MKV file made by MakeMKV and Perian on a Mac = bad

[jelockwood]

I am using MakeMKV 1.5.2 beta under Mac OS X 10.5.8, and also on another computer running 10.6.2. Both computers have Perian 1.2.1 installed, and also the Apple MPEG2 QuickTime component (should that be relevant).

I am using MakeMKV to produce an MKV file from a title on an unprotected DVD. As such this means the MKV file will contain MPEG2 video, and AC3 audio. I have tried both PAL and NTSC DVDs.

The files will open successfully in QuickTime (thanks to Perian), however the video quality is appallingly bad. There is both macroblock defects, and smearing on an almost constant basis. The audio is fine, as are subtitles. Single stepping frame by frame still shows the same errors, and the errors seem to be in the same place each time.

VLC 1.0.5 on the same Mac does not suffer the macroblock or smearing. However VLC will crash every time you try and fastforward through the file.

Sample screen captures can be seen in this thread http://forums.cocoaforge.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=21949

I would greatly like to get it to play properly in QuickTime via Perian, as this would in theory provide a means of playing the original MPEG2 and AC3 with no loss of quality. Normally QuickTime cannot play muxed MPEG2+AC3.

[g1ngerninja]

Well I would personally not use quicktime as it's crap at playing anything other than apples formats very well.

I suggest you use Plex http://www.plexapp.com/ or Mplayer http://mplayerosx.sttz.ch/ as these are much better at playing the resultant files as well as Blu-Ray rips, Plex being better at these than Mplayer!

Cheers
g1nerninja

[jamiemlaw]

From the research I undertook, and reported in my other post, where I brought up the same issue, hoping to have it resolved, which is wasn't, QuickTime isn't the issue.

[Claudio]

Perian and Quicktime 7 is pretty old school in my point of view.

I would Recommend

Plex
Movist (Though it hasn't been updated since December)
VLC
MPlayer (pretty small development team for the Mac version)

[jelockwood]

Files produced by MakeMKV (from a DVD source) play fine on a Mac in VLC or Plex or other similar software using ffmpeg and similar libraries.

However I was looking for a solution that would allow playing files based on DVD sources that would also work in QuickTime to provide the maximum flexibility and to retain the original unaltered video quality, i.e. not to transcode using for example HandBrake.

As many people visiting these forums may know, Apple produce an add-on for QuickTime to let it play MPEG2 files, meaning that in theory QuickTime could play the original unaltered MPEG2 from a DVD (which of course VLC etc. can do). Unfortunately QuickTime even with this MPEG2 add-on cannot play the muxed audio from an unaltered DVD source, you will see the video but will hear nothing.

If however you use MakeMKV then it produces an MKV file containing the same unaltered video and audio but no longer in the original DVD muxed format, and in conjunction with Perian a free add-on for QuickTime can be played back and can even include selectable DVD subtitles.

When I originally tried this last year and started this thread, I found that while the resulting MKV file played perfectly in VLC, with audio, video and subtitles, that it played back with very poor video quality in QuickTime (audio and subtitles were OK). As Perian has recently been upgraded (at last) from 1.2.1 to 1.2.2, I thought it worth revisiting this issue to see if matters had improved.

Unfortunately while things have changed the results still do not work properly in QuickTime Player, but do still work fine in VLC etc.

It seems an MKV file I made last year plays very slightly better, it now only has very bad MPEG2 blocking artifacts, but does not seem to smear like before. However what is worse, is that new MKV files produced using the latest MakeMKV 1.6.7 do not show any video at all in QuickTime Player, you just get the audio and subtitles but no video.

The fact that old MakeMKV produced files still play video even if badly but new MakeMKV files play no video at all suggests that some of the guilt may be down to MakeMKV.

[jelockwood]

Somewhat good news!

MKV files produced using MakeMKV do not work properly in QuickTime Player using Perian and Apple's MPEG2 component. Older versions of MakeMKV resulted in bad macro blocking, while the latest 1.6.7 version of MakeMKV results in a file that plays no video at all (but does play audio and subtitles).

(Update: I have now managed to make one MKV file via MakeMKV 1.6.7 that played video but still had macro block errors and was very jerky.)

However via a previous reply to this thread I came across MkvToolnix and MkvMerge for Mac and took a demuxed .M2V video file, and three AC3 audio track .AC3 files, and four subtitle tracks (as a IDX/SUB pair of files) and merged them together into an MKV file and the resulting file does play properly in QuickTime Player via Perian 1.2.2! Video and all the audio and subtitles worked fine in QuickTime Player!

Obviously this approach is far more labour intensive than using MakeMKV but shows it is clearly possible to produce a valid file and that now we only need MakeMKV to be 'fixed' so as to make it a simple and easy process.

[mike admin]

Unfortunately It's a defect in MakeMKV and should be corrected shortly. Please continue discussion here http://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3390