# Who in the hell uses MKV?



## VictorDTarsus (Sep 12, 2007)

I am seriously sick of that crap Russian Matroska video container format because the only players for the Mac that can play this crap format are equally crap. VLC and MPlayer.


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## Chealion (Jan 16, 2001)

Perian - The swiss-army knife of QuickTime® components That should make you slightly happier.


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## VictorDTarsus (Sep 12, 2007)

Perian had no effect on my situation. Thanx though. After installation and even a machine restart, QuickTime Pro still won't open MKV files. QuickTime simply stopped responding, but now I am using a slower method of converting these useless files with ffmpegX for Mac. Its slow as hell, but its converting one of my larger MKV video files to MP4 format.


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## rondini (Dec 6, 2001)

the things we do for porn!


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## craeyon (Jan 31, 2007)

are you crazy man?

.mkv is the new format for hold .H264 videos.

All my TV shows - smallville, scrubs, the office, etc... I download in .mkv format and they are all atleast 720p res.  WITH 5.1 surround sound.. thats right .mkv can hold that much data...

cheers mate!


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## irontree (Oct 28, 2006)

I just got a movie as a .mkv file that's 4.1gb in size. The thing plays very choppy on my Mac Mini using VLC... any tips on what to do to make it play better without having to resort to converting? I don't want to lose any quality


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## irontree (Oct 28, 2006)

Could it be that my 1.5 core solo Mini doesn't have enough power to play these back?


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## fyrefly (Apr 16, 2005)

irontree said:


> Could it be that my 1.5 core solo Mini doesn't have enough power to play these back?


If it's a 720p 4.1GB file, it's very possible that a CoreSolo Mini can't handle it. CoreSolos are iffy on 720p and non-starters on 1080p.


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## Macified (Sep 18, 2003)

I'm looking to upgrade my mini from CoreSolo to Core2Duo. Just trying to figure out which processor. 

I have one mkv file which is 8GB and I was interested in seeing the picture quality. The few frames I get to see before the mini chokes look awesome.


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## Zoiks (Sep 5, 2005)

Macified said:


> I have one mkv file which is 8GB and I was interested in seeing the picture quality. The few frames I get to see before the mini chokes look awesome.


I'm running a 2.0 GHz C2D Mac Mini as my HTPC. It plays all 720p MKV files no problem in VLC, FrontRow and even Quicktime. It will also play 1080p files without a hitch if I use VLC in _stereo_ mode. However, as soon as I enable 5.1 in VLC, the framerate drops to unacceptable levels (estimate 5 fps average).

If you are looking for a 1080p - 5.1 solution, in my experience, the Newest Mac Mini is not the valid option. I believe it's the built-in video card that is the bottle-neck rather than the CPU.

Cheers!


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

Zoiks said:


> If you are looking for a 1080p - 5.1 solution, in my experience, the Newest Mac Mini is not the valid option. I believe it's the built-in video card that is the bottle-neck rather than the CPU.


You're right, in a way.

The Intel Mac minis don't *have* video cards. They have shared-RAM video chipsets. Perfectly fine for most things, but 3-D gaming and hi-def video -- uh, choke.

As for mkv, the only things I've seen in that format are either Russian or anime porn. I don't waste my time with either one, generally, so I haven't had much use for .mkv files. BUT if I ever get another one, I'll know what works and what doesn't!


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## mikelc2 (Mar 3, 2008)

.mkv are the highest quality video files around. The only thing I hate about them is they are not supported by anything!! I want to watch these Hd video files on my xbox, but can't because it's an nheard of extension. 

I did manage to convert the movie "Elizabeth" into a wmvhd file, and wow doesit look amazing. 4.7 GB, but a crystal clear picture nonetheless.


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## machspeed5 (Mar 4, 2008)

VictorDTarsus said:


> I am seriously sick of that crap Russian Matroska video container format because the only players for the Mac that can play this crap format are equally crap. VLC and MPlayer.


the video quality i've seen from matroska h.264 has been excellent / exceptional. mplayer does a better job IME @ handling .mkv than VLC.

unfortunately we're still waiting for more robust support........along with .FLV seeking  in VLC.

and btw. VLC is far superior to QT player IMHO. The downloads speak for themselves.


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## CaptainCode (Jun 4, 2006)

I don't really like it either. Support is flakey on the Mac even with VLC(crashes a lot for me). I can open the files in Quicktime no problem though. There's no difference between an MKV and MOV file quality wise if it's encoded the same. It just happens that most of the rips are using MKV as the container format instead of MOV because it's open source.


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## dona83 (Jun 26, 2005)

Quicktime with Perian supports FLV seeking. Quicktime is my default player and I prefer it 10x over VLC. I only use VLC for some problematic MPEG-1 files which Quicktime struggles to play properly...

A lot of the high def videos in the legal Azureus page are in MKV format, they look absolutely stunning. Rihanna's Umbrella with the water effect part... wowww.


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## Rayford Booth (Oct 20, 2007)

I use a 24" iMac Aluminum 2.8ghz c2de with 4gb of ram and Perian 1.1. 

I am watching The Day After Tomorrow in .mkv x264 1080p 8.7GB file size and I am watching it in Front Row.

There was some lag in the first few min of the movie as it took about 5 to 8min for the movie to fully load. It started to play right away but there was a some choppyness once the movie fully loaded it runs fine. The only problem i notice is that every once and a while (maybe 4 times that i noticed throughout the whole movie) the video slows down every so slightly. Like its barely noticeable. Like its like video was slowed by 10%.

But the video and audio quality is TOP NOTCH.

I dont think watching .mkv HD movies especially 1080p over a network would work very well. The movie only seemed to work perfectly and pause instantly after the movie was fully loaded. But if you stream 1080p over a GB network let me know as i am thinking about doing it but want to know of any issues.


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## milhaus (Jun 1, 2004)

My Mini is capable of doing 720p mkv rips fine using VLC. What's all the complaining about? Nothing wrong with VLC, nothing wrong with mkv. The Mini even does 1080p files file. 

As for only finding "russian" videos or porn in mkv, well, you clearly don't know where to look. The HDDVD rip of BSG season one in mkv was pretty nice at 1.3gb per episode. 

Quicktime chokes on more videos for me than VLC, with perian installed.


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## Rayford Booth (Oct 20, 2007)

I think the .mkv container has lag issues.

I think i am going to convert to .mov


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## Rayford Booth (Oct 20, 2007)

Usenet has lots of HD movies in .mkv


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

Since mkv is only a container, not a format, this is (mostly) a silly discussion.

A DivX .avi file encoded in h.264 will look and sound just as great.


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## Rayford Booth (Oct 20, 2007)

yes but apparently the .mkv hold multiple audio and text tracks much better than other formats. Also .mkv can hold custom fonts


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## jeepguy (Apr 4, 2008)

from what I've read, it seems that the MKV decoders on the mac only use one core, and it drives it at 100%, so on slower Mac's you get a lot of dropped frames, you need 2.8Gig on a single core to get good playback of 1080p24 5.1 audio. What this tells me is that we need someone to develop a better decoder.


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

jeepguy said:


> from what I've read, it seems that the MKV decoders on the mac only use one core, and it drives it at 100%, so on slower Mac's you get a lot of dropped frames, you need 2.8Gig on a single core to get good playback of 1080p24 5.1 audio. What this tells me is that we need someone to develop a better decoder.


I don't know what everyone here is a talking about personally. I have a 1.83GHz MacIntel Mini Coreduo with 2GB ram. I recently had the opportunity of viewing a few mkv video's. I used VLC to play them back. I have to say the picture quality on my HD TV was great, no pauses, stutters or stops at all, they played perfectly and the clarity was fantastic, best picture quality of any compressed video I have ever seen. Perhaps the problem people are having is with those particular mkv files, as my experience would indicate that it is not endemic to the format/container.


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## jeepguy (Apr 4, 2008)

screature said:


> I don't know what everyone here is a talking about personally. I have a 1.83GHz MacIntel Mini Coreduo with 2GB ram. I recently had the opportunity of viewing a few mkv video's. I used VLC to play them back. I have to say the picture quality on my HD TV was great, no pauses, stutters or stops at all, they played perfectly and the clarity was fantastic, best picture quality of any compressed video I have ever seen. Perhaps the problem people are having is with those particular mkv files, as my experience would indicate that it is not endemic to the format/container.


1080p24 5.1 or 720p ?? , I can play 720p's all day with no problems, switch to a 1080p with 5.1 audio mkv blu-ray rip, and it's a different ball game (18Gig file).

I have 1.83GHz MacIntel Mini Coreduo with 2GB ram as well.


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

jeepguy said:


> 1080p24 5.1 or 720p ?? , I can play 720p's all day with no problems, switch to a 1080p with 5.1 audio mkv blu-ray rip, and it's a different ball game (18Gig file).
> 
> I have 1.86GHz MacIntel Mini Coreduo with 2GB ram as well.


Sorry I didn't notice you 1080p detail. Yes they were 720p, I haven't even attempted a 1080p playback, mainly because I haven't even seen any yet. That being said I wouldn't even be able to on the TV front either as my HD TV is limited to 1080i/720p.


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## simoncoul (Jan 27, 2008)

A .mkv container is far superior to any other container other their so if anything u should be asking why isn't there better support on the mac. People use .mkv because they don't need to hack in like other formats(mov, avi, mp4) to hold multiple audio tracks and subtitles, they are natively supported, it's open source, also for fansubs they can easily make corrections to their subs and remux the file very quickly. 

The quality of the video has nothing to do with the container, and your ability to not play back the video is most likely due to your machine and not the container. Installing perian should allow u to play back the video just fine. Cue markers are not part of a standard and many people that make .mkvs do not included them(like rips form HandBreak) so you are unable to scrub through the video in vlc without it crapping out on you.

If u are having problems with perian open the open and give in a couple minutes to load part of it before pressing play.


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## Rayford Booth (Oct 20, 2007)

The solution to the loading of the .mkv files is to create a .mov reference file from QT and open the movie from that .mov file. So you end up with two files. The original .mkv file and the .mov reference file. When you open the movie from the .mov file the movie will be fully loaded. The Perian Main Dev/creator told me this was the best way to run .mkv files under perian.

Also there is currently dev going on with the h264 with perian. Currently h264 does not run at the best possible speed under perian and work is being done to resolve this but h264 is very complicated and so the work is not instantly rewarding


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## ..........? (Dec 25, 2005)

Macified said:


> I'm looking to upgrade my mini from CoreSolo to Core2Duo. Just trying to figure out which processor.
> 
> I have one mkv file which is 8GB and I was interested in seeing the picture quality. The few frames I get to see before the mini chokes look awesome.



If you want to play HD content then the mac mini will not be capable enough.

All of the mac mini right now can handle up to 720p they simplily can't handle 1080p properly or not all all.


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## Macaholic (Jan 7, 2003)

Interesting. mkv is certainly a welcome wrapper -- and even trusty Handbrake can convert to it... so it can't be THAT obscure.

There are a list of software that support at on its wiki:
Matroska - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## Rayford Booth (Oct 20, 2007)

some ass hole upload a .mkv 15gb 1080p movie in 2 parts. (disk 1 and disk 2) so stupid..... anyways anyone know of a good joined to use?

Thanks


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