The VideoLAN Forums

I went back from Vista to XP some time ago, and I have noticed that my 1.1.8 no longer plays MKV, not at all. In fact, I have shut VLC down with the Desk Manager. I looked for info about this in the forum website but I haven't found a satisfactory answer. Any help from up there?

Only MKV files cause problems?

Only MKV. The other video and audio formats are playing fine.

If you open Tools -> Messages (set Verbosity to 2), and start playback of MKV file, does the message log complain something?

If you open Tools -> Messages (set Verbosity to 2), and start playback of MKV file, does the message log complain something?

I set Verbosity to that level but the message log shows nothing. VLC does not play the MKV file at all and the Task Manager says it's using a 98% of CPU.

I have the same problem. I have just updated to 1.1.8. The previous version was able to play .mkv files.

In "messages" it says:

ps warning: found sync code
ps debug: contains a PSM
ps warning: garbage at input, trying to resync...
ps warning: found sync code
ps warning: garbage at input, trying to resync...
ps warning: found sync code
ps warning: garbage at input, trying to resync...

I use windows vista.

Those messages would indicate that VLC doesn't recognize those MKV files, and it assumes those are MPEG Program Stream files. That is why they won't play. Is there some sample file we could test?

I have a sample file - can I attach it to a message in this forum? If yes, how?

You can't attach files to posts, upload the sample to Multiupload.com instead so it will be spread to several other file sharing sites for you and then paste the link to the file here.

May I post the link where I found the MKV then? Or would that be against the forum rules for copyright reasons?

We are not going to download torrents and/or illegal material especially full movies or DVD/BD rips. However a short sample is tolerated for fair use and that's exactly what we want.

OK, I am posting the link I downloaded. It's just 52 MB, so I guess it counts as a short sample.

http://uploading.com/files/a659ba56/Mos ... Humour.mkv

Works just fine in here
http://i.imgur.com/9Z6xf.jpg

What do we do then? Shall we try this?

VLC hangs when opening Matroska (mkv) files
* This might occur when using VLC to view an mkv file in a directory that has a large number of mkv files. (eg. in an Azureus download directory)
VLC will attempt to preload all the mkv files in the directory and will hang, especially if some mkv files are not fully downloaded yet (thus seem to be broken).
* The solution is to set the mkv option: --mkv-preload-local-dir to false
Preferences -> Input / Codecs -> Demuxers -> Matroska -> Preload Directory (uncheck the checkbox) (See also http://wiki.videolan.org/Matroska)

From http://wiki.videolan.org/Common_Problems

Also, I tried to convert the file into another format, but again the Task Manager complains that VLC was taking a 99% of RAM. (Although the fact that I haven't found in the VLC wiki a explanation of how to convert might have been patrly respnisble for this.)

Works just fine in here

You're lucky then because I'm getting weird artifacts with this file with error messages like these: Tested on Windows XP x86 with an ATI Radeon HD 4870:
http://i.imgur.com/XZMeE.png
http://i.imgur.com/ORjsE.png

And on Windows Seven x64 with an NVIDIA GeForce GTS 240:
http://i.imgur.com/41gbt.png
http://i.imgur.com/gtsG0.png


There are no artifacts with MPlayer and FFplay though.

I have played the file again but this time using GOM Player. It is played but the video and the audio are out of sync. Maybe it is just the file that is corrupt? That it became corrupt when they converted it to MKV?

You might want to try to remux the file since it was created with mkvmerge v2.5.2 which is somewhat old and might contain some bugs.

@Votarpo - I can't seem to find 'Demuxers' anywhere in the preferences menu. Can you Specify?

@vlc_help As I have the same problem, with a different .mkv file (that I was able to view with the former version of VLC), it seems that the problem is not with the file, but with the new version of the player.

@Votarpo - I can't seem to find 'Demuxers' anywhere in the preferences menu. Can you Specify?

I think you have to select "all" in the Settings menu to find the Demuxers section.

This might be the reason of your sync issue: However I've remuxed the file to MKV forcing the FPS to 15.509 and it helped a bit but there is still image corruption with VLC while it's playing fine with other players.
But remuxing the file to MP4, still forcing the FPS to 15.509, makes a file which is not showing any corruption at all with VLC so I guess there is something wrong with MKV that VLC doesn't like.

Thanks, Votarpo. I still wasn't able to make it work, though. I tried another player, to see if something was wrong with my system, and it worked fine.