Is there any way to passthrough an MKV file to MP4 without it ending up as HVC1?

I use my PS3 to play all my shows & Films using x2 (Fat32) 5TB Drives, normaly mp4's & avis, but I've noticed the PS3 won't play HVC1.

I recently tried using dvdfab with the passtrhough option which it's great and fast. But the MP4 file ends up being a HVC1 MP.4 which is no good for my PS3.

I normaly convert MKVs using handbrake H.264, but the quility is degrading the image slightly and it's been bugging me, so I'm now tring to find a work around.

I'm running Mavricks on my Mac mini, but I do have a drive with Serria on it just in case I need it for newer software.

Any advise would be greatly appriciated. Thanks Don

Solution 1:

No. It's ending up as "HVC1" because it already was "HVC1" in the first place.

The tag "HVC1" indicates the HEVC (H.265) video codec. If your .mkv file had a HEVC-encoded video stream, it doesn't matter how or where you copy it or "pass through" – a copy of HEVC video is still going to be HEVC video. That's literally what "passthrough" means.

Your PS3 can't play HEVC/H.265 video in general. So the "HVC1" tag isn't the problem, it merely indicates that the actual video data will be a problem, and changing the tag or even the file type won't cause the video data to stop being HEVC.

In other words, if you have HEVC-encoded videos, there's no other choice but to re-encode them using some other video codec such as H.264 (AVC). However, you should be able to adjust the encoding settings to mostly avoid quality loss – for example, choose a lower CRF as described here; the conversion will be slower but with better results.

Solution 2:

As it's been stated, the PS3 (and PS4) cannot play HEVC. I'm not sure what your setup is like, but have you considered running a media server like Plex? It's possible to have it re-encode media on the fly, saving you the trouble of doing it manually. There are quality options, but the default looks pretty good at 1080p.