How to convert MKV to AVI format?

In this guide I will describe you the steps on how to easily convert MKV video files to  AVI. Of course someone would ask why to do this, MKV along with the H.264 codec has better quality. Well a simple answer is in order to reproduce the video file on a standalone divx player and watch it in your TV or in any other portable device that doesn't support mkv files. Just for the record MKV stands for Matroska Multimedia Container and it is an open standard free container format, in other words it's a file format that can hold video, audio and subtitles in a single file.
First of all we have to check what is the video codec of our MKV file. To do so open the video with VLC Media Player. Go to Tools > Codec Information and check the video codec. Now there are two cases:



Case avc1:

If the video codec is avc1 it means that our video is encoded with H.264 and therefore we must convert it to DivX. Download and install Xvid4PSP, a freeware software which allows many video types convertions.

Load your video file and choose the following:

Format > AVI Hardware or AVI Hardware HD
Video encoding > Xvid HQ Ultra
Audio encoding > MP3 CBR 128k

Press E next to Video encoding

Encoding Mode > Constant quality if you want a fast convertion or 3-pass quality if you want a good quality/size ratio

If you choose the 3-pass quality and you want the best quality set the Quantizer to 1. If you want a smaller video file set it to 2.5 - 3.0



Finaly press the Encode button. Depending on the original video size, your options and your computer it might need a lot of time for the convertion to be accomplished..



Case XVID, DX50, DIVX or 3ivx:

If the video codec is XVID, DX50, DIVX or 3ivx it means that the MKV files is encoded with Divx and therefore we will just have to demux the video and audio from the mkv file and then put them in an AVI container.

First download MKVTollnix and install it. Next download MKV extractGUI and unzip it in the same directory with MKVToolnix. The default location of MKVToolnix is C:\Program Files\MKVtoolnix . Run MKVextractGUI2.exe

Now open the mkv file and check the video and audio tracks and press Extract.



Two files will be created a .avi (video) and a .mp3 or .aac (audio).

Next download AviMux (the binary file is the one you want), run it and open the .avi file and the .mp3 or .aac file. Press generate data from source files and finally press Start.



This case is much faster than the previous one sinve no convertion is needed. In a couple of minutes you will have your avi file ready to be played in any standalone DVD player!