The VideoLAN Forums

Hey all!

I love this app. Something interesting I noticed though (don't know if it's a bug or a limitation)

I have a hard drive which shows up fine as a uPNP device. It plays mp4s fine.

However, I copied an MKV file to the drive, and it doesn't even show up in the list of files in the app. I know the file is there on the drive. Is the MKV file type not showing a bug, or a uPNP limitation?

This depends on the UPnP server running on the device. Some servers insist on transcoding all media you put there to mp4 before offering any way to play them. Others, simply offer the mkv. and of course, there the ones which can't transcode all files to mp4, so you basically can't server non-mp4 files.

One of those options is probably applicable in your case.

Fair enough. It's a small device which is serving USB media. The fact that it even has uPNP is impressive. I found a way to remux the content (without any form of re-encoding) using the same software I used to use for the PS3. It's called mkv2vob and while it's not the most elegant solution, it wraps it in an x264 encoded ts/MPEG stream with the mpg extension so it does play lol

Complicated? Sure lol

Is there any way to force VLC for iOS to buffer a littler more than the high latency setting? Maybe have a number you can change? (This is more out of curiosity than anything).

Thanks for the response!

This depends on the UPnP server running on the device. Some servers insist on transcoding all media you put there to mp4 before offering any way to play them. Others, simply offer the mkv. and of course, there the ones which can't transcode all files to mp4, so you basically can't server non-mp4 files.

One of those options is probably applicable in your case.

I was just about to post about this, I have a Kingston MobileLite Wireless connected to an External HDD. VLC on iOS doesn't recognise the .mkv files but the OPlayerHD app does.

I wondered why everything was .mp4


With more browsing, I've come across a few discussions on this, and someone has said to use nPlayer, which will allow you to use SMB/CIFT streaming which works flawlessly (You'll see every file). The only problem now is nPlayer doesn't support DTS.

Hi, I have just bought the MobileLite from Kingston too & am still confused as to why it won't show the MKV files when other apps do?

I have tried FileExplorer & that sees the MKV's & plays them - but not well. I have used MKV on my desktop for years.

How do I get it to recognise the MKV's?

Thanks

I need to check this with hands-on access to the device..

We are working on SMB / CIFS integration in VLC btw.