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MKV's crash playback software

Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2009 10:21 am
by Icanseestars
Hey MakeMKV is a great app but I do not seem to be having much success with it. I am using the latest version from your site and Media Player Classic Home Cinema + VLC but attempting to play back the two Blu-ray's I have converted through MakeMKV causes the error messages below. I also had Slysofy AnyDVD-HD running in the background (but not while playing the videos).

In the case of MPC-HC it plays normally for a little bit but then displays this error and crashes MPC-HC
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For VLC the error appears right at the start with video plays in the background which then eventually freezes.
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Blu-rays in question were Transformers and Hellboy 2, both are H.264.

Edit: I also tried The Dark Knight [VC-1] which generates no crash in either but stutters like mad which I saw is a bug in the other thread, however the VLC error message does still show on TDK.

Edit-2: After further messing about I think it may be the audio that is the problem, I thought MPC-HC could handle eAC3 but for some reason it seems to be choking on it, after converting the audio to a regular AC3 stream and manually muxing with mkvmerge the video plays fine.

I think an automatic downmixer to standard AC3 audio in MakeMKV would be a good "pay for" feature in the future as it would resolve compatibility issues.

Re: MKV's crash playback software

Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2009 7:48 pm
by jketch
The VC-1 stuttering is a known bug in this version of the beta which should be fixed in the future. As a workaround, you can demux using tsmuxer and remux using mkvmerge. Unfortunatley, tsmuxer cannot recognize the Blu-ray format subtitles. Does anyone know a way around this limitation?

As for the H.264 encoded movies, I have experienced this as well. I don't know exactly what is wrong, but I know the files work both on mplayer and on Windows Media Player with CCCP codec pack installed (WMP is also uses multithreaded decoding so it runs far smoother than anything else, at least on my Q9450).

Hope this helps.

Re: MKV's crash playback software

Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 2:14 pm
by Icanseestars
I disabled the internal AC3 and DTS filters in MPC-HC and let the latest official build of ffdshow-tryouts take over audio decoding and the H.264/eAC3 MKV videos but it made no difference the same Blu-ray MKV's still crash MPC-HC especially if you try to seek to a point in the movie.

I don't plan on using software playback primarily I'm getting one of the WDTV's units which supposedly work with Blu-ray derived MKV's.

Thanks for the info about the VC-1 bug I'll demux the VC-1 Dark Knight and for good measure the H.264 Transformers and remux them with their original streams and see if that changes anything.

Edit: So I demuxed Transformers and remuxed into MKV with MKVmerge and it now plays perfectly in MPC-HC. I can only assume that the current v1.3 build 722 build of MakeMKV is producing broken MKV files not just for VC-1 titles but H.264 encoded Blu-ray movies as well.

Re: MKV's crash playback software

Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 8:54 am
by mike admin
MakeMKV always downmixes to standard AC3 from Blu-ray discs. Can you please try the latest version (build 778) and see if it still produces unplayable MKVs?

Re: MKV's crash playback software

Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 8:20 pm
by Icanseestars
Thanks mike I tested the new build with the transformers blu-ray and its working perfectly now.