I really hate multiple codecs... (MKV codec problem)

[impmon2]

I swear someone out there somewhere is probably laughing very hard. It seems when I think I got every possible codecs I need on my PC wotrking together and stable, something new comes along that really breaks the delicate balance. I think I'm going to start converting every video I get with less commonly used codecs to something more common like XViD so I wont run into trouble enxt time.

Last time I had trouble getting h.264 to work. Before that, Panasonic DV vs DiVX 5.

This time my latest battle is with matroska format. Most of them work fine on my computer but I have a batch of few that refuses to run, spitting out error about first element not being EBML. I tried these video files with current Windows Media Player, WMP Classic, VLC Media Player, VirtualDub, TMPGEnc, and Quicktime player.

What is it this time? I really want to start watching a few japanese animies that aren't out in USA (at least the original unedited version)

And why should there be that many codecs? There are already many free codecs to use and some of them offers decent to great quality while makingt smaller file size, one would need a decent HDTV and high end DVD player just to see quality difference.

Not all of the video codecs in existience will ever work together on the same PC no matter what anyone does. I have never been able to solve the issue with Panasonic DV codec, when I try it official DiVX encoded video wont play. And when I try to encode using Huffyuv, PC just shuts down (no BSOD or error message) but using MJPEG works fine

[celtic_druid]

MKV is a container, so there is no such thing as an mkv codec. It can contain various streams and therefor many different codecs can be used. As for why. Anime is quite often hybrid and mkv supports VFR (variable frame rate) and that is probably the main reason.

[Moonstomp]

Hi,

Some newer MKV files require codecs and cannot be played by some of the usual software like VLC for example. You can check whether you have the necessary codec on your system by using the following prog. from the people at Matroska http://www.matroska.org/%7Etoff/MatroskaDiag.exe It identifies what codecs are required to play your file, whether you have those codecs and where to get them if you don't have them. (Like Gspot).

Here's a page with the explanation, and some other MKV players:
http://www.matroska.org/technical/guides/playback/windows/index.html

Good luck !

Moonstomp.