# .mkv files: WTF?



## Rigor Sardonicus (Jun 15, 2009)

Okay, so, I recently downloaded some videos, but they're all in MKV format, which even VLC will not do anything useful with. I tried playing one, and nothing happened...then, pursuant to some instructions I found after a Google search, extracted the useful parts and attempted to compress them into a format that's actually useful...except that the converter program (ironically named "Super") doesn't actually DO anything.

Is there any way I can actually use these worthless files, and is the creator of this arcane format still alive?


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## Pi (Jun 15, 2009)

SMPlayer. Also yeah MKV files are an abortion; even the designer recommends against their use nowadays.


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## Rigor Sardonicus (Jun 16, 2009)

Pi said:


> SMPlayer. Also yeah MKV files are an abortion; even the designer recommends against their use nowadays.


Gah. Is there any way to make them into useful files? I hate installing redundant programs...

VLC lies, too, the bastards.
According to Wikipedia, it does support MKVs.
Lies! All lies!  :sad:


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## AshleyAshes (Jun 16, 2009)

I've never had problems with MKVs in VLC except that VLC's subtitel support is shit.

For windows you can look into using The Combined Community Codec Pack which is sthe standard distrobution of files agreed upon by most anime pirates and fansubbers.

Still VLC should work with MKV.

MKV grew to be popular to use with h.264/AVC video as you can't really fit it into an AVI file.  Of course, there is already a container designed SPECIFICLY for all MPEG-4 formats, DivX, Xvix, AVC and others... IT'S CALLED MP4 AND NO ONE EVER USES IT BUT APPLE.

And I have NO fucking idea why.  It's argued that MKV has direct support of the ASS subtitle format so it's popular amongst anime groups that use ASS subtitles.  But to my knowledge there should NO major difficulty in shoehorning an ASS stream into an MP4 file as a private stream and voila.


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## Rigor Sardonicus (Jun 16, 2009)

AshleyAshes said:


> I've never had problems with MKVs in VLC except that VLC's subtitel support is shit.
> 
> For windows you can look into using The Combined Community Codec Pack which is sthe standard distrobution of files agreed upon by most anime pirates and fansubbers.
> 
> Still VLC should work with MKV.


Well, it doesn't. How do I make it into a useful format?



> MKV grew to be popular to use with h.264/AVC video as you can't really fit it into an AVI file.  Of course, there is already a container designed SPECIFICLY for all MPEG-4 formats, DivX, Xvix, AVC and others... IT'S CALLED MP4 AND NO ONE EVER USES IT BUT APPLE.
> 
> And I have NO fucking idea why.  It's argued that MKV has direct support of the ASS subtitle format so it's popular amongst anime groups that use ASS subtitles.  But to my knowledge there should NO major difficulty in shoehorning an ASS stream into an MP4 file as a private stream and voila.


Haah, you said ASS.

o_o;
Wow.
I need sleep.
Badly.
'Night, folks!


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## AshleyAshes (Jun 16, 2009)

*A*dvanced *S*ub*S*tation Alpha, .ass format.  Really.  I dunno why they didn't go with .ASA

Fansubbers use ASS for more specific softsub positioning and to allow karaoke effects.  Still there shouldn't be any difficulty in putting one into an MP4 container as opposed to an MKV container.  I actually put this to the test once and found that none of the off the shelf tools really supported it, when it should be easy to do.  The tools just didn't BOTHER basicly.  But someone with half a brain for computer science should be able to built a tool that can mux ASS and SSA into an MP4 stream.

Anyway, MKV SHOULD be a useful format in VLC.  Any conversion is likely to degrade quality and be a general pain in the ass and time consuming.

The CCCP is a combination of filters that'll work in Windows and should enable any media player to playback the files through standard DirectShow.  This won't work for VLC as VLC uses it's own internal set of filters and ignores anything Windows has.  Makes VLC stand alone and not dependant on OS installations but at the same time removes VLC's expandability.


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## lilEmber (Jun 16, 2009)

VLC can play .mkv perfectly, download the latest version.


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## Pi (Jun 16, 2009)

NewfDraggie said:


> VLC can play .mkv perfectly, download the latest version.



he _just_ said vlc is not handling these properly like 3 times in a row.


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## ~secret~ (Jun 16, 2009)

Matroska files work grand for me. Try downloading a codec pack for whatever OS you're on. And if that doesn't work I know a few good video converters.


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## lilEmber (Jun 16, 2009)

Pi said:


> he _just_ said vlc is not handling these properly like 3 times in a row.



Like most software there's different versions of VLC, I use the latest version and play .mkv all the time. In fact I was watching a few movies this week all on that format, so I know it does work. It must be an error in the files.


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## Pi (Jun 16, 2009)

NewfDraggie said:


> Like most software there's different versions of VLC, I use the latest version and play .mkv all the time. In fact I was watching a few movies this week all on that format, so I know it does work. It must be an error in the files.



"it works for me" != "it works 100% all the time everywhere". Your habit of stating such absolutes barefacedly is really annoying, too, because you're often wrong.

I suggest seeing if smplayer has the same problem. If the file plays in SMplayer, there's something else wrong -- vlc might not have the codec.

Try installing FFDshow, too.


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## lilEmber (Jun 16, 2009)

lol Pi and his Ad Hominem.


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## AshleyAshes (Jun 16, 2009)

Pi his a potential point.  Matroska isn't a video format, it's a video container.  It's a kind of BOX basicly and you can put different formats into the box.  It's possible that the MKV file contains something that VLC doesn't support.

However I don't think this is the most likely issue as almost exclusively MKV is used for h.264/AVC as video which VLC supports all levels of and some sorta audio, typically MP3, AAC, AC3 or DTS which agian VLC supports.

I think it's more likely that the file itself is damaged and just unplayable.


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## WarMocK (Jun 16, 2009)

Depending on the OS, you need to find and install a codec pack that provides theora and RealVideo support (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and WMV are most likely already supported ;-)) as well as the codecs for the audio formats mentioned above. VLC actually IS able to play .mkv containers, provided it finds the proper audo and video codecs on your system.

EDIT: for Windows, try this one:
http://cccp-project.net/


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## AshleyAshes (Jun 16, 2009)

WarMocK said:


> VLC actually IS able to play .mkv containers, provided it finds the proper audo and video codecs on your system.


 
This is infact incorrect.  VLC is entirely self-contained and does not rely on codecs in the operating system to decode media.  Libavcodec and other codecs are built into VLC.  This means that even if the codec isn't installed into your OS, VLC can still decode it.  Of course this is assuming that what you are trying to decode is of VLCs supported codecs.  It's a double edged sword.  If VLC doesn't have the codec but the operating system does, VLC will still not playback the media.


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## lilEmber (Jun 16, 2009)

Exactly Ashley.

I think it's just damaged files, re-download them or find another set.


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## AshleyAshes (Jun 16, 2009)

Well, I'd try CCCP and a different media player that CCCP will work with (Almost every other one) before wasting bandwidth on downloading the files agian.


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## WarMocK (Jun 16, 2009)

AshleyAshes said:


> VLC is entirely self-contained and does not rely on codecs in the operating system to decode media.  Libavcodec and other codecs are built into VLC.  This means that even if the codec isn't installed into your OS, VLC can still decode it.  Of course this is assuming that what you are trying to decode is of VLCs supported codecs.  It's a double edged sword.  If VLC doesn't have the codec but the operating system does, VLC will still not playback the media.


Just found this statement on the VideoLAN forum:"In VLC's description, it says that it can use some external codecs in its windows version"

source: http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=35859&start=45&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

It seems to be a common question, btw. Common suggestions are downloading the newest version of VLC (which is supposed to be fixed) or checking out wether the mkv is corrupted or not.


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## yak (Jun 16, 2009)

I've always used the K-Lite codec pack on Windows, and playback of mostly everything always worked as well. The bundled Media player Classic is a good, small video player that can do subtitles and audio streams switching which is all that I need.


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## Carenath (Jun 16, 2009)

Pi said:


> he _just_ said vlc is not handling these properly like 3 times in a row.


This is why people should use a proper container format instead of that Bastard Child that is AVI.



yak said:


> I've always used the K-Lite codec pack on Windows, and playback of mostly everything always worked as well. The bundled Media player Classic is a good, small video player that can do subtitles and audio streams switching which is all that I need.


And that's superfluous these days. Installing MPC (Media Player Classic) Home Cinema and ffdshow-tryouts will playback everything, and it doesnt take over your system the way K-Lite's distribution does.

Need Quicktime or Real? QuicktimeAlternative and RealAlternative will install the relevent codecs (and optionally a copy of MPC if you didnt install one already), and MPC will happily pic up on them and playback the files. Though I have Quicktime installed anyway because asside from not picking up and using windows codecs that well.. it is the only video player that does what I want... but meh, Im in the minority with that I bet


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## AshleyAshes (Jun 16, 2009)

K-Lite is redundnat in itself.  It has a hell of a lot of codecs, some for the same job and then includes FFDShow which has priority for decoding most of the other codecs it already installed.

For Windows I prefer the CCCP package since it's specificly based at being what you need, just what you need, and can actually be fully uninstalled just as easy.


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## yak (Jun 16, 2009)

The last thing I need is to mess around with codecs for some obscure video format, or try to figure out what's wrong when I'm parking myself in the sofa to watch something before sleep. 

Heh, I know it's bloated, but quite honestly I don't care much. I never researched into the subject to know what's better and what's worse, I'm simply satisfied that it just works.


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## Rigor Sardonicus (Jun 16, 2009)

@Ashley: The MKV of the first file contained an H264 file, an AC3 file, an ASS file, and a TTF font (presumably for the subtitles).

I actually tried opening it in VLC again..._shocking,_ it still didn't work, and VLC's "convert" function's about as useless as anything else.

I really wish it didn't have so many features listed that don't actually work. Then again, isn't VideoLan's selling point that you can stream video over the network? They should really team up with the PulseAudio developers to make something even more useless...



Carenath said:


> This is why people should use a proper container format instead of that Bastard Child that is AVI.


Um, do you know what the title of this thread is?

AVI works just fine, as it so happens...and if you're saying MKV is a "proper" container format, I might have to hurt you >_>;

I'll have to try that MPC thing, though. I forgot about it.



WarMocK said:


> It seems to be a common question, btw. Common suggestions are downloading the newest version of VLC (which is supposed to be fixed) or checking out wether the mkv is corrupted or not.



I have the latest VLC, and how do I check whether the MKV is corrupted if nothing will open it? <_>

Well...I did manage to extract the potentially-useful bits from it, so it can't be all that corrupted, right?


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## Carenath (Jun 16, 2009)

Satan Q. Jones said:


> AVI works just fine, as it so happens...and if you're saying MKV is a "proper" container format, I might have to hurt you >_>;


No.. but AVI is a bastard of a container format.. and disliked by many because its not really a standard so much as a collection of hacks that got glued together by popular use.

If Im using MPEG4 I'd be more likely to pop it into the MP4 container.. rather than an AVI. I believe that's the correct format for MPEG4 anyway.

My point is that people should use the correct container for the format they are using.. instead of MKV or AVI.


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## Rigor Sardonicus (Jun 16, 2009)

Carenath said:


> No.. but AVI is a bastard of a container format.. and disliked by many because its not really a standard so much as a collection of hacks that got glued together by popular use.
> 
> If Im using MPEG4 I'd be more likely to pop it into the MP4 container.. rather than an AVI. I believe that's the correct format for MPEG4 anyway.
> 
> My point is that people should use the correct container for the format they are using.. instead of MKV or AVI.



I don't have any say in the matter, sir. All I have are the crappy files I got >_>;

*Edit:* SMplayer didn't work, and instead crashed. (What a shock, considering it's based on MPlayer...)
MPC, however opened the first file just fine. In other news, VLC can go to hell.


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