Add AVI MKV or other file formats into iTunes

Posted by lars | Filed under Mac, howto

 Import mkv iTunes

The simplest way to add basically any file format into iTunes is to make sure you have the developer tools installed (it comes with your Mac OS X cd) and just go to the directory of your movie/audio files and do this (in this example I’ve gone into the directory where I have a ton of MKV files):

SetFile -t “MooV” -c “TVOD” *.mkv   

Then Mac OS X will identify the files as Quicktime movies. Other than that, nothing has changed, it’s still MKV files, we still need Perian installed to play the files/be able to use the codecs. Oh and if you like me have 720p MKV rips, importing the files into iTunes will take a really, really long time.  Of course these files wont work on your iPod, but thats not the point here, the point is to have a tidy nice iTunes on, say your Mac Mini which acts as a HTPC, and being able to have a nice, clean Front Row experience with Movie artwork, info and so on. 

Update Jan 26/09: Be sure to check out these comments below, Videodrive seems to be a good piece of software to help you out and also check out Marcus tip about using Quicktime to “save as mov” in order to get iTunes to like the mkv better.

Update Apr 25/08: Adding artwork and stuff seems to crash my iTunes. Gargh! Even though it’s slow as hell to add the mkvs and I cant really view the movies with coverflow or add artwork..its still my best bet as of today.

Tags: , , , ,

Permalink | 22:00 April 5th, 2008

9 Responses to “Add AVI MKV or other file formats into iTunes”

  1. deadleus Says:
    April 7th, 2008 at 9:51 pm

    fedt, vi dunkar på det, skoj spel ju!

  2. Greg Smith Says:
    November 20th, 2008 at 10:10 pm

    I tried this on some AVI files that will play in QT player. iTunes still won’t import them.

  3. lars Says:
    November 27th, 2008 at 8:26 pm

    hm, maybe something has changed now in itunes? not sure. i did work before.
    i now use Plex

  4. tom Says:
    December 27th, 2008 at 9:05 pm

    Another approach to put MKV videos in iTunes without reconverting them is VideoDrive. You can download it at http://www.aroona.net

  5. lars Says:
    December 29th, 2008 at 2:53 pm

    interesting, i’m going to have to try that. although i use plex these days since the performance of that software on my mac mini is incredible.

  6. kangax Says:
    January 5th, 2009 at 1:31 am

    Worked like a charm, although importing ~4.7GB mkv file does indeed take ~15 minutes and freezes iTunes like there’s no tomorrow.

  7. Marcus Says:
    January 26th, 2009 at 12:02 am

    I vouch for VideoDrive as well – great for adding lots of vids to iTunes. However in the meantime, if you just want to do a few .mkv’s, without freezing iTunes – you should open the .mkv in Quicktime, then save as -this will change the movie container (without re-encoding) to a .mov, which iTunes will handle with much more grace, you can also add artwork to .mov. You see, apparently mkvs have to be buffered entirely before you can start playing them, whereas movs can be started immediately.

  8. Marcus (different) Says:
    December 23rd, 2009 at 1:48 pm

    I vouch for the above Marcus’ comment. Though you will need Quicktime 7 if you are in Snow Leopard. Quicktime X won’t open mkvs..

  9. Matias Says:
    June 14th, 2010 at 6:32 am

    Saving as reference movie seems quite useful. It only needs one slow loading of the mkv when opening it in QuickTime before saving. Using the SetFile or VideoDrive to import mkv:s makes Front Row a bit too slow to enjoy. Smaller avi:s are not a problem, but on a 27″ iMac the quality is not “much to hang in the Christmas tree” ;)

Leave a Reply