Importing MVK files into Premiere Pro (all versions)

Dear folks,

I see the old topic was locked (probably because it got WAY out of hand, OT and flameworthy) and I have no interest in adding fuel to the fire but I do want to bring light and a solution that I've been using for a while with great success (I thought I'd share here because I was asked by someone on another forum who directed me to the old thread here when I answered them).

(And while I do NOT want to inflame anyone, let's just say that even us retired pros run into a need to edit MKV files from time to time and while I don't think Adobe needs to add this import format I do think people should know how to do it).  In my own case our animated television series is produced in an electronic distribution format (we're bypassing media entirely) and MKV works best for the folks who play our stuff.  But rather than have to re-render our older stuff when we want to do a bottle show, or other such reuse (like "Previously on..."), I find it's just easier to take the completed shows (in MKV format) and use them in PP (6.0 at the moment but this works in all versions).

The answer is actually IN that old thread, albeit fairly buried -- you just need to demux the MKV container and then remux again in a TS one.  There are two pretty great freeware programs that can do this -- MKVExtract (for the demuxing) and tsMuxer (for the muxing).  They are virus and adware free, have been around for years, and can be gotten from reliable places (avoid the disreputable ones, though -- they should be ZIP not EXE files).

MKVExtract is part of the larger MKVToolset and you'll need the whole thing to get the GUI part of it (it's actually MKVExtractGUI that runs the executable).  MKVMerge is also part of that toolset in case you want to create MKV files, as we do, from almost anything.  tsMuxer can create MT2S files as tell as TS, and it can also demux a variety of formats (not MKV though, or you could use it alone).

Because we're just muxing and remuxing there is no additional codec loss -- naturally that's the biggest consideration when trying to re-edit stuff like this.  For the highest quality, of course, you always want to remain with original source when you can (although I actually like some of the artifacts that get introduced sometimes -- I often think that maybe the biggest issue with going completely digital is the lack of, well, old timeyness.  Then again, I'm an old guy myself).