VLC won't play certain mkv files

[whiterainbow]

I see that there are multiple other threads on this topic (https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.ph ... kv#p408239,https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.ph ... kv#p407249,https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.ph ... 4&start=20 which all seem to have the same symptoms) and nobody seems to have ever solved the problem. I myself had this problem before and was never able to fix it, I just ended up deleting the offending files. Here is what I know:

• In previous versions of VLC (looks like I played this particular file around September 2013) the file played fine.
  If I try to load it today (running version 2.1.5), it just looks like it's loading forever. When I try to quit, VLC hangs and I must force quit
  No VLC crash log is generated

There is a system log generated but it's too large to post here. If someone can let me know what to look for or which parts might be useful, I can post part of it.