The VideoLAN Forums

I was trying to load some content to my iPad Mini for a flight and realized the audio wasn't working. I found this post about audio issues with MKV files on the iPad air using VLC 2.2.1 that has a solution involving changing the device's timezone and that worked for me. I am in Eastern Daylight Time and had to set my iPad's timezone to a future one, not a past one.

I'm still seeing the issue in 2.3.0, so I'm writing up as much info as I can on it here.

Environment info:

• iOS 7.1.1 (11D201)
  iPad mini with retina display - ME276LL/A
  VLC 2.3.0
  Eastern Daylight Time (UTC-4)

Media info:

• 1.46GB
  MKV container
  H264 MPEG4 AVC
  1280x720 resolution
  A52 (AC3) audio 48000Hz
  
  Audio does not play in current timezone: Eastern Daylight Time (-4)
  Audio does not play in past timezones: Central Daylight Time (-5), Mountain Daylight Time (-6), Pacific Daylight Time (-7)
  Audio does play in future timezones: Atlantic Daylight Time (-3), Greenwich Mean TIme (0), British Summer Time (+1), Central European Summer Time (+2)

Here are the cities you can use to get the timezones I used in testing:

• San Francisco - Pacific Daylight Time
  Denver - Mountain Daylight Time
  Chicago - Central Daylight Time
  New York - Eastern Daylight Time
  Halifax - Atlantic Daylight Time
  Reykjavik - Greenwich Mean Time
  London - British Summer Time
  Zurich - Central European Summer Time

Curious but related, I tried watching the videos on my Nexus 5 - the native video player had no audio. I downloaded MX Player and had no audio there either, but I found a "Use s/w audio decoder" setting in there and that made it work.Trying the timezone trick without the s/w decoder on the Nexus 5 did not fix the problem. Not sure if it helps as it's a different device and application but it may be of use.

There are four cardinal points, not only two.