In a previous post we have seen the advantages of MKV as a multimedia container compared to Bluray. But there are also a series of advanced utilities that are very useful for sending and projecting with digital files, one of them is the possibility of splitting MKV files into several smaller parts and joining them easily and simply, which greatly facilitates their transport, both over the internet and on USB drives.
For this we use the Matroska utilities program, mkvtoolnix is available on the official project website: www.matroska.org, the direct link is: http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/downloads.html. This program is free, open-source, and cross-platform.
To split the file we go to the Global tab, and we will see the Enable splitting option, with which we can configure the number of parts, duration, etc., and the option to link them (link files).
The different parts are numbered automatically. To join them is very simple, with the same program, we open the first part (add), and the second is appended (append) (careful, it is not opened again), and so on, successively, with each of the parts.
and now to append the parts:
once everything is done, we simply save it (Start muxing), and we will obtain the final file, ready for projection, with all the original configuration of subtitle tracks, audio, and video. Furthermore, this process will take little time, since nothing is re-encoded.
This option allows us to send files larger than 2GB through services that have size limitations (such as wetransfer) and improve the download process, or on hard drives and USB drives formatted in fat32 (which has a 4GB per file limitation, but are compatible with all systems), furthermore if we have linked the files, and I open them with VLC, it automatically creates a playlist.