MKV seeking

[Mr Hangman]

For all the reasons on Matroska's website it seemed that .mkv might be the best choice to store my videos, but I've had some issues muxing them. The source file I've been testing with is an AVI with h.264 and AAC streams (it's an unedited camcorder clip). I remuxed it with mkvmerge (v4.3.0) with all the default settings.

The output video appears fine on first glance, it's the same size, it plays with the same quality and it is synched correctly. However, when seeking around in the video (in VLC, v1.1.4) the frames become heavily distorted on the first couple attempts and then VLC automatically closes the file. The original AVI seeks perfectly correctly.

What can I do to fix this?

[lowellriggsiam]

Try using Handbreak to convert the file to MKV as you problem is likely an indexing problem.

[Mr Hangman]

Handbrake can't just remux videos, it always reencodes them. And I don't want to reencode the videos from h.264 to h.264 again, that'll cause a needless loss of quality and be time consuming.

[Mr Hangman]

After testing more media players, it seems the problem is with VLC rather than mkvmerge or the format itself. Using Media Player Classic HC, the mkv remux of the video actually seeks more smoothly than the original avi.

Now if I can figure out how to tag them right I think I'll be settled on mkv.

[redwudz]

VLC is fairly versatile, but may not be the best choice for MKV playback, especially HD. It relies more on CPU processing power, so it can be slower. I have also had stability problems with the latest versions of VLC and may end up reverting to an older version. MPC-HC, as you've noticed, is much more stable for MKV playback.

[bat999]

Now if I can figure out how to tag them right I think I'll be settled on mkv.

Me too!
Look here:-https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/326119-How-to-tag-an-mkv-mka-file