A quick, easy, and accurate way to test MKV files?

[guht]

It seems like less and less MKV files play right out of the box these days, and determining whether its a bad file, streaming issues, codec issues, hardware issues, etc... is becoming more common and more and more of a headache!

So I am wondering if there is a quick, easy, and accurate way to test these files before cozying down to watch a movie to only have it stop 30 minutes from the end.

I know mediainfo is still commonly used for this. It is quick in terms of operation, but deciphering the output from it by no means seems quick OR easy. I am sure a lot of people consider it accurate or they wouldnt use it.

So does anything new exist that would meet my requirements?

I just want to be able to test a MKV file and determine if its going to play correctly or not.

Thanks to those that took the time to read!

[guns1inger]

I have not seen any particular decline in quality or playability. If anything, the standardisation on AVC H264 has simplified the use of MKV files a lot. The biggest issue to affect playability was the recent implementation of compressed headers by default - previously this was turned off - which has broken playback on a lot hardware players. However this is easily fixed by re-muxing the contents with compression turned off.

[cal_tony]

The problem guns1inger mentioned has caused an awful lot of the problems. Further on that note, ver.4.0 and the earlier versions do not auto compress the headers. I have heard it mentioned the new ver. of MKVtool Nix has the option to turn off compression as an option. Earlier, each time you put a file into the program you had to remember to turn compression off.

Another problem with MKVtoolNix is that whenever you re-mux a MKV, you should separate all the streams out before you add something to the file. MKVtoolNix will allow you to just add something to an existing MKV, but unless you begin with just the streams themselves, the resulting file may or not play. A file muxed without going back to the origination streams will take longer to load in computer playing software and media players may or not wait for them to load. Depends on the player.

About your question re: a program to test MKVs.
Meteorite, a program designed to fix broken MKVs is the only program that I know of to test MKVs. ( in this case, testing would mean fixing). I have tried it with a number of MKVs without positive results.

(My opinion)
Even if you don't use MKVtoolNix directly, the programs that generate MKVs use it. With the changes since ver 4.0 all of these programs have modified their programs to incorporate the changes. So problems with any of the MKV programs could still be a result of the MKVtoolNix updates since ver 4.0.

Tony