MKV can be played on many major media players, but is not accepted by nearly all portable devices. Its files are larger and easily cause uploading problems.
AVI maintains a good balance between video quality and file size. It is also the most supported format on video hosting platforms.
If you get lots of MKV files that you need to upload to video-sharing sites, you can convert your MKV files to AVI first. Here we will walk through to show how to convert MKV to AVI on Mac, free and online methods included.
Cisdem Video Converter is currently our best program for converting MKV to AVI on Mac. Thanks to its simple, no-frills interface and impressive features, you can easily turn MKV into 500+ formats (including AVI) in original quality.
What makes Cisdem MKV to AVI converter for Mac stand out:
Free Download macOS 10.13 or later
Steps to batch convert MKV to AVI on Mac without losing quality:
Step 1. Import multiple MKV clips.
Once you open up Cisdem Video Converter, drag your MKV files from the Mac computer and drop them into the interface.
Step 2. Select output format – AVI.
Click the format button to open a drop-down and interactive panel. From the "Video" category, choose the option – “AVI”, “XVID AVI”, or "DIVX AV".
To adjust specific parameters of the output format, go to “Settings” by clicking the gear icon, and a new window like the one beneath appears.
Step 3. Edit videos (optional).
There is an editing suite to take care of your video personalization needs. Click on the pencil icon to call up the video editor and make changes.
Step 4. Convert MKV to AVI on Mac.
At the "Save to" location, select a directory to save your converted AVI on Mac, and then click the "Start" icon in the bottom right.
Free Download macOS 10.13 or later
VLC is an open source MKV to AVI converter that works on Mac and various platforms. It helps you transcode media files from one format to another. Only one MKV file can be converted at a time, batch processing is not supported.
It's also a lightweight video player with no hardware requirements. Not just video files, it's able to view DVDs, VCDs, and streaming protocols as well.
Steps to convert MKV to AVI on Mac with VLC:
But VLC is not as friendly to novices as Cisdem Video Converter. The latter has already set the best audio and video codec suitable for AVI, while the former needs to be manually selected, as not all codecs can be wrapped in AVI.
In addition, the AVI converted by VLC may have no sound or be somewhat broken. You need to repair AVI files through its inbuilt tool in the preferences.
It’s a decent online MKV to AVI converter for Mac with the ability to change MKV into 14 video formats like AVI, M4V, M2TS, etc. without watermarks.
Although its page says, "The size of the video file is 1GB", in fact, as long as you add over 300MB, the video will always remain in the uploading state. And don’t add too many MKV files to the website, or it gets slow and won’t work properly.
Steps to convert MKV to AVI online:
In spite of convenience, online converters have a size limit for uploading videos. Most of them can't convert videos larger than 200MB. But MKV video is famous for its high quality and large size. Generally, a full MKV movie should exceed 5GB, and online MKV converters don't support it at all.
To convert MKV dual audio to AVI on Mac, the only way is to remux videos without encoding. Remuxing puts video and audio streams from MKV to AVI container while preserving the actual encoding untouched.
FFmpeg is unable to automatically map all tracks. When using a common command line like ffmpeg -i input.mkv -c copy -copyts output.avi, the converted AVI file will merely map one video, one audio, and one subtitle track. You should add the command - "-map 0" to cover all tracks.
But the results are not always satisfactory. In our tests, the final dual audio AVI played either sound only (black screen) or video only (no sound).
Avidemux is an open-source software designed for simple editing and transcoding tasks. It can remux dual audio MKV to AVI, FLV, MP4, and WebM on Mac. Besides remuxing, you can also change the output codecs to re-encode your media files.
There are still issues to convert MKV with two audio tracks through Avidemux. According to tests, the output AVI contains dual audio, but the higher-quality audio will be accelerated and ended early.
| MKV | AVI | |
|---|---|---|
| File type | Matroska Video file | Audio Video Interleave file |
| Developer | Matroska | Microsoft |
| Initial release | 2002 | 1992 |
| Licensing | Open container | Proprietary container |
| Pros | 1. Store multi-tracks & subtitles; 2.Support the most modern codecs; 3. Lossless quality. | 1. Compatible with older portable devices; 2. Shrink video size while hardly reducing quality. |
| Cons | Not supported by many mobile devices; 2. Pretty larger than average files. | 1. Can only hold single video and audio stream; 2. Not support new codecs and uhd content, e.g. 4k hevc. |
Although AVI supports more mobile devices than MKV, neither AVI nor MKV can be opened on Apple apps and devices.
No, Handbrake can’t do it. The app supports a plethora of input formats, so it allows you to convert AVI to MKV. However, converting MKV files to AVI doesn't work the other way around, as Handbrake merely includes 2 outputs - MKV and MP4 (some new versions may add WebM).
No. MKVToolNix is a set of tools (mkvmerge, mkvextract, etc.) to create, split, join, and mux MKV files. You can only extract videos from AVI or any format to MKV. There is no AVI output option.
Yes, but an Internet connection is needed.
In my opinion, it’s better to use a dedicated video player. Although QuickTime doesn’t support playing MKV and AVI on Mac, you can download the best free alternative – Cisdem Video Player. It is good at playing dual audio files and VLC is not.
In short, the best MKV to AVI converter for Mac is Cisdem Video Converter. It's easy to operate and able to convert large and unlimited MKV files to various formats fast.
When it comes to remuxing dual audio MKV files to AVI on Mac, FFmpeg and Avidemux will do you a favor. Video converter software can only smartly save the audio with the highest quality. FFmpeg and Avidemux can keep all tracks in AVI. Actually, AVI is not the container to store multiple tracks, so most of the output files are bad in audio quality or can’t be played.
Emily is a girl who loves to review various multimedia software. She enjoys exploring cutting edge technology and writing how-to guides. Hopefully her articles will help you solve your audio, video, DVD and Blu-ray issues.
