Makemkv doesn't play nice with others

[Trnsprtr]

The mkv files I make with the program work great in VLC - so makemkv is a roaring success in that respect - but if I try to take the mkv file and do anything with it, the mkv streams can't be read.

The end result I'm shooting for is an x264 w/ AC3 playable on the PS3. The ideal route to get there seems to be DVD->makemkv->mkv2vob. I know there are other programs to do it but I've yet to find the right combo that doesn't give me audio sync problems. Makemkv gave a perfectly synced mkv, I know mkv2vob can transcode it to x264 without screwing the audio up on my system.

- MKV plays fine in VLC.
- When I open the mkv with mkv2vob, it errors out with "Could not parse mkv file!"
- When I look at the mkv with mkvextract, it does not see the audio or video stream.
- When I attempt to open the mkv with megui, I get a Direct Show Error: "Unable to render the file. You probably don't have the correct filters installed."
- All programs I mentioned work fine with conventional mkv files.

Now I have no idea what it means, but I did notice differences in the structure of a 'good' mkv and the makemkv when viewing it with mkvinfo; mainly lines related to "EBML".

I can paste the entire file contents if desired but here is the EBML head portion:

'good'
(MKVInfo) + EBML head at 0
(MKVInfo) |+ EBML version: 1 at 5
(MKVInfo) |+ EBML read version: 1 at 9
(MKVInfo) |+ EBML maximum ID length: 4 at 13
(MKVInfo) |+ (Unknown element: EBMLMaxSizeLength; ID: 0x42f3 size: 4) at 17
(MKVInfo) |+ Doc type: matroska at 21
(MKVInfo) |+ Doc type version: 1 at 32
(MKVInfo) |+ Doc type read version: 1 at 36

makemkv
(MKVInfo) + EBML head at 0
(MKVInfo) |+ Doc type: matroska at 5
(MKVInfo) |+ Doc type version: 2 at 16
(MKVInfo) |+ Doc type read version: 1 at 20



Dunno if that helps point the way at why the makemkv can't play nice with other stuff but if not, any ideas?

[mike admin]

Dunno if that helps point the way at why the makemkv can't play nice with other stuff but if not, any ideas?

The problems you described seem to be caused by mkvextract failing on MKV file. I don't know the reason - we'll try to investigate.

As for your problem, there is a solution. mkv2vob is just a GUI for many tools that do the actual work. The tool that transcodes MKV to M2TS is called tsMuxEr. You can get the latest version from author's site at http://www.smlabs.net/tsmuxer_en.html or run it from mkv2vob directory - it's there. Running tsMuxER directly or from tsMuxER GUI should work and produce m2ts files that will play on PS3 perfectly.

[Trnsprtr]

Thanks Mike, I'll give it a try.

[tyborg]

Just wanted to chime in that I can extract video, audio, and subtitle streams without any trouble using MKVextract GUI.

The subs are even uncompressed which is great. I had some problems with subs initially because I didn't know MKVmerge by default compressed them.