this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2026

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How to convert .mkv to .mp4 that Internet Archive will accept & stream? (piefed.social)

submitted 1 day ago by klu9@piefed.social to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

9 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Any ideas how to do that, preferably in a GUI program? I'm not good at CLI or scripts.

CONTEXT

I uploaded a video in Matroska mkv format (~1gb) to Internet Archive. IA added its own converted mp4 of much lower video quality (~500mb) & that's the only video it will stream. The mkv only available by downloading.

As I'd prefer streaming availability, I used Handbrake (on Linux) to convert the mkv to mp4 myself, hoping to make a better quality mp4 that IA would stream.

Seems successful, plays fine locally, much better quality than IA's mp4, & smaller file size (~800mb) than original mkv.

But I can't upload it to IA as I get an error

There is a network problem

400 Bad Data

BadContent

Uploaded content is unacceptable.

Resource>video file has improper extension, try one of these: .mpv .mkv

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[–] IcedRaktajino@startrek.website 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I usually do everything from CLI.

Are you wanting to re-encode it to a different codec or just change the container from mkv to mp4?

To remux the file (change the container format), you can simply do:

# The -f mp4 is technically optional as it can deduce it from the extension, but I like to be explicit
ffmpeg -i file.mkv -f mp4 file.mp4

That should go very fast as it's just copying the streams as-is into a new container.

If you want to re-encode it to a different codec, then you'll need to use a more complex ffmpeg command.

[–] SatyrSack@quokk.au 2 points 1 day ago

CLI can be scary, but this is such a simple command to run. It should not be too intimidating.

If someone really needs a GUI, I believe VLC's file conversion capability is basically just running an FFMPEG command like that in the background.