MKV files ?

fenlander said:
@jack616
There's some black magic going on with mkv files. I posted above some files you could download from Usenet, but if you're not into usenet I can see that that's a problem.

A while ago I transcoded the whole of Band of Brothers to mkv. I can't remember if I used Freemake or Handbrake, but all the files played perfectly on the Humax. They still play perfectly on the Humax, but if I try to take a clip from one of them - using Solveig or Freemake - the resulting files do not play. I also used to play TV shows downloaded from Usenet on a regular basis until the posters changed the stream format and rendered them unusable. I have no idea why and it was precisely this weirdness that convinced me that it wasn't worth the hassle. I have a media PC connected to the TV and with Splash Pro, whose video quality I particularly like, there is just no reason to be bothered with moving files to the Humax in order to play them.

Sorry, but the playable files I have are all >1GB and while downloads on my connection are fast, I'm not prepared to upload a file that size. I can understand your incredulity, but nobody has any reason to lie to you. MKV files are NOT impossible to play per se, it's just that most of them don't work and nobody to my knowledge has come up with a simple and comprehensible way of making unplayable files playable. Personally, I'm not prepared to consider any multi-step processes: if I have a 45-minute file, I don't expect to spend an hour recoding it before I watch, especially if I'm just going to delete it afterwards. I should make clear that I'm talking here about files that are on the Humax's drive or a USB drive, or are accessed via a network share. I'm not aware of anyone who's managed to stream a mkv file via DLNA without using a transcoding DLNA server.

I'm shortly intending to try a Sumvision Cyclone media player. These cost about £30 and if the ads are to be believed they'll munch any flavour of mkv file quite happily. I'm getting it to take on holiday, so I'm not limited to my 13" laptop screen. Moral: mkv files on a Humax are not completely impossible, but they're so much trouble it's not worth the bother. Find an alternative solution. After all, the Hummy is a PVR - nobody sold it to you as a multi-format media centre.
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I could not find any consistency to the MKV issues, that play or not play, so I bought the said 'Sumvision Media Player' and its fantastic for the money....the remote is cheap though, and I cant find the code for the Humax remote to take charge of it, but the reading of the files on my external 2TB drive is a lot quicker than the humax, and Its played everything I have thrown at it.
 
jack616 said:
Cutting a 1 minute edit is too comlicated ? Excuse follows excuse.
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There are no excuses being offer here at all only advice and any possible work arounds - is it complicated to create a 1 minute video NO - but as I said in my previous post, current software that creates MKV files adds the extra EBML information which @ykno referred to in his post - he even gives you screen shots to explain this

I gave you a link to an older version of mkvtoolnix which does create mkv files that the HDR can read and play via network share

As I have already stated, current versions of mkv creation software add the extra EBML information so will not play at all on the HDR

I said the Humax doesnt play MKV files period. I said this because the manufacturer of the device said so.
To re-iterate: It was also suggested that .MKV files MAY play if they are otherwise encoded in a format
the Humax does recognise but just have an incorrect file extension. I suggest that may be what
people are creating.
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The HDR seems to recognise an older version of the mkv format - it is not recognising an 'incorrect' file extension, just the old standard

The old version of mkvmerge creates mkv files that do work on the HDR, but the newer versions do not create files that work

I can use the old version of mkvmerge with most video and audio formats, and it creates files that are playable on the HDR

If the creators of MKV are to be believed about their own product - EBML is what makes the wrapper into an MKV file (without breakong old parsers). The words "based on" are worth noting.
There is nothing "problematic" or "extra" about EBML in MKV.
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You are quite right is saying nothing 'problematic' or 'extra', but you miss the point in what myself and others have said about the EBML information - the extra info that is referred to is extra to the old standard of mkv creation - the standard for creating mkv files has obviously changed in the latest versions of the software

The older software has always had EBML info
Doc type
Doc type version
Doc type read version

Newer mkv creation software includes the three lines above plus 4 new lines
EBML version
EBML read version
EBML maximum ID length
EBML maximum size length
Doc type
Doc type version
Doc type read version

When the HDR first went on sale, the mkv standard at the time and since, included the 'extra' EBML info, so Humax would be correct in saying that the product does not support the current version of mkv files

You need to stop wasting peoples time claiming MKV files play on the humax. They do not. Period.
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Please don't take this the wrong way, but I thought the whole point was to get mkv files to work on the Hummy - the new standard obviously doesn't work, as you and myself and others have found out, so the only way to get them to work is by going back to the old mkv standard

As you know software and hardware are always changing, so is it unreasonable to assume that mkv files have also changed in the last few years

I agree, mkv files created using the current mkv standard do not work, however the old standard does, 'Period' ;)
 
Black Hole said:
Let us know how you get on!
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Well, it arrived this morning - A Sumvision Cyclone 3 about half the size of my portable HDD. Once I'd taken the power connector out of the audio socket and put it where it belonged it started up, self-configured and was ready to go. As already mentioned, it seems to play anything - including (decrypted) Hummy .ts files - from USB, internal memory (8GB) or SD card. There's no wifi or network capability and files must be added and removed using a PC. Visually, the output quality is similar to the Hummy or Splash Pro - better than Splash lite because there's some default sharpening. Transport controls are limited - fast forward, fast reverse, or goto specified time point (no user-defined jumps). The interface is functional - no flashy media cover art, just a folder view and file list. It's all cheap as chips, but seems perfectly adequately put together, so I'm very pleased.

EDIT: works fine with my Harmony remote. Also can confirm good results with mp3 and flac music files.
 
fenlander said:
Well, it arrived this morning - A Sumvision Cyclone 3 about half the size of my portable HDD. Once I'd taken the power connector out of the audio socket and put it where it belonged it started up, self-configured and was ready to go. As already mentioned, it seems to play anything - including (decrypted) Hummy .ts files - from USB, internal memory (8GB) or SD card. There's no wifi or network capability and files must be added and removed using a PC. Visually, the output quality is similar to the Hummy or Splash Pro - better than Splash lite because there's some default sharpening. Transport controls are limited - fast forward, fast reverse, or goto specified time point (no user-defined jumps). The interface is functional - no flashy media cover art, just a folder view and file list. It's all cheap as chips, but seems perfectly adequately put together, so I'm very pleased.
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Hi fenlander, I am interested in purchasing a sumvision cyclone media player and would like to know can it take a 64GB SDXC card ?
I am planning to put my Blu-Ray movies onto SD cards and use the sumvision cyclone as a portable player.
 
Hi Frederick,
I'm afraid my SD card collection maxes out at 4GB so I can't test. The manual is minimal and the only mention is 'different kinds of storage space, such as 2G\4G\8G\16G\32G\64G and so on'. This does not specifically refer to SD and could be taken to refer to SD and/or USB stick. However, I see on Sumvision's site in the information on the earlier model 2, they say 'If you’ve used this brilliant Player Adaptor before you’ll know that buying a 16GB, 32GB, or an even bigger 64GB SD card will give you loads of flexibility allowing you to store and carry hours of entertainment.' I imagine the model 3 can do anything the model 2 can do.
 
fenlander said:
Hi Frederick,
I'm afraid my SD card collection maxes out at 4GB so I can't test. The manual is minimal and the only mention is 'different kinds of storage space, such as 2G\4G\8G\16G\32G\64G and so on'. This does not specifically refer to SD and could be taken to refer to SD and/or USB stick. However, I see on Sumvision's site in the information on the earlier model 2, they say 'If you’ve used this brilliant Player Adaptor before you’ll know that buying a 16GB, 32GB, or an even bigger 64GB SD card will give you loads of flexibility allowing you to store and carry hours of entertainment.' I imagine the model 3 can do anything the model 2 can do.
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Hi fenlander, it would seem logical that from the info you supplied that the Sumvision media player can take 64GB cards.
Thanks.
 
A couple of points:

Someone asserted file sharing is illegal. It's not.
Sharing content you're not licenced to redistribute is illegal.

Projects like Vodo and others support independent film makers through a donation model distribute mainly through completely legal Bittorrent file sharing. Moreover Vuze (formerly Azureus ) deliver legal, paid content via bittorrent file sharing.
Bittorrent is simply an efficient method of distributing large files by downloading small parts of files from a network of peers. I hope it becomes more mainstream eventually, and people stop demanding we dig up roads to stop people stealing cars.

An MKV file that plays correctly for me was an independent UK film called Rising Tide:
http://vodo.net/risingtide

Several other MKVs I've tried from VODO have started playing (a couple of seconds of the ident with a brief bit of sound before the Hummy stops it as an unsupported file.

I know nothing about the file format itself, but the above film was played directly from the Human disk with no problems at all.

Note: My experience with these files on the 3view was problematic but I'd put that down to use of AC3 audio that the box was never updated to support.
 
I've just come across a little utility called GOTSent. It takes an mkv file and remuxes it as mp4 with AAC sound. The output files play perfectly on the Humax with full skip/ff/rwd/resume, as the Hummy automatically creates an hmi file for mp4s. I'm not currently set up to see if they work over DLNA. It's very quick as it involves no video recoding, though AC3 sound is recoded to AAC. Useful for watching those legally downloaded episodes on the Hummy and as a bonus, I believe the same files will work on the PS3 and XBox.
 
Ezra Pound said:
This sounds like a really useful utility, however I think It's worth sharing this Virus Total report on this file, that suggests it may have some problems :-
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I virus scanned with Microssft Security Essentials, and it didn't highlight anything, so not sure if it is dodgy or not?
 
If I read that report correctly, 4 out of 40 antiviruses rejected it, but couldn't agree on what was wrong with it. Anyway, it seems fine to me and Malwarebytes has no problems with it.
 
ykno said:
If you have files with the wrong audio format you can convert to AC3 with this program and retain 5.1 sound if you want to, as well. .
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I have tried it but:
When I select source it says
Video Track:
Non-existing!

when I click run it says
"C:\Program Files (x86)\MKVtoolnix\mkvinfo.exe" C:\...........a.Femme.Nikita.1990.720p.BluRay.x264.DTS-PRoDJi.mkv --ui-language en >C:\Users..........\AppData\Local\Temp\AudioConverter\20160408\MKVINFO-ZFVOSVKMH.out
 
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