Playing MKV files on my pc just can not get them to work HELP

[meridiusuk]

Hi all new here and nice to meet you all just a quick question.

I got a mkv file and i can not seem to play it correctly, the video plays i can see it but seems to play ofk at first and then seems to slow down and the audio foes out of sync as the movie plays on.

I have installed

Haali Media Splitter
Combined Community Codec Pack
Lazy Man's MKV
ffdshow
coreplayer, VPL, zoomplayer and otheres and thay all play the same way

I have a

P4 prescott at 3.8gig with 1 gig of ddr2 ram
a ati x700 GFX card
windows xp sp2
my cpu runs at 55% to 60% when playing the film

i can not understand why i can not get it to play , its about 90% there just need to make it run smooth as i can not watvh it as the audio goes out of sync to

the film is

Codec: x264 2-pass
█ Audio: 640kbps AC3 5.1 English + 192kbps AC3 2.0 Director Commentary
█ Bitrate: 5708kbps
█ Resolution: 1280 x 536 (2.40:1) (OAR)
█ Subtitles: English, Spanish, Swedish, Nor, Dan, Fin, Dut, Por-BR, Rum .ASS
█ Framerate: 23.976 fps
█ Length: 2:23:27
█ Filesize: 6.55 GB (7,041,306,152 bytes) 1.5 DVD5
█ Quants: I) 19.43, P) 21.81, B) 23.69
█ Encoder: Bobby

why can i not play it what do i need to do to play it ?

there seems to be many mkv files now but how can i get the best from it ? is it my pc ? if so what do you need to run all the formats corectly i mena 1080p encodes to

I would of thought my pc could coupe

thanks for any help

[redwudz]

Have you tried VLC Media Player? It's a good test to see if your codecs are the problem as it uses it's own codecs. And it plays most anything. If it's successful, you might need to do some codec cleaning.

And you might try Gspot and drop the file in there, then render it to see what codecs and programs are used. If Gspot doesn't give any info, try MediaInfo or VideoInspector.

Have you tried other MKV files? Is it just this one or all MKV files?

[meridiusuk]

ffdshow was used and ac3 codec

tried VLC and just the same result as before, strange thing is if i go full screen on VLC or coreplay or zoomplayer its just a blank screen but in window mode i can see the video only WMP11 lets me go full screen but it still way out of synce and the video slows down ???

I should be able to play any HD .mkv files on my machine ?????

[Baldrick]

I don't see what this has to do with dvd to avi. Moving you to software playing.

Maybe it's corrupt. Does other mkv work?

[meridiusuk]

ok tried a few more mkv files

the ones that work
1280x688
1280x534
1392x1040

the ones that dont
1920x800
1920x800
1920x1040

so it seems anything with a 1920 res seems to be abit slow at playing the video back like slow motion effect and the audio goes out of sync

so is my pc to slow to play 1080p videos 720p seems to be fine i have a p4 3.8 with 1 gig of ram and using a x700 ati gfx card

if it is my machine what do you need these days to play them fully with no problems or is it a codec problem and ?

[jman98]

so it seems anything with a 1920 res seems to be abit slow at playing the video back like slow motion effect and the audio goes out of sync

so is my pc to slow to play 1080p videos 720p seems to be fine i have a p4 3.8 with 1 gig of ram and using a x700 ati gfx card

if it is my machine what do you need these days to play them fully with no problems or is it a codec problem and ?

Yes, your PC is too slow to play 1080p H.264/X.264 videos. MKV is just a container. Your video is either X.264 or H.264. H.264/X.264 is too cutting edge for my tastes. In reality, almost no PC available today is capable of playing these files correctly at 1080p. I've read vague reports of some people having to use hacked drivers to get playback to work OK at 1080p resolution and this was only for the most state of art PCs with very expensive video cards. We are all probably a few years away from being able to play these files successfully on common PCs. I have some hope that perhaps the upcoming 4 core CPU systems may finally have the horsepower to play these files correctly, but that is just hope on my part. I really do not understand at all why encoding with H.264/X.264 is so popular given that almost nothing can correctly play 1080p video encoded with these codecs. It's a real case of the hardware not catching up with the software.

[meridiusuk]

i would of thought a dual core could play these as my pc can nearly play these files i would say 90% there its not far off but would of thought a dual core could manage it ? also does it depend on you gfx card to

so why encode in 1080p if no machine can play them, can a xbox360 or ps3 play them ?

[Baldrick]

With coreavc it might work better but it's not free and no demo available. I'm using Coreavc and can play some 1080p h264 fine using my athlon 64 3800. I'm using ffdshow for 720p material because the video quality seems a bit better than corevc. 1080p and ffdshow wont work.

[Baldrick]

And try latest ffdshow builds as it seems as they have improved the avc playback a lot lately. Try http://sourceforge.net/project/downloading.php?group_id=173941&use_mirror=superb-west&...l.exe&56071641

[thetman]

I hope this help someone but if your hd mkv file is playing slow a simple fix that worked for me was rename the mkv file to .avi and i am using powerdvd 7 to play it

good luck