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
01-06-2026 12:10:03
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:
```bash
# 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.
01-06-2026 12:28:46
Not necessarily, but it does require a lot of computing power to decode in real time.
But good point, h.265 encoded video is not accessible for much of the world.
01-06-2026 16:07:22
You can do it with ffmpeg (CLI) and I can give you the incantation for that if you want, but the IA's transcoding pipeline should really do it automatically and I'm surprised if it doesn't do it already. I wonder if it's supposed to and something is going wrong. I assume you used .mkv extension and still got that error. So that sounds like a bug. Otherwise, try renaming the file and re-uploading.
If it's a bug, you could try contacting the IA and asking what's up. They do read the emails they get, though obviously a software fix is likely to take a while if they pursue it.
https://archive.org/about/contact 01-06-2026 19:35:34
According to:
https://help.archive.org/help/movies-and-videos-a-basic-guide/
What encoding specifications are best for .mp4 files?
For your original mp4 to work in the online player we currently require the file to have:
audio: aac
video: h.264
moov atom: front
pixel format: yuv420p
FFS, they're not even on h.265 yet. Ugh.
01-06-2026 20:31:52
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.
02-06-2026 00:16:49
I am not sure file formats are like religions. I mean, some of them are cross compatible. Totally unlike religion.
02-06-2026 03:25:44
03-06-2026 01:12:54
According to: https://help.archive.org/help/movies-and-videos-a-basic-guide/
> What encoding specifications are best for .mp4 files?
> For your original mp4 to work in the online player we currently require the file to have:
audio: aac
video: h.264
moov atom: front
pixel format: yuv420p
FFS, they're not even on h.265 yet. Ugh.
03-06-2026 02:37:43
Lemmy
Related topics
![💬](/forum/post_reply?topic=693"e_user=Guest"e_content=%5Bb%5D%40akunohana%5B%2Fb%5D%0A%0A%5Bimg%5Dhttps%3A%2F%2Fpiefed.cdn.blahaj.zone%2Fposts%2FmU%2FzJ%2FmUzJZ5xfnU7iNF1.webp%5B%2Fimg%5D){kind=link}
![💬](/forum/post_reply?topic=693"e_user=Guest"e_content=%5Bb%5D%40akunohana%5B%2Fb%5D%0A%0A%21%5BmUzJZ5xfnU7iNF1.webp%5D%28https%3A%2F%2Fpiefed.cdn.blahaj.zone%2Fposts%2FmU%2FzJ%2FmUzJZ5xfnU7iNF1.webp%29){kind=link}