Suddenly, I can't play the MKVs I'm making.

[CarlosTheDwarf]

New user here, and not super technical. I've been backing up my Blu-Ray collection using MakeMKV, and everything has been working as planned. I successfully pulled movie and extras for 8 Blu-Ray discs, can play those on my computer (Windows 10), no issues.

Then I opened Spinal Tap, which has a DVD along with the Blu. I installed DVDFab Passkey Lite (free) to deal with the DVD encryption...and that's when everything went downhill. I wasn't able to view the .mkv's that resulted from this pull. So I uninstalled DVDFab Passkey. (Not worth the hassle for 2 extras).

But since then, the .mkvs I create using the program are not viewable by Windows "TV & Movie" app - which had no trouble with them before. MakeMKV creates the files as normal, but the error message I get says "Can't play. Choose something else to play. This item is in a format we don't support." I installed DIVX...same issue. Both players can play the .mkv's I made before the Spinal Tap incident, but can't play anything I created after. Additionally, before the change, my .mkvs would show up with a preview of the video...now they are just the ,mkv icons in windows.

After I uninstalled DVDFab, I restarted, deleted the remaining DVDFab folder, and installed the lastest version of makemkv. This did not fix the problem. I've spent most of the day trying to troubleshoot this and am at wits end! Any thoughts on next steps to fix or diagnose this?

[Woodstock]

First of all, there is no reason to use DVDFAB with MakeMKV can decode both Bluray and DVD disks, all by itself. In fact, having both can cause conflicts, as you have discovered.

Can you play MKV files using a program that is known to understand them, such as VLC (from videolan.org) ?

It is quite possible that, somewhere along the line, the library that allowed the Windows player to play MKV files got removed.

[CarlosTheDwarf]

Thanks for the reply, Woodstock. Yep = VLC worked!

Question - I put that extra Spinal Tap DVD in and MakeMKV wouldn't even read it - citing a "Region" issue. Is there something I should be doing to be able to access the DVD? I have zero problems with Blu Rays.

Also...very odd...before I read your reply, I used MakeMKV on "Unbreakable" - all titles. The actual movie DOES play on Windows 10 "TV & Media" app...but the other extra files do not - even though they are all .mkv files. It's less of an issue now that VLC works, but I'd still like to "Reset" the app if possible. I did some research on that, but could find nothing. Microsoft won't let me uninstall it, and their "app fixer" didn't fix. Perhaps I'll try the Microsoft forums...

[Woodstock]

MakeMKV can usually work around region issues, but there are a few drives out there that simply refuse to ignore it. With my drives, I'll get it from time to time because I've never selected a region for DVDs - no need. And I've read both region 1 and 2 disks in them, without issue.

The thing about MKV files is that they can contain lots of different encodings that are not allowed in MP4 files. But the output of a DVD should only include encodings that are found in most players - MPeg 2 video, AC3 audio, and VOBSUB subtitles (VOBSUB isn't actually allowed by specification, but most players support it). When you get into Bluray, the encodings get far more varied, and not all players can deal with them.

Usually, if the source is the same disk, the encodings are going to be the same, so the feature working but the extras not working is strange.

In VLC, you can bring up the information screen (Ctrl-I on Windows), and see what codecs (encodings) are being used in the third tab. You can compare what is listed while playing the movie with what the extras show.