MKV files ?

P

Peter Galbavy

New Member
I remember reading somewhere, maybe on the old org.uk site that the HDR could play MKV files from a USB stick but not from the network. I have not yet tried this, but anyone with more knowledge / experience care to comment ?

I already have 4 HDMI ports full on my AVR and can't add yet another streaming box, so looking for a way to use the Hummy to be my video streamer - esp for online HD-DVDs which I am going to start ripping to my NAS to defend against bit-rot in the future, now the standard is dead ;)
 
There are quite a few threads on streaming that might fill in some info for you, they are Here under the section on Streaming.

You're right I think about MKV files so I have stuck with files in the same format as the Hummy outputs i.e. H264 ts files and I have also converted DVDs to the same format and put them on my NAS drive. They play fine on the Hummy and I get good audio and the trick play functions work.
 
Thanks, but those links don't work. I get the idea though and I have already browsed the FAQ thread. There is "stuff" about UPNP/DLNA but nothing about supported file formats or anyone's experiences with USB sticks. I might have to actually find some time to try things myself...
 
Most DLNA servers (not just the Hummy) don't seem to handle mkv files. Either they don't appear at all on the client or if they do, they don't play.

So far as I know, the situation with imported mkv files is the same if you play them from a stick or external drive or import them to the Hummy's internal disk - i.e. some play, some don't. In the past, I've found that most downloaded files (TV shows etc.) would play perfectly on the Hummy. In recent months, the shadowy beings who post such files have changed the specs and most recent files do not play. Similarly, many - probably most - downloaded movies don't play. Not a few mkv files actually cause the Hummy to spontaneously reboot.

I experimented with various fixes, some of which worked to greater or lesser extent but all of which were time consuming. I eventually concluded that it wasn't worth the hassle. I keep downloads on my media PC and play them with Splash Player.
 
Just a thought (I know very little about this), but the iPlayer downloads end up as mp4 files and the Hummy seems happy with them.

The problem with streaming v. direct play is that the DLNA "standard" supports relatively few file formats. If you use the MSP and mount the external drive as a file share, you should have more success.
 
Just thought I'd share a tip regarding MKV files. Quite a lot of files I acquire don't play on the hummy initially, but there is an easy way to get them to play. Download mkclean (http://sourceforge.net/projects/matroska/files/mkclean/) and use "mkwdclean" included on the stubborn files - it just remuxes the mkv and makes it more compatible with the hummy. It doesn't perform miracles (files with DTS soundtracks, for example, still won't play correctly), but it makes more files playable
 
I've been playing with MKV files on a USB harddrive and I get mixed results (with mkWDclean). The first two files I tried the HD DVD dump of "A Scanner Darkly" worked fine but the US SD DVD of "An Affair to Remember" did not. I have sadly not had much time to see which combination of HD/SD 50Hz/60Hz Audio coded etc. work, but I hope to be able to get more testing done soon.
 
There has been an issue with Mkvmerge regarding specificaly requesting "no compression". This has caused me problems with streaming from my Synology NAS to an LG BD570. This device normaly streams MKV files without problems but more recent versions of MKVmerge (from 4.2?) have defaulted to this compression setting. "Mediainfo" will list the version of MKVmerge used to create the file and it might be worth using MKVcleaver to split and reprocess the file (has worked for me). My Humax does not seem to want to stream any MKV files so any information to enable it to do so would be useful.
 
I have successfully used XMediaRecode to remux mkv files into mp4 files and they play fine on the Hummy. I do a straight copy of the audio and video by ticking the "copy" checkboxes, and it pretty well wizzes through remuxing the files, even on a laptop.

Worth a mention.
 
I just downloaded that and I cannot find any "copy" checkboxes. Maybe my version is different ? I select either an MKV or a Bluray directly and then "Custom", "mp4" and then I have to select video and audio codecs. Will try finding the right combo, but pointers appreciated.

OK, I found a Copy Video checkbox under the Video tabs, but nothing for audio. Still hunting :)
 
OK, my bad. Audio copy doesn't always appear, it would seem (no option to copy rather than convert under "Modus"). However, I guess the audio transform will be much quicker, especially if pretty much nothing changes.

Question is, does it work for you?
 
Simple answer, no. The times it didn't crash out it insisted on only producing a 663MB file from a 29GB mkv. No amount of settings, options, selecting stuff in the Jobs screen worked.

But thanks for the pointer.
 
Wow, that's one hell of a mkv file. I wonder if there's a memory resource allocation issue somewhere. Has anything else been able to process that?

The other guys elsewhere have suggested Freemake. Not tried it myself.

Sorry couldn't be of more help.
 
Have you tried remuxing the file to a transport stream using tsMuxer? It's very quick compared to a recode.
 
I wanted to try the earlier efforts mentioned on this thread, but didn't expect much success. Last night my third effort was with tsMuxer (Transport Stream muxer - Can mux pretty much anything into a regular transport stream and now even Blu-ray's M2TS) I've used it before so I knew how good it was. The good news is it works perfectly.
So putting this thread to bed, use tsMuxer it's FREEWARE it will mux an mkv to a ts stream in 4/5 mins for a 1 hour/1.5gb video ( a high end pc will do it much quicker) And of course a ts stream plays on your Humax!!!
 
You might also find AV2HDR-T2 by raydon useful.
Whilst TSmuxer does a good job it doesn't create the "sidecar" files that allow you to skip forward or resume.
If you run this on TSmuxers output .ts file it will create those for you. (just drag and drop) This does however take a little longer
as it has to scan the file and create a replacement. (It doesnt re-compress the file so it doesnt take too much time)

more info here: http://hummy.tv/forum/threads/av2hdr-t2-v1-0-for-the-humax-hdr-fox-t2.907/
 
You think you've got to the end of a thread, but you haven't. I guess you never will, haha.
I have now tried AV2HDR-T2 by raydon and it worked correctly and produced the extra sidecar files to allow ff & rr.
The below speed timings where on an 8.2GB BluRay m2ts video file of 105 min play duration.
tsMuxer = 33 min (without sidecar files)
AV2HDR-T2 = 64 min (with sidecar files)
Conclusions: If full video control is important to you use AV2HDR-T2 and the extra time taken will be worth it.
Otherwise use tsMuxer which is twice as fast (you can only pause playback)
HOWEVER AV2HDR-T2 only supports input video with file extensions, .TS .MTS .M2TS .MPG and .VOB
importantly not MKV which tsMuxer does. So for mkv files use tsMuxer first and then rerun the produced ts file with AV2HDR-T2 as jack616 suggested.
Hope all this will be useful info for folks.
 
Just to chip in on the trick play thing when I have 'backed up' (ahem) my DVD's I used VLC to convert the VOB's to .TS files. I put them straight onto the Hummy disk (or indeed the USB drive and now even the NAS drive that the Hummy thinks is a USB drive) and I get ff/rw capability without any sidecar files - but I think only using the left and right on the silver button rather than the actual << and >> buttons. I prefer that method anyway as the button is easier to use without peering at the little buttons in the dark!!
 
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