How can I change a video container without re-encoding or compressing the file?

Question

When I ripped my Kill Bill DVD I used handbrake and put it into a single avi. I realize that I didn't get the subtitles, so what I want to do is convert the AVI to MKV and put the subtitles in the mkv. How do I go about doing this without losing any qualityI don't care about compressing or anything ju? I don't care about compressing or anything, just want to change the container.

If handbrake can do it, I'd prefer to use that since I already have it.

Solution

MKVtoolnix can help with this. I believe someone else already suggested this package to you in an answer to another question. As a commenter on that answer mentions, it will repackage your AVI with no quality lost.

Basically, you just run the mkvmerge program. Since AVI and SRT files are both supported, you should be able to run this and get a working MKV.

$ mkvmerge -o out.mkv input.avi input.srt

If you run into problems, you'll need to figure out the proper tweaks to the command -- it can do a lot of things, but it can't guess what you want from it. The documentation is a great place to start.

Comments

[quack quixote]

i just tested it to make sure... if your SRT file is in sync already, it really is that easy.

[GiH]

oh really?? i didn't know that program would also convert the avi, i thought it would only merge the subtitles! Thanks, nice to know I only need one software to do this! :-)

[GiH]

WOW, literally too easy! thanks again! I just ended up using the GUI tool anyway

[quack quixote]

technically there's no "conversion", it just strips the AVI container format and repackages the existing streams in an MKV container.