Indeed, like everyone else here, the performance of MKV playback on my VLC has suffered after upgrading to the new version.
As reported by others, it requires between 7 and 10 seconds for MKV videos to load. Other problems I'm having include the inability to drag the player window when an MKV is playing. The window literally
locks into place on screen and I cannot move it. This particular problem does not happen every single time, but it happens frequently.
The other strange behavior I'm encountering is that, if I'm playing a non-MKV video, stop it, and then open an MKV, it will open in a separate instance of the player despite the fact that my settings are currently configured to permit only one instance at a time.
SOME INFORMATION:
When I installed 0.9.9., I did not uninstall the previous version of VLC and did not delete my cache/user settings. When I first encountered the MKV issue, I tried "resetting" my preferences within the tools>preferences; this accomplished nothing.
The difficulty does appear to be related to subtitles given the fact that my MKVs all played flawlessly after I disabled them. I have not attempted to remove and reinstall, though from what I've read in this thread, it doesn't seem to resolve the problem.
I don't know if any of the above will be useful in getting this fixed (I don't consider myself a very technically knowledgeable user), but VLC is still hands-down the best video playback program I've ever used. While there are bigger things in the world to be upset about, I suffer from the compulsive need to have my media applications function absolutely perfectly. I do hope the "MKV Demon" is slain soon.
Thanks for the help guys, and keep up the stellar work.