No video while playing MKV file

zxcvbnm · Post by **zxcvbnm** » Sun Feb 07, 2016 11:40 pm

Hello. I downloaded a season of a TV series and all the files are MKV, and it also says 720p x265 AAC. They work fine in VLC on my Windows PC, but after FTP-ing them to Xbox, it only plays sound in XBMC, as if it is an audio file. I thought maybe XBMC has trouble with MKV so decided to convert to a type I know will work.. so I used the trustful Prism Video Converter to convert them, but these MKVs for some reason can't be converted by the software. I downloaded an alternative (AVS), which also oddly could not convert it, but another software, Wondershare, did. However the file size explodes when converting. One video is 116MB but becomes 972MB when converted to various types like AVI or MP4 and in both MPEG4 and Dvix codecs. Even when downscaling the resolution to something like 640x480, AND selecting the lowest possible bitrate, it *still* says that the converted file would be more than double the size of the original. Anyone know why the files play as an audio on XBMC, and why the size becomes huge when converting?

Post by **BuZz** » Mon Feb 08, 2016 6:46 am

Because https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Effi ... deo_Coding - it is a far more efficient codec (and requires lots of cpu power). Not supported on XBMC4Xbox, and there is no way 720p would play - 720p h264 is also a no go (will decode, but slowly)

hawsey · Post by **hawsey** » Mon Feb 08, 2016 7:58 am

Get a Raspberry Pi 2 for this sort of resolution

Post by **BuZz** » Mon Feb 08, 2016 9:20 am

Even the RPI won't be able to handle h265 (No hardware decoding support for it) - the CPU won't be fast enough to do it in software.

Henning_B · Post by **Henning_B** » Mon Feb 08, 2016 9:35 am

I recommend getting a i3 asus chrome box for h.264 playback.

sixties keith · Post by **sixties keith** » Mon Feb 08, 2016 10:39 am

@buzz - could the file not be run thru ffmpeg with your code to get the mkv file to a reasonable bitrate the xbox will play? I use it all the time for every non compatible video file i download and with minimal frame drops im happy with the results, maybe worth a go

Post by **BuZz** » Mon Feb 08, 2016 10:43 am

yeh, can be transcoded - but the file will be bigger as the OP mentioned.

zxcvbnm · Post by **zxcvbnm** » Mon Feb 08, 2016 2:59 pm

Thanks for answers so far. All right, so it just can't work then. I will not get another device just for the videos, of course. I just need to convert them.

EDIT: Okay, I've converted the files to MP4 MPEG4 with a low bitrate and 480i resolution (not that it looks bad) but the subtitles are gone, why?

Post by **Dan Dar3** » Mon Feb 08, 2016 4:04 pm

Cause your probably converted into a different container (MKV is a container, it can hold audio, video, subtitle; MPEG4 is a audio/video codec, as in what goes into the audio and video tracks) or you didn't specify to copy subtitles when converting maybe? (-c:s copy for ffmpeg I believe).

Btw, if you were to press Black on controller or INFO on remote when playing the video in full screen you can see information on the audio/video streams at the top of the screen, as in codec formats, bitrates, as well as information like video/audio frames being dropped or played back. Or if you enable debug log you will see CPU being maxed out at the top of the screen as well. That should explain blank screens with audio. See the screenshots at the bottom of this blog post as an example: http://dandar3.blogspot.com/2010/12/ps3 ... oding.html

zxcvbnm · Post by **zxcvbnm** » Wed Feb 17, 2016 8:19 pm

Thanks for the help Dan Dar3, and sorry for this late reply. Okay, so from reading that I'm guessing MKV = a container = something that holds all three audio/video/subtitle, so changing it from MKV to MPEG4 kills subtitles because MPEG4 doesn't have subtitles as it's not a container, am I right?

Well what do you suggest me to do now? Is there some other (container?) format it can be converted into that the Xbox can handle and thus has subtitles?

Post by **BuZz** » Wed Feb 17, 2016 8:50 pm

convert to another mkv, but with a different video codec

zxcvbnm · Post by **zxcvbnm** » Thu Feb 18, 2016 5:25 pm

Gonna try that now, chose H264 over Xvid. Had to decrease the bitrate to 768 kbps (and therefore also resolution to 720x480) to stop the file from exploding in size to 900MB+. Well it still says the result will be 415MB, oh well. I'll see how the resulting video goes on XBMC and report here.

EDIT: The H264 video had no subtitles either. Then tried converting to Xvid and that was the same story

Post by **Dan Dar3** » Fri Feb 19, 2016 2:15 pm

It's not the video that is the problem - tehnically the video, audio and subtitle are separate entities (unless the subtitle is burnt into the video frames), they are just packed together in the MKV container. You need to find a way to keep the subtitles stream in your MKV.

Last you seemed to mentioned you used Wondershare to convert - if you're happy with your final result and you don't want or know how to convert again with keeping the subtitles stream, here are two links that might help (I don't have much experience with the software, I just looked for what you might need), one to extract the subtitles from the original MKV and one to add to the resulting MKV, hope it helps.

MKV Subtitle Extractor - How to Extract Subtitle from MKV
https://www.wondershare.com/subtitle/ex ... m-mkv.html
How to Add Subtitle to MKV Files in Mac/Win (Windows 10 included)
https://www.wondershare.com/subtitle/ho ... o-mkv.html

Post by **Dom DXecutioner** » Fri Feb 19, 2016 6:18 pm

Personally, I use handbrake to do conversions, when needed. During conversion, you can include the subtitles, re-encode or simply passthru audio, re-encode video, and add chapters (of available). Best of all, it's free!

You can also remux (not re-encode) mkv using mkvtoolnix, and extract (including batch extraction) using mkvcleaver.

https://cmkvtoolnix.download
http://www.videohelp.com/software/MKVcleaver

zxcvbnm · Post by **zxcvbnm** » Mon Feb 22, 2016 12:41 am

Dom DXecutioner wrote:Personally, I use handbrake to do conversions, when needed.

I tried it using Handbrake and no, it couldn't read the file. Other movie files I had worked but none of this series I have. The same happened to Prism Converter (which never failed me otherwise) and AVS converter, so there's definitely something fishy about these MKV files of this series that many software just cannot read them.

Dan Dar3 wrote:Last you seemed to mentioned you used Wondershare to convert - if you're happy with your final result and you don't want or know how to convert again with keeping the subtitles stream, here are two links that might help (I don't have much experience with the software, I just looked for what you might need), one to extract the subtitles from the original MKV and one to add to the resulting MKV, hope it helps.

Thanks for them, I've managed to extract the subtitle from one of the videos and have added that to a new conversion. I'll see how it goes.

EDIT: Yes! Converted to MP4 (MPEG4) with imported subtitles, and finally the video works fully with the subs. The only issue is, why does it have to take this hassle to get the subs to work?