Get rid of lags

[NikkiSix]

Hi guys.

I put (mkv) files to my USB mem stick, and put that in my Samsung Bluray player. Now I have a full series (Deadwood) and it lags terribly. No it doesn't lag on my PC, but right now I have no other option than playing it in my Samsung to be able to watch it on the telly.
Maybe converting it to another file type would fix the problem I don't know, haven't tried, but I surely would be happy if there was another easier fix, coz it's 3 seasons.
Any advice on how I could try to resolve this?

[robjv1]

Typically problems with lag in your scenario are caused by a combination of a format not being well supported by the software on a player and issues with the actual device used to transmit it. Is the USB in your player USB 1, 2 or 3.0? Check the manual. The USB drives themselves do not all have the same read speed or performance either, so if you have other USB drives, I'd test your same clip on those as well.

If that fails, as far as converting to another format -- it may make a difference, but you'll want to check the player manual to see what formats it can play off of a USB device. If it supports a whole host of different formats, ideally you'd convert it to another format with less compression and/or less processing overhead.

[NikkiSix]

Sorry not at home right now can't check on the Samsung. It's about 1½ years old and I play mkv files daily on it from the USB no problem (that's what I bought it for). Just once in a while there's the odd mkv that will lag on it, it's very rare.
I first thought with some luck there'd be a quick simple remedy for this lol. But yes I understand, being a stand alone BR player chanses are there's not.
Maybe converting won't help either, I don't know what causes the problem.

[robjv1]

I gotcha, I missed the MKV reference the first time I read your post -- there is a catch of course!

MKV is not itself a format, it's a format container, which can utilize many different video formats. So the reason your player likely plays some without issue is because the underlying format is compatible with your player. A secondary issue could be the bitrate of the file, or also other aspects of the encoding that are poorly supported by your player.

You can check your manual to see what actual video formats it supports. You could analyze the files that do work without issue on your player using a program on the PC called MediaInfo. That'll give you a lot of info on how it was encoded. Both of those will at least give you an idea for the format best used to convert your files if you choose to go that direction.

[hello_hello]

I have a Samsung TV and as a general rule it plays everything I throw at it (well, AVI, MP4 and MKV, anyway), but every now and then I come across a file it's not so happy with for no reason I can see. Sometimes, for reasons I also don't understand, opening the MKV with MKVMergeGUI and resaving it as a new MKV fixes the playback problem. Not always, but some of the time.

Everything I've ever encoded using High Profile, Level 4.1 has played perfectly, so lower levels should be fine. I'm not sure I've tested higher levels. You can probably check which profile and level were used when encoding the files using MediaInfo.