mkvmerge corrupts H.264 video?

[edgar_riley]

Hey everyone. Long-time lurker here with a couple of questions. First off, I should preface this by stating that the computer in question is collapsing at the moment. Vista crashes at random, sometimes accompanied by a loud pop. I plan to replace the motherboard and/or memory in a couple of weeks, but until then, I have what I have.

Anyway, here's the deal. I'm working on backing up my Blus as MKVs. I sometimes use MakeMKV - which usually works great - but will occasionally use a combo of AnyDVD HD/eac3to/mkvmerge for various reasons. The latter seems to have problems, even when no errors are reported. In particular, whenever I encounter H.264 video, something gets corrupted along the way and leaves me with glitchy video. I've tried the files on MPC-HC, VLC and TMT2, and both have noticeable glitches in the same spots (albeit with slightly different artefacts). If I play the discs or the original rip back via TMT (mounted image or folder w/ decrypted contents), all's well. Same for the raw H.264 file created by eac3to. It's definitely something in mkvmerge.

Does anybody know what might be happening and how I can fix it? If you're curious, Haali isn't installed, and the MKVs have PGS/SUP and TrueHD or DTS-HD MA files, all of which seem to be unaffected when played back on MPC-HC (my preferred player). I'll gladly supply any other information that's needed.

(FWIW, I did poke around on Google for awhile but couldn't find any definitive answers.)

Thanks!

[cal_tony]

The only thing I might mention is that MkvMERGE works best with streams. I usually get my streams from TSMuxer. Also, MKVMerge will need to know the frame rate of the H.264 or it will assume 25.

Using TSMuxer and streams has worked out well for me.

Tony

[edgar_riley]

The only thing I might mention is that MkvMERGE works best with streams. I usually get my streams from TSMuxer. Also, MKVMerge will need to know the frame rate of the H.264 or it will assume 25.

Using TSMuxer and streams has worked out well for me.

Tony

Hi. Thanks for the reminder about TSMuxer. I'll give it a spin and see what happens.

Regarding the frame rate, don't worry, I've been setting that. As a side note, I've been using that to correct some authoring errors on some Chinese Blus. For some reason, every disc I've gotten from HK or the mainland is encoded at 24 fps. Slowing the subs & audio down a hair and setting the frame rate to 23.976 seems to work just fine, the aforementioned video glitches notwithstanding.

[edgar_riley]

Uggh. TSmuxer stream doesn't seem to be glitch-free either when mixed, despite the raw stream appearing to play back fine.

Any other ideas? Perhaps I should try to get in touch with the devs? Thanks.

[dinobike]

What version of mkvmerge are you using?. I had problems with the lastest version that gave me a corrupted video. Reinstalled the v2.9.7 (tenderness) and everything is back to normal again.

[fritzi93]

You could try ripping main movie to hard drive, then repackage to MKV with HDConvertToX. If you choose copy video and audio, there's no re-encoding. That would confirm the problem is with mkvmerge, as well as being an alternate method.

Is it all movies or just some that mkvmerge has trouble with?

[x0pht]

sorry for digging up an old thread, but im having exactly the same problem, though it doesnt occur everytime. usually remuxing the original file again fixes the issue, but it's really a pain to run every muxed mkv's through mkvverify to ensure there's no video glitch - plus it's still not a 100% guaranteed method nonetheless.

is it because of header compression? i have both VC-1 and H264 corrupted by mkvmerge 4.4.0.