MKV plays in VLC but MPC crashes computer

[DTG12]

I have an extensive anime collection, just recently I tried to watch a new series and my usual play is Media Player Classic-HC would open the file and then freeze up the whole computer. I tried looking around for some way to test or repair the MKV files (found this place), but nothing works or is too complicated or doesnt handle more than 1 file at a time, I dont have the patience to sit and test each file and I sure as heck dont want to find out which files are crashing my computer by opening them one at a time.

On the off chance that this might be a problem with MPC-HC codec but only certain MKV files are doing the crashing, I cant tell the difference unless I play and risk another crash. I downloaded VLC, and surprisingly, the known pronlem files played fine. I do prefer MPC-HC to VLC so I was wondering if MakeMKV can test various MKV's or whatever and find out what is different about the files. The other thought is just flat out convert ALL of the collection using MakeMKV so that they are ALL the same codec. Does MakeMKV do batch files or cue up several files at one to convert each one? (Time doesnt matter here.)

[Woodstock]

There is a utility called "MediaInfo" which can tell you what CODECs are in a file from the command line. You can get some of that from mkvtoolnix, but it's a bit harder to interpret.

MPC should not crash, even if it doesn't understand the CODECs in use... It should simply say, "I don't know how to handle that." There are third-party CODECs to add capability to MPC, but you have to develop a trust for something coming from an unknown source... I couldn't, so I dropped MPC.

You CAN fix the CODEC issue by transcoding with tools like Handbrake (handbrake.fr). Make everything into h.254 video, and the audio transcoded to either FAAC or AC3, and MPC would be happy to play it. But, it takes time to do such things. I know... I've recently redone all of Bleach, Ranma, and Fairy Tail because I found some settings that were better for both my stand-alone players and the Android tablets.