www.makemkv.com

I have been using MakeMKV for several years to rip my Blu-rays and a few of my DVDs, but hit a problem today I have never seen before. A DVD rip was completed without any error and the resulting MKV plays fine on my primary Dell workstation, using JRiver Media Center 26. However, when I tried to play it on an OLED TV via my HTPC, the picture was totally unsynchronised and kept flashing uncontrollably. Both PCs are running MC 26 under Windows 10.

Previously ripped DVDs and Blu-rays continue to run fine on this HTPC and TV, so I'm struggling to work out the cause of this unexpected problem. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

I don't know if this is an MC or an MakeMKV issue, so I have also asked this question on the JRiver Media Center forum.

Most likely cause is a bandwidth issue. And the most likely place is that the decoding of video is too slow for real-time display. The decoder will usually try to keep the audio on track (time-wise), sacrificing the video decode. I see this when I try to play 4K h.265 content on a system that does not have a hardware h.265 decoder.

Woodstock wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 26, 2020 11:05 pm

Most likely cause is a bandwidth issue. And the most likely place is that the decoding of video is too slow for real-time display. The decoder will usually try to keep the audio on track (time-wise), sacrificing the video decode. I see this when I try to play 4K h.265 content on a system that does not have a hardware h.265 decoder.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by a 'bandwidth issue'. What are you suggesting would fix the problem?

EDIT: As it happens, I have managed to find a solution. The video problem goes away if I turn off JRiver Media Center's option 'Hardware accelerate video decoding when possible'. That setting has never previously caused a problem with any other MKV file, so it's all rather puzzling.

I think it is a problem with DVD resolution or framerate. Provide a listing with "MediaInfo" from a working and not working mkv file. Maybe this shows the difference in the streams.

Grauhaar wrote: ↑

Mon Apr 27, 2020 6:14 am

I think it is a problem with DVD resolution or framerate. Provide a listing with "MediaInfo" from a working and not working mkv file. Maybe this shows the difference in the streams.

I have attached MediaInfo data for two of my DVD rips. La Cenerentola is a 1996 opera recording and is the video that failed to work properly until I disabled hardware acceleration on my HTPC. Enigma is a 2001 movie that works fine when hardware acceleration is enabled.

The big difference is "Rossini - La Cenerentola" is a NTSC 29,976fps DVD and "Enigma" is a PAL 25fps DVD.

Maybe (!) the 29,976fps are not accepted by the TV (disabled?) or the conversion to 25fps failed.

Grauhaar wrote: ↑

Mon Apr 27, 2020 4:36 pm

The big difference is "Rossini - La Cenerentola" is a NTSC 29,976fps DVD and "Enigma" is a PAL 25fps DVD.

Maybe (!) the 29,976fps are not accepted by the TV (disabled?) or the conversion to 25fps failed.

I was aware of the NTSC vs PAL difference, but couldn't find any other NTSC DVD that I had previously ripped. I don't think the difference in FPS settings can be relevant, as all it took to make the La Cenerentola DVD run properly was to disable hardware acceleration in JRiver Media Center.