So, I've been over a LOT of this forum, and while many people have my issue, I haven't found a satisfactory way to fix it yet. The problem is that VLC cannot play about 50% of .mkv files on Mac OS X. The audio works fine, but the video is all greyed out and VLC eventually "quits unexpectedly" after a few seconds of playback. I haven't found a consistent way to determine WHAT exactly is causing this problem. At first, I thought it was the avc1 codec, but I've got a few movies that are avc1 that play fine. However, all the movies that DON'T play are encoded with avc1.
So, I've installed a bunch of other media players and whatnot (at one point I had seven different media players, trying to fix this issue). Perian was by far the best, except for one glaring issue: subtitles. If there are subtitles either encoded into the .mkv itself or in a separate folder, Perian will turn them on and there is no way to turn them off, no matter what options you check in Perian. Subtitles are eye-magnets. I don't like them unless I'm watching a foreign film where they are required. When I'm watching a movie in English, I'd very much like to not have subtitles.
I've long since rid myself of the other media players. Some of them had no audio, some of them had choppy playback, all sucked. I don't even remember all of their names.
So, my choice has become watch the movie in Quicktime with Perian with subtitles, or don't watch the movie at all. WHY won't many .mkv files work with VLC? Why am I getting this grey screen? Why do some avc1 movies work, and others don't? What is the best workaround for this, where I can both watch my movie and not have to deal with subtitles? Thanks!