPH so that our family sounded like Donald Ducks.

However, hail AVI-Mux GUI ;) Is there any similar GNU app out there, more recent? I'm always getting the creeps of using old releases of things. I know, alot of these problems are actually in my own head, like a light touch of (e)nforced (c)ompulsive (d)isorder. Whatever.. :thanks:

[poisondeathray]

AAC and h264 are compatible with avi

Let me rephrase, not completely compatible then (or only works some of the time....:)). I'm not going to get into an argument in this thread...leave that for another thread topic :)

Also tried using avidemuxgui aswell as VirtualDubMod. Both these apps resulted in defects in the AVI structure though, like unrecognisible strings; causing the file to be unrecognisable without the correct file extention.

Avidemux should work, set the video & audio to "copy", format to "avi"; BUT you have to enter the extension manually (e.g. "myfile.avi"). This is from avidemux's linux heritage. This will direct stream copy your XviD/MP3 into the avi container

[Gew]

Avidemux should work, set the video & audio to "copy", format to "avi"; BUT you have to enter the extension manually (e.g. "myfile.avi"). This is from avidemux's linux heritage. This will direct stream copy your XviD/MP3 into the avi container

Yeah, I figured I oughtta set the extention manually. However, just because of boredom I tried F3 (View in TotalCMD) when having "result.avi" marked. It showed as plain ASCII/HEX (text).Wtf, something wrong? I thought, and tried F3 on another - directly Xvided - .avi container. Showed up in TC/mmplayer then. Strange, so I took it some "identification string" was missing in the result.avi that Avidemux had produced. However, it played fine in VLC etc. However, I'm sort of fanatical perfectionist sometimes (I "hang on" to the minor minor issue and keep repeating it in my head over and over cna't sleep etc), so I dropped it. AVI-Mux GUI is the app that - this far - has been giving me the best result.avi ;)