Import MKV to Premiere Pro (VLC Method)

This is my most viewed video on YouTube and the content that earned me my first Google AdSense verification. It addresses a common pain point for editors in 2018: Adobe Premiere Pro's inability to import MKV files.

The Problem

MKV (Matroska Video) is a popular container format, but Premiere Pro CC 2015 deemed it "unsupported." The standard advice was to convert the file, which often meant:

• Slow re-encoding times.
• Loss of video quality (compression artifacts).
• Downloading sketchy third-party converter tools.

The Solution: "Remuxing" with VLC

I introduced a method using VLC Media Player—a tool almost everyone already had.

• The Technique: Instead of re-encoding, I showed how to use VLC's "Convert/Save" feature with a specific tweak: checking "Keep original video/audio track."
• The Result: This effectively remuxes (re-boxes) the streams from an MKV container into an MP4 container.
• The Benefit: The process is lossless and instant (taking seconds instead of hours).

Impact

The video provided a clean, no-nonsense tutorial for a technical problem, helping thousands of editors (including myself) bridge the gap between their source media and their editing software.