MKV to PDF converter
People bring three expectations to this route: a transcript, an embedded video, or a montage. It produces none of them. What you get is one PDF page holding still frames spaced by an interval you choose, each with its timestamp printed under it — a contact sheet, sized so a reader can follow the sequence in a document.
Sound and motion are not kept; the PDF holds still frames spaced by the interval you choose.
Processed on your device. Files aren’t sent anywhere.
What this does not produce
Naming the limits first saves a disappointed reviewer. The output is an ordinary PDF page of images and text, not a player.
- No OCR, no transcript, no captions derived from speech — timestamps are the only text
- No embedded video or animation; every entry on the page is a still frame
- No audio track, and no attempt to reconstruct the clip in full
- No guarantee that every codec is decodable: coverage depends on the vendored FFmpeg build
Questions
Does the PDF contain the video?
Can it transcribe what is said in the clip?
Is the MKV uploaded?
Why does my sheet have only two frames?
Will any MKV decode?
Three knobs that decide the page
Illustrative: Dana attaches evidence to a ticket. The reviewer will read a PDF, not open a player, so she sets a 10-second interval, 24 frames and 2 columns and gets a single page that walks the clip in order. Interval, frame cap and column count interact — change one and the density of the sheet changes.
| Control | Choices | Effect on the sheet |
|---|---|---|
| Take a frame every | 1 s, 2 s, 5 s, 10 s (default), 30 s, 1 min | Sets how far apart sampled moments are |
| Most frames | 4–24, default 24 | Caps the sheet; long clips are sampled, not shown in full |
| Columns on the sheet | 2 (default), 3, 4 | Sets frame size and how the row reads |
Short clips produce fewer frames
The frame cap is a ceiling, not a target. A four-second clip sampled every 10 seconds yields only a couple of frames, whatever the cap says. The clip's own duration sets the floor, so a short recording comes out sparse and a long one comes out capped.
To inspect a fast event, switch the interval to 1 or 2 seconds and lower the cap so the page stays readable. To survey a long recording, keep the interval wide and let the cap fill the page.
Reading the sheet back
Frames are drawn proportionally and labelled with the time they were taken, so the page reads as a timeline rather than a collage. Two columns give large frames worth reading; four columns pack more moments into the same page at the cost of detail.
- Open the MKV; the first run loads about 32 MB of WASM for the local worker
- Choose the interval that matches how often the thing you care about happens
- Set the frame cap, then the column count for legibility
- Convert and read the PDF at print size before you attach it
Cost, limits and what the first run loads
Decoding and page assembly both happen in your browser tab. Nothing is uploaded and there is no cloud conversion step; the worker's core and WASM are served from this same origin and the worker is terminated after each conversion and on cancellation.
- One file per run, up to 60 MiB
- Roughly a 2 megapixel source resolution limit
- First use loads about 32 MB of WASM; later runs in the same tab are faster
- Frames past the cap are dropped, so a long clip is sampled rather than represented in full
- Each frame inherits whatever compression the video already applied — a low-bitrate recording produces a low-quality sheet