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MKV Videos

Private61

Private61

Member
Hi,

Can anyone play MKV videos on the Fox T2 or know how to make them playable, other than conversion to another container format?
 
The NEW READERS START HERE thread should lead you to

Index (click) > Miscellaneous > Video File Support & Manipulation > Codec Support

(You could also google "site:hummy.tv mkv" - the forum's own search won't accept three-letter search terms.)

Through the above, you should come to the following thread, which has useful information (except posts from somebody who refuses to accept the Humax can play MKV at all, despite demonstrations to the contrary) but you need to read all of it to find the useful bits - particularly posts 21 & 39:

https://hummy.tv/forum/threads/mkv-files.588/
 
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I have found that a lot of mkv files that will not play are ok if you use Windows ffmpeg to swap their container to MP4.
Try ffmpeg -i in.mkv out.mp4
Because it is not converting, it is similar in speed to a straight copy.
 
Thank All.

I did find that the forum wouldn't accept three letter searches. After posting this I randomly browse the forum and found info which help me to decide my next move, i.e. use mp4.

But before I just convert everything I look at ffmpeg as it may be quicker and achieve what I'm after.

Either way thanks.
 
Just checked script the actual script that I am running at home
Code: 
ffmpeg -i in.mkv -vcodec copy -acodec copy out.mp4
I think that the 2 codec copy parameters are probably the default so may be unnecessary.
The "in" and "out" may be whatever you want, but the ".mkv" and ".mp4" are essential as they tell ffmpeg what remapping it needs to do.
 
hi,

Thanks for the info hairy_mutley, it should work as you have it. I used the following

ffmpeg -i in.mkv out.mp4

and it worked fine, like you said the video and audio parts look like defaults. It took nearly as long as my conversion programme would, but I did use my laptop to do it, so I would hope for a 50min file, for it to take about 5min or a little more on my normal media machine.

As such I will look into what standard I will work to and probably just convert to mp4. It would seem that using mkv on possible different machines/device could be more trouble than it's worth.

Either way thanks for you input, helpful to confirm my work and most appreciated.
 
Private61 said:
hi,

Thanks for the info hairy_mutley, it should work as you have it. I used the following

ffmpeg -i in.mkv out.mp4

and it worked fine, like you said the video and audio parts look like defaults. It took nearly as long as my conversion programme would, but I did use my laptop to do it, so I would hope for a 50min file, for it to take about 5min or a little more on my normal media machine.

As such I will look into what standard I will work to and probably just convert to mp4. It would seem that using mkv on possible different machines/device could be more trouble than it's worth.

Either way thanks for you input, helpful to confirm my work and most appreciated.
Click to expand...
Depending on the source audio format, you may find that the sound does not work on the HDR-FOX itself. AAC will be fine but it may not play AC3 audio in an mp4 container, even though it will play a ts (m2ts) file with AC3 audio. I would test it before converting most of your files. If you do have to transcode, AAC is the way to go with mp4. Conversion should still be pretty quick on a modern Windows PC.
 
Thanks for that MontysEvilTwin, it will save me time when I decide. By pure luck I was thinking of AAC with x264.

Not so interested in other feature other than subtitles on some videos, important, and to be able to resume play from a given point, but this isn't that important really.

I currently use Xvid with mp3. I know Xvid is dyeing so I'm thinking for same resolutions what bitrate I should use to give similar picture quality. I currently use a Qf value of 0.2 as a reasonable balance to gauge video bitrate for all of my selected resolutions and frame rates.

It would be good to now how much of an improvement I will see with x264. I'm not expecting that much, but it will be helpful as I increase resolutions.

If it was more commonly used and I could get the Humax's to work I'd look at x265 as the replacement, but I think it's too early to jump that far.

Anyway, thanks for your help.
 
x264 is a software library for implementing H.264. If you are talking about a video codec, it's H.264 (also known as AVC).

Set-top boxes won't support H.265 (HEVC) without an upgrade.
 
hairy_mutley said:
I have found that a lot of mkv files that will not play are ok if you use Windows ffmpeg to swap their container to MP4.
Try ffmpeg -i in.mkv out.mp4
Because it is not converting, it is similar in speed to a straight copy.
Click to expand...

You can even do this conversion "on the box" if you have the ffmpeg package installed...
 
Yes Black Hole I understand that, just a case of loose language, sorry.

Kev_w, I'm happy to do them on my desktop, leaves the Humax for playing and recording, but thanks.
 
Black Hole said:
The NEW READERS START HERE thread should lead you to

Index (click) > Miscellaneous > Video File Support & Manipulation > Codec Support

(You could also google "site:hummy.tv mkv" - the forum's own search won't accept three-letter search terms.)

Through the above, you should come to the following thread, which has useful information (except posts from somebody who refuses to accept the Humax can play MKV at all, despite demonstrations to the contrary) but you need to read all of it to find the useful bits - particularly posts 21 & 39:

https://hummy.tv/forum/threads/mkv-files.588/
Click to expand...

The Humax HDR-Fox T2 does not - never has - and never will play back MKV files.
anyone claiming otherwsie does not have an MKV file as has been explained to you in full technical depth.

Stop wasting peoples time.
.
 
Maybe I don't understand, please explain.. this one plays fine on mine
Code: 
humax# ffprobe test.mkv
Input #0, matroska,webm, from 'test.mkv':
  Metadata:
    encoder         : libx264 + libebml + libmatroska + libfastrar
    creation_time   : 2017-05-03 01:03:00
  Duration: 00:41:39.79, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 3723 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (High), yuv420p(tv, bt709/unknown/unknown), 1280x720, SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9, 23.98 fps, 23.98 tbr, 1k tbn, 47.95 tbc (default)
    Stream #0:1: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, 5.1(side), fltp, 384 kb/s (default)

As I understand it, mkv is just a container; whether it can be played depends on what is inside.
 
jack616 said:
The Humax HDR-Fox T2 does not - never has - and never will play back MKV files.
anyone claiming otherwsie does not have an MKV file as has been explained to you in full technical depth.

Stop wasting peoples time.
.
Click to expand...
Not the flat-earther again! It's you who need to justify your claims, we know that some MKVs play.
 
af123 said:
this one plays fine on mine
Click to expand...
Maybe you could host that somewhere online as a test download? I will then test it and verify. Anyone who has a poor experience of MKV compatibility can then download the test to use as a barrel cleaner (and shut them up whinging that no MKVs will play at all). Alternatively maybe somebody could post a link to a publicly-accessible MKV that already exists for download (and is likely to persist).

If my test then fails (with the identical file), we will know that there is some kind of variability between systems.

jack616's position seems to be that because he has never personally experienced an MKV that plays, it is impossible for any MKV to play. One wonders how hard he's tried (several remedies have been posted).
 
There are long exhaustive threads on this topic going back as far as 2011. At that time, the only way to convert an mkv file to something else, such as mp4, was to recode it with Handbrake or similar, a very slow process, so people were keen to get mkv/hummy compatibility sorted. Currently, an mkv file can be converted to mp4 in seconds, without recoding, using various tools, e.g. AviDemux.

I am quite sure that at one time, the hummy would play the mkv files that were then current. I used to do it regularly. Something changed in the specification of the mkv file format that the hummy was not equipped to deal with and from that point on, mkv files on a hummy were a no-go. I don't really need to know the technical details.

I don't see a lot of point in flogging this particular dead horse. Practically speaking, the hummy does NOT currently play most mkv files, the possible exception being some really old ones. Given the antiquity of the device, this is unlikely to change. If you really want to play files obtained from external sources on your dear old hummy, then transcoding to mp4 with modern tools is a trivial task and much preferable to agonising over why something doesn't work.
 
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The problem with converting mkv to mp4 is that the HDR-FOX only seems to play mp4 files with AAC audio. If you convert say an mkv with H264 video and AC3 audio to mp4 you have to transcode the audio too. You can do this on the HDR-FOX itself with ffmpeg as long as it is only audio transcoding that is required.
 
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