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Question

Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 MKV support?

Forum|Forum|17 years ago
August 1, 2008
36 replies
124075 views

Is there any way to get Adobe Premiere to support MKV files or it simply just doesn't support it?

This topic has been closed for replies.

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PHR16384

Participant

*Blows dust away*

Wow, look at this thread. The answer to the original question is in there somewhere, underneath all that text.

Anyway, here's my two cents and a summary, from attempting to work with MKV files myself in Premiere Pro CS5.5:

MKVs are incompatible. You can't fool Premiere by changing the extension. Big surprise.
Also not surprisingly, the streams contained in the MKV (e.g. H.264 video + 5.1 AC3 audio) are compatible.
Demux the MKV to separate streams (files of extension .264 and .ac3 successfully import) or remux to another container format (e.g. M2TS files work).
Use tsMuxeR and MKVToolnix to losslessly convert to/from MKVs: http://www.videohelp.com/tools/tsMuxeR; http://www.videohelp.com/tools/mkvtoolnix
If you're willing to spend $70, try the Moyea Import Plugin. Says it's compatible with Premiere Pro CS4 and under, or Premiere Elements 8.0 and under.

IMHO, I like MKVs. Because they support video, audio and subtitle streams of all kinds -- moreso than other containers like AVI or MP4 -- they're useful. Incidentally, given an MKV file and an M2TS file of identical streams, the MKV file is smaller.

There is also something to be said about Matroska's relation to WebM, which according to the latter Adobe supports. Depending on WebM's future success, I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't already a large number of requests for compatibility with its accompanying formats (e.g. Vorbis and Matroska) -- claims of the opposite in this thread notwithstanding.

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excited_Genie16B8

Legend

claims of the opposite in this thread notwithstanding.

It's more than just a claim. It's a statement from an Adobe employee who has access to the feature requests. There just aren't a lot of them for MKV support.

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fish_man_ok

Participant

Please don't entangled in the format,each team must take into account the needs of the market, MKV relatively small minority. Format is a eternal topic. this time,every user can choose the other way to solve this problem, Use Video Converter, This is an emerging industry, If Adobe Premiere supported all formats, then many people will lose their jobs. I want to say "Thanks Adobe". There, i recommend a video converter，

link: http://www.aovsoft.com/products/video-converter/

Hope this software can help more friends

Your friend - Fishman

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EuroSiti

Participating Frequently

AOVsoft's converter has some nice features (cutting without converting is always nice, and cropping is still a missing feature in too many standard programs). But I'm quite happy with the free alternatives (Handbrake, SUPER, Freemake (just as fast as AOV), MakeMKV (lossless) and XMedia Recode). Notably Handbrake which lets you adjust even more than most of the paid/professional tools. It's just a little less user friendly.

Some people have actually been developing these tools and formats for free continuously over the years, and they're not just half-done solutions.

Matroska and FLAC are superiour, better featured, lossy/lossless solutions.

I take it that there isn't an urgent need for MKV support in the United States, because you don't have a broad public demand for subtitles and foreign (original) language support? But anyone working in a multilingual environment would benefit from this. So it's not really an obsession. I am merely stressing the fact that the industry is keeping a whole bunch of inferior, platform dependent (and therefore short lived) file formats alive. They're even still developing new, closed, proprietary formats for mobile devices). This short-term profit speculation is the main reason why there is a "format war" going on. A war that forces content providers to create identical video content in different file containers.

The industry have been trying to agree on a mutual standard (MXF) since 2005, but even after 7 years it is still not really supported by any standalone equipment. Meanwhile Matroska (created in 2002) has basically developed all the features that MXF has, and it is already widely supported by leading hardware and mobile equipment manufacturers such as Asus, Samsung, LG and Western Digital.

The "high end" hardware developers just decided that they won't support MKV. That is of course the main reason why "the market doesn't use it".

While there is an increasing demand for HD video content, the industry has decided only to provide lossy audio content. It is practically impossible to buy online digital audio content in a lossless sound format legally. That is of course another reason why sound connoisseurs are sharing their CD and DVD audio content as FLAC files. When the CD disappears they're stuck with lossy AAC, WMA and MP3 files!

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excited_Genie16B8

Legend

I take it that there isn't an urgent need for MKV support in the United States, because you don't have a broad public demand for subtitles and foreign (original) language support?

No. There isn't a need for Matroska because it's not a file format used for the major delivery mediums - disk, broadcast and web.

The industry have been trying t agree on a mutual standard (MXF) since 2005, but even after 7 years it is still not really supported by any standalone equipment.

Uh...not sure that's very accurate. Many professional camera use the format. And many TV stations use it for broadcast as well.

Matroska (created in 2002) has basically developed all the features that MXF has, and it is already widely supported by leading hardware and mobile equipment manufacturers such as Asus, Samsung, LG and Western Digital.

Yeah, for computer playback. But that's just not anywhere near a significant enough percentage of professional delivery. The big three are, as previously mentioned, disk (DVD, Blu-ray), broadcast, and web sites.

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fish_man_ok

Participant

why you not change a way to think about it ? Now, it can't work. I suggest you change the video‘s format. I had similar experience, Every software has it's shortcoming, we have to use their advantage. there is a video converter software in aovsoft.com. I think it can help you solve problem. Because it support many formats convert, certainly, MKV is Including.

Message was edited by: Fishman

the_wine_snob

Inspiring

Fish_Man,

Though I do not know that software, I agree with you.

I get handed (or did, until I retired) all sorts of "stuff," and will convert, as is needed, to edit in my chosen NLE program. I also have about six other NLE's, that are basically enhanced "conversion" programs, as some handle different "stuff" better, than others. In the end, however, I finish in PrPro, as it does what I like best, and I use the others to get the material into it. I do not expect it to cover ALL bases, and have learned workarounds for odd footage. Maybe I should campaign for PrPro to become an "end-all/be-all," but would rather Adobe concentrate on doing certain things in the best possible, and most stable way.

Just my personal feelings,

Hunt

T

taz291819

Participating Frequently

What we need to remember is that MKV is a CONTAINER, not a CODEC. Simply adding MKV support isn't so simple, as there is no telling what video and/or audio CODEC is being used. Adobe would have to add a lot of addtional codecs, such as Xvid, Divx (non-professional), and others, or their CS would get a ton of calls asking why their MKV videos aren't importing.

I hope they do add more CODEC and container support, including the above mentioned, as PrPro has always been on the cutting-edge of all popular formats. It only makes the software better.

the_wine_snob

Inspiring

The one drawback that I see is that those CODEC's mentioned are delivery-only CODEC's, and are not meant to be edited.

However, PrPro DID add support for 100% DVD-compatible VOB containers (with the MPEG-2 CODEC), and those are designed for delivery too. The few cameras, that produced mini-DVD discs, seem to be becoming but a footnote in the history of Video.

It might happen? Some other NLE programs, like CyberLink's PowerDirector, Magix MovieEdit Pro, and some others (mostly "consumer-level" NLE's) do support more of those delivery-only formats, like DivX. Some have even reported that PrElements will handle some, that PrPro will not, though I have not tested, since my version of PrE is quite old, and does not offer such support.

Hunt

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HS1979

Participant

I suppose no one tried changing the file extension from .MKV to .AVI, right?

It worked for me.

It took awhile for the video to conform (after importing the video to PP, check the status bar on the bottom right corner to view the status of PP conforming the file).

the_wine_snob

Inspiring

Good to know, and thanks for reporting.

Unfortunately, the thread deviated very soon from the original question, which should have been Importing/editing MKV footage. There is another similar MKV thread around, and it too deviated into an "Adobe should, or should not, support every format." Or, they became an argument on how good/bad MKV was.

Your comments and suggestion are appreciated,

Hunt

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NetBuzz

Participating Frequently

I could suggest a "MKVExtract" to extract the video and audio stream so

you could remerge them in a MP4 format.

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EuroSiti

Participating Frequently

The real explanation as to why Adobe won't support the Matroska MKV container is of course that they simply don't like it. I bet this reluctance has something to do with making money. If Matroska (or FLAC or OGG) was in fact supported natively by any Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Adobe (or any other major MPEG-LA member) product, many users would use it instead of MP4, M4V, MOV, F4V and other commercial standards falsely being marketed (via the ISO label) towards public and private companies as the only acceptable video standards.

Top quality freeware programs like Handbrake or MediaCoder and many 'cheaper' commercial products support both MKV and MP4/M4V and many of the best video codecs available. So there's no reason to pretend that there's any other explanation than commercial 'monopoly' interests behind this decision!

the_wine_snob

Inspiring

Welcome to the forum.

I completely agree with Jim, as to the "why" - just not enough folk in the user-base have a need for it. The way to have your need and voice heard, is to file a Feature Request. Adobe engineers do not just sit around the Official Adobe Cafeteria, dreaming up what to add to Premiere. They survey the user-base (partly through the Feature Request forms), and then try to figure out what is worth the development time and money.

It was that way with AVCHD and also VOB editing. Initially, only PrElements could do that, but then the capabilities were added to PrPro, when enough users requested it. As it happened, AVCHD became very popular in some circles, and though editing the MPEG-2's in the VOB containers does not yield high-quality results, it is popular enough.

Let Adobe know what you want, and if the numbers justify, you will likely see internal support in the future.

With the MKV conversion programs, and as Jim points out, no camera producing it, I rather doubt that there are enough users of that format/CODEC to justify, but could be very wrong.

Good luck,

Hunt

the_wine_snob

Inspiring

Roughly said: Since Matroska and FLAC were invented, there hasn't been any need for any other video or sound containers for end user storage purposes - only a need for improved compression algorithms.

But for the past two decades, Apple, Sony, Canon, Micrsoft and also Adobe/Corel have continually been adding primitive (technically unnecessary) format restrictions to their popular software products. ("If you wanna use OUR software, you also gotta use OUR format standards... and no one else's!")

There was never any need for an FLV container (Ogg+Theora was just as good), and there certainly isn't any need for the F4V container either with both MP4 and MKV already on the market.

Inventing new file formats just to make extra license profits is an incredibly old-fashioned and unhealthy way of making money these days. Maybe it worked 5 or 10 years ago, but today it just seems stupid... just as it was stupid to fight against the MP3 format 15 years ago.

When high quality video editing and rendering becomes available through powerful, cloud-based solutions, oldfashioned standalone programs like Final Cut, Premiere Pro etc. will of course become obsolete - and so will the file formats that were invented along with them. The world has no need for any more license-crippled, content-restricted file formats.

Then, by your model, Adobe, Microsoft, Apple and Sony will all fail, because the full market has gone elsewhere. Is that correct?

Maybe we should also campaign for all camera mfgrs. to stop development of proprietary CODEC's, since MKV exists and is so far superior to all developments, that have come since.

Perhaps a boycott of Canon, Panasonic, RED, Sony, JVC, Nikon and all others, would be in order. We could carry banners stating, "Give me MKV, or give me death," and rally around each companies' headquarters?

BTW - have you filed your Feature Request with Adobe?

Good luck,

Hunt

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fuwad84

Participant

Jeff and Mr. Hunt, Thank you both VERY VERY MUCH - you're both thousands of times helpful than either of the afformentioned 'experts' on video formats.

Jeff Bellune

Legend

Thanks for the props, but to be fair I have to say that all I did was echo Harm's "it's impossible" comment, while leaving open the possibility that a plug-in existed that I didn't know about.

I think conversion is your best bet, and if you have the right freeware (like maybe VirtualDub, AviSynth and DGMPGDec) you can probably do the conversion on the cheap. For example, if DGMPGDec will open your MKV file, then you create a D2V index file, and use that as the source in an AviSynth script. Then load the AviSynth script into VirtualDub and save it out as an AVI file. I recommend the Lagarith or UT codecs for maximum quality. Pr will import and edit the new AVI file just fine.

-Jeff

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fuwad84

Participant

@ Jim Simon and Harm Millaard

It's people like you that are destroying the internet. The original poster was simply asking if there is a way to import mkv format into Adobes $300 video editing software instead of using freeware. He didn't ask what your opinion on the format was and frankly no one really gives a crap.

Since I’ve edited video for paying customers I’m what you could call a ‘professional’ using ‘professional software’ so here’s a conundrum maybe you ‘video format experts’ can answer. How can I, a video professional using professional $300 software that I paid for from my own pocket, edit my daughters first baby steps to upload via youtube so I can share this shorter, yet more touching, video with my parents whom reside abroad?

If your answer doesn’t include a link to a plug-in, directions on importing mkv video or anything of that nature than please save it for another thread, because I doubt anyone stumbled upon here just to read criticism of certain video formats. Thank you.

Harm_Millaard

Inspiring

Reread #6. Already answered.

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fuwad84