What is more annoying, is that the Xbox 360 doesn’t play Matroska Video containers, even though the video itself is encoded in h.264 or MPEG-4. There are several ways of playing the videos on the Xbox, but unfortunately all of them require converting the video.

HandBrake, previously only a DVD ripper, is an easy tool for converting videos. Unfortunately, HandBrake always transcodes the video, even though the video itself is in a format that is playable by the Xbox 360. This method will work, but the process is very time-consuming. On an upside, the program is free and works very well. Hopefully, they’ll add support for passing through the original video from the MKV container to a MPEG-4 video (m4v) container.

A better solution would be to only package the video in a new container that the Xbox 360 can understand. This process can be done with several tools. Using QuickTime Pro 7, you can export the file to another format passing though the video. You only need to re-encode the audio track, which makes this a much faster process than the Handbrake method. The QuickTime Player X bundled with Snow Leopard seems to have lost this functionality. It should be possible to install the older version of QuickTime, but the Pro license is pretty expensive if this is the only use you’ll have for it.

The easiest way I have found to do the conversion is by using MKVtools. This is a small program, specifically designed to do this task as easy as possible. It uses several open source tools to extract and re-encode the file and comes with presets both for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. While it is possible to use the tools directly, MKVtools really takes the hassle out of the process. The best part is that the program is only $5 and has a fully functional trial.

The resulting mp4 or m4v file should play on the Xbox 360 or PS3 without a problem. The only downside is that you lose the multichannel soundtrack, and have to settle for stereo. For most programs, this really isn’t a big problem in my opinion.

Do you have any better ways of viewing MKV files on a Xbox 360 that I’m unaware of? Please post them in the comments!