Converting .mkv to .avi with hardsub

If you want to watch your favorite anime on a big screen (for example, on your Smart-TV), you may have noticed that often embedded subtitles don’t look good (or not played at all). Most of hardware players don’t support .ass subtitles, styles and fonts. Also, it’s common problem even to play videos in mkv-format for many players. For this purpose, you should convert mkv to avi, optionally making hardsub.

Required utilities

We are going to use mencoder.exe. You can download it here, it’s free tool and no installation is required.

Choose one of the builds matching your system and processor.

Mkv file with embedded subtitles

If the subtitles are not needed, or you have them embedded in .mkv file, you can convert mkv to avi format with this command:

mencoder.exe "Captain Earth 01.mkv" -o "Captain Earth 01.avi" -oac pcm -ovc lavc -lavcopts vbitrate=5500

You may consider change parameter vbitrate, to imporove video quality.

Hardsub mkv with .ass subtitles

If .mkv file does not contain embedded subtitles, and you have .ass file for it, you can make hardsub with this command line:

mencoder.exe "Captain Earth 01.mkv" -ass -UTF8 -sub "Captain Earth 01.ass" -o "Captain Earth 01.avi" -oac pcm -ovc lavc -lavcopts vbitrate=5500

As you can see, we added “-ass -UTF8 -sub” options, to make .ass hardsub.