MKV on MAC ?!

[Elitward]

Hi,

I notice that MKV files are getting more and more popular around us.
But it looks that these files are not supported very well on MAC.
Maybe it's because many MKV files use ReadVideo9 as video codec, which is not popular in MAC world.
As far as I know, the only software to decode Real Media File is RealPlayer, and RealPlayer do not support MKV files. So ...!!

Does anyone have an idea to deal with MKV files?

Thanks in advance.

Elitward

[jon-chan]

Maybe it's because many MKV files use ReadVideo9 as video codec, which is not popular in MAC world.


In my experience, I've seen most MKV files use the DVIX and XVID codecs for video. My suggestion would be to try VLC or MPlayer, but I doubt they support RealVideo9.

[ReanimationLP]

All of my MKV files that I have (all anime) use H.264 or just good ol DivX.

Just get VLC for it, and Mplayer, and you should be good to go.

[dr_lha]

PS. Its "Mac" not "MAC", unless you're talking about running videos on a network card.

[SC68Cal]

Call me an idiot, but I've honestly never seen anything in H.264. Ever.

EDIT: Not to mention, none of my computers are nearly fast enough to do it anyway.

[killmoms]

Call me an idiot, but I've honestly never seen anything in H.264. Ever.

EDIT: Not to mention, none of my computers are nearly fast enough to do it anyway.
I have, I encode stuff myself. And standard-def H.264 plays fine on my 2-year-old PowerBook G4 with a 1.25GHz CPU. All of your computers are slower than that?

H.264 != HD

[Eidorian]

http://www.videolan.org/

VLC will play .mkv files just fine on OS X. I've been able to watch 720 x 480 .mkv files on my old PowerMac G3 450. Sure, the CPU was under 100% load but it was completely watchable.

I've found that h.264 is showing up a lot more now for standard definition as well. You get up to a 20% savings on file size when compared to MPEG-4/DivX/XviD.

[andcraig]

Yeah. I encode a lot of things in h264 inside of mkv.

VLC doesn't handle .mkv well (at least not on a 1.5 ghz powerbook) with h264 inside of it. VLC itself isn't the best .mkv player and combining that with the extra proc needed for h264 makes for a poor showing sometimes.

I'm hoping someone will improve mplayer since it handles them beautifully on my linux box

[Eidorian]

I just generally try to steer clear of .mkv files. I prefer .mp4 or .avi. with whatever video codec was used.

[DennyKrane]

Until Matroska decides to address the Mac Community...
I have found a way to play mkv files, with 60% less frustration.
This works for me, using a G4/400 and Mplayer osx
1. Get Info the mkv file
2. Change to extension to wmv. Save as wmv and that's it.
3. Playback improved, and of course with a G4/400 I'm not running
anything else.
Btw, my display is set to 800x600 100 Hz, Million colors
Best regards to all
6/30/2006 :)

[Nermal]

Several months ago a Windows-using friend gave me an MKV file, just to see whether I could play it (he couldn't). To this day I've never managed to get it working. The latest version of VLC comes back with:

mkv: unknow codec id=`V_REAL/RV40'
main: no suitable decoder module for fourcc `undf'.
VLC probably does not support this sound or video format.

It's obviously Real-format video, but I don't know what that "undf" is. Any suggestions?

Edit: The sound plays, just not the video. I also tried MPlayer, which also plays the sound. I don't get a video error in MPlayer, it just sits there eternally bouncing in the Dock.

[Yuvi]

Several months ago a Windows-using friend gave me an MKV file, just to see whether I could play it (he couldn't). To this day I've never managed to get it working. The latest version of VLC comes back with:

mkv: unknow codec id=`V_REAL/RV40'
main: no suitable decoder module for fourcc `undf'.
VLC probably does not support this sound or video format.

It's obviously Real-format video, but I don't know what that "undf" is. Any suggestions?

Edit: The sound plays, just not the video. I also tried MPlayer, which also plays the sound. I don't get a video error in MPlayer, it just sits there eternally bouncing in the Dock.AFAIK, there is no open-source real video decoder, nor will there be anytime soon, and I doubt Real cares much about Matroska, so I doubt files like that will ever work on PowerPC. It might on Intel if someone gets MPlayer's binary codec pack to work on Mac OS X, which I don't think has been done. Also, the undf is because VLC uses four character codes (like 'XVID', 'avc1', 'mp4a', etc) internally to map codecs, but Matroska uses strings to identify codecs, so VLC has to map Matroska's strings to a fourcc manually, and it looks like no-one's added the mappings for the Real codecs since no sane encoder uses them in Matroska. Where are you guys finding these files anyway? The only Real codecs in Matroska I've seen are test files for proving Matroska's capabilities.

Until Matroska decides to address the Mac Community...
I have found a way to play mkv files, with 60% less frustration.
This works for me, using a G4/400 and Mplayer osx
1. Get Info the mkv file
2. Change to extension to wmv. Save as wmv and that's it.
3. Playback improved, and of course with a G4/400 I'm not running
anything else.
Btw, my display is set to 800x600 100 Hz, Million colors
Best regards to allASF (the container that .wmv files are) and Matroska are two completely different formats entirely, and are not compatible in the least. Unless the file was actually ASF and got renamed to MKV for whatever stupid reason, this should do nothing but confuse MPlayer, but I think it ignores the extension anyway. At any rate, there just might be something for Mac users pretty soon...

[Eidorian]

Just out of curiousity will VLC use Real's codec if you have Realplayer installed? The OS X version isn't as bad as the Windows one. I need it sometimes too.

Additionally, h.264 in .mkv enclosure playback is terrible in VLC.

[Fukui]

AFAIK, there is no open-source real video decoder, nor will there be anytime soon...
Mplayer (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/video-codecs.html#realvideo)

[Eidorian]

Mplayer (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/video-codecs.html#realvideo)
RealVideo 3.0, 4.0 (fourcc RV30, RV40) - decoding supported by RealPlayer librariesO RLY?

[Yuvi]

Just out of curiousity will VLC use Real's codec if you have Realplayer installed? The OS X version isn't as bad as the Windows one. I need it sometimes too.Not last I tried.

One thing I didn't know until I just checked is that MPlayer bundles the Real codecs for MPlayer OS X - http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/rp9codecs-macosx-20041107.pkg.zip (I thought they would only be part of MPlayer's Linux codec pack.) I doubt they work with anything other than MPlayer, but I'll have to try the Real-in-Matroska test files I have when I get home.

@Fukui: There's a difference between a decoder and a player. MPlayer uses closed-source codecs for Indeo, WMV9, and Real Video, among others, which have to be installed seperately.

[FullmetalZ26]

The real problem with MKVs are that since such a file is only a container, not a format, getting one and having it play is kind of a mixed bag. The only ones I've had trouble with so far contained WMV10 video, which at the time (still?) wasn't supported on the Mac.

[Fukui]

@Fukui: There's a difference between a decoder and a player. MPlayer uses closed-source codecs for Indeo, WMV9, and Real Video, among others, which have to be installed seperately.
I think the Real ones are made using Helix, I also heard there was partial support for VC1 (WMV9) in VLC, but not much has come of it. Some may be hacked too, but I think the real codec may be legit.

[CrashRay]

Hi,
i did a website about the mkv on Mac.
It's Mkv4Mac (http://mkv4mac.free.fr/?lang=en&p=acc)
It's originally in french but i'm working on the translation. Some part of the website is already in english.
For mkv file with real Media video, you must use Mplayer with additionnal codec.
How to install what you need (http://mkv4mac.free.fr/index.php?p=log#mpl)
After you can see this part :
How to use Mplayer with Mkv Files (http://mkv4mac.free.fr/index.php?lang=en&p=lec)

[sysiphus]

MKVs are lovely looking, but my 2.16ghz CD MBP with 2gb of RAM can't handle a 1080p movie...:(

[illegallydead]

I'm sorry, but I don't undertnad the point of even having the MKV format. It sounds like a fancy way to package a normal movie, that will end up requiring the user to download more spotty software in order to play it...

WHY use this when you have so many widely playable options: WMV, AVI, MPEG, H.264, MP4, etc. etc.

[Cybix]

I'm sorry, but I don't undertnad the point of even having the MKV format. It sounds like a fancy way to package a normal movie, that will end up requiring the user to download more spotty software in order to play it...

WHY use this when you have so many widely playable options: WMV, AVI, MPEG, H.264, MP4, etc. etc.

It's part of an evil plan to take over the world. heh, there's always someone that has to do something differently *sigh*

[BeefUK]

Try this quicktime component www.perian.org (http://perian.org/)
It was recommend to me in another thread, not had chance to try it out yet but worth a go.

[killmoms]

I'm sorry, but I don't undertnad the point of even having the MKV format. It sounds like a fancy way to package a normal movie, that will end up requiring the user to download more spotty software in order to play it...

WHY use this when you have so many widely playable options: WMV, AVI, MPEG, H.264, MP4, etc. etc.

MKV mostly exists because it got relatively popular in the anime fansubbing community due to its ability to contain soft-subtitles and do mixed frame rates. But that's about it. Why it's gotten popular in other circles is beyond me.

[platypus63]

I've only seen it in anime as well. VLC and Mplayer have worked great for me. But when I started using front row, it had to be quicktime compatible. So I used this to extract the avi's or whatever is in there. You get to pick which audio/subtitle track you want in the mix, and pops the avi's right out of MKV. Maybe it'll be of some use.

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/24872/mokgvm2dvd

P.S. Does quicktime allow for soft subtitles??

[killmoms]

I've only seen it in anime as well. VLC and Mplayer have worked great for me. But when I started using front row, it had to be quicktime compatible. So I used this to extract the avi's or whatever is in there. You get to pick which audio/subtitle track you want in the mix, and pops the avi's right out of MKV. Maybe it'll be of some use.

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/24872/mokgvm2dvd

P.S. Does quicktime allow for soft subtitles??

If you have Perian installed to play MKVs in QuickTime, yes. There's also some support in QT for MP4's "TTXT" soft-subtitles, but there's no good way to create them or mux them into MP4's in OS X. I played around with it once, but it's kind of a bitch. I think it might get easier as "closed captioning" on iTunes video material gets more common though. In fact, I'm wondering if that's what they're using to accomplish that at the moment. Haven't bought anything that's captioned/subtitled off iTunes recently, so I'm not sure.

EDIT: Perian (or QuickTime) also currently has a bug where MKVs with soft-subtitles will play back with their embedded fonts displaying correctly when you're just playing them, but if you try to export to another format, all formatting disappears. It's bizarre.

[Merlyn3D]

Try this quicktime component www.perian.org (http://perian.org/)
It was recommend to me in another thread, not had chance to try it out yet but worth a go.

I'm surprised it took 23 posts for someone to actually mention perian. It's the best solution if you want to play your movies in frontrow, although I'm also a big fan of VLC on the mac, it's much better than its windows counterpart.

[michaelverdin]

guys i tried mokgvm2dvd but it seems to give me this error since i upgraded to leopard

applescript error

pid tt stat time command (1)

any help?

[twoodcc]

guys i tried mokgvm2dvd but it seems to give me this error since i upgraded to leopard

applescript error

pid tt stat time command (1)

any help?

i got the same error in leopard also

[Eidorian]

MKV mostly exists because it got relatively popular in the anime fansubbing community due to its ability to contain soft-subtitles and do mixed frame rates. But that's about it. Why it's gotten popular in other circles is beyond me.Back in my day we used OGM. :rolleyes:

I'm surprised it took 23 posts for someone to actually mention perian. It's the best solution if you want to play your movies in frontrow, although I'm also a big fan of VLC on the mac, it's much better than its windows counterpart.The thread was started last year.

[TheStu]

Back in my day we used OGM. :rolleyes:

The thread was started last year.

And last year although Perian existed, it was not the shining example of Apple codec goodness that it is today, not by a long shot. The 1.0 version is leaps and bounds better than the old .76 that they had posted for the longest time.

[Eidorian]

And last year although Perian existed, it was not the shining example of Apple codec goodness that it is today, not by a long shot. The 1.0 version is leaps and bounds better than the old .76 that they had posted for the longest time.I remember 0.5 but I don't think it supported .mkv.

[ricoisacsson]

The trick to viewing MKV files in Mac is that you have to convert them into a format that is compatible.

Use VisualHub (v 1.23) to convert the files into a better format. I prefer MP4 so I can play them in my iPod.

Then open the file in for example Mplayer OSX 2.... and Voila..

Please note that this has worked with all the files that I have tried... But I'm not promising anything.

[TheStu]

The trick to viewing MKV files in Mac is that you have to convert them into a format that is compatible.

Use VisualHub (v 1.23) to convert the files into a better format. I prefer MP4 so I can play them in my iPod.

Then open the file in for example Mplayer OSX 2.... and Voila..

Please note that this has worked with all the files that I have tried... But I'm not promising anything.

The trick to viewing MKV files is to use Perian or VLC as others have mentioned. There is no need to re-encode them unless you want to put them on your iPod. MKV is a fine format, since it is open and uses x264 it produces quite high-quality rips. I personally prefer h264 mp4 since that is immediately compatible with Quicktime (ergo Front Row) and is more easily transfered to other macs that might not have perian or vlc.

[chaos86]

I know I risk sounding like a fan boy by saying this but why the heck can't everybody just realize that h.264 is the best codec out there? It has the best quatily per byte and it scales the best so why does anyone even bother with this other crap? The only players that can't play it are older ones that don't have the processing power, and in those cases people should fall back to the previous best standard which was mpeg4. I know nobody pikes a monopoly, but there are cases where one standard should be universally accepted, like h.264, aac (for lossy compression), usb, dvi, imap, etc. I shouldn't have to deal with real media format, ogg vorbis, usb-b and mini-usb, apple display connector (thank god), etc just because some random company wants to make their own standard. I know there are some good alternatives (xvid, ogg) but come on, give up, you lost.

Sorry i ranted in your thread. Bring on the flames.

[Eidorian]

I know I risk sounding like a fan boy by saying this but why the heck can't everybody just realize that h.264 is the best codec out there? It has the best quatily per byte and it scales the best so why does anyone even bother with this other crap? The only players that can't play it are older ones that don't have the processing power, and in those cases people should fall back to the previous best standard which was mpeg4. I know nobody pikes a monopoly, but there are cases where one standard should be universally accepted, like h.264, aac (for lossy compression), usb, dvi, imap, etc. I shouldn't have to deal with real media format, ogg vorbis, usb-b and mini-usb, apple display connector (thank god), etc just because some random company wants to make their own standard. I know there are some good alternatives (xvid, ogg) but come on, give up, you lost.

Sorry i ranted in your thread. Bring on the flames.MKV isn't a codec it's a container format.

Oh look, h.264. :rolleyes:

[chaos86]

MKV isn't a codec it's a container format.

Oh look, h.264. :rolleyes:

well I think you can tell from my post that its not mkv I hate, its people and companies who choose to use non standard stuff when the standard is free, superior, and available to all. Codec or container, Mkv is clearly not a good choice and companies who use it will be on my personal boycott list.

They should have used h.264 in mp4.

[Eidorian]

well I think you can tell from my post that its not mkv I hate, its people and companies who choose to use non standard stuff when the standard is free, superior, and available to all.I believe that the use of .mkv in the fan subbing community comes from the fact that it's GNU LGPL and it supports soft subs. OGM was the previous standard for multi-audio video and subtitles even if it was a hack job.

Can you think of any other free and standard solutions?


Codec or container, Mkv is clearly not a good choice and companies who use it will be on my personal boycott list.Quite true when dealing with proprietary and even open source formats.

[Cave Man]

I like that I can use Handbrake to rip an mkv H.264 file from a DVD and preserve the AC3 Dolby Digital 5.1 audio for playback with VLC (with my Onkyo system). I wish there were an easy way to do the same with QT-compatible files - does such a method exist? It'd be nice do easily generate DD files for the Apple TV, even if it meant pulling its drive to install Perian or something.

[Kilamite]

I remember when I downloaded Lost in Hi-Definition it was a .mkv file. The file was about 1.07GB's, but the detail was amazing.

My old HP laptop couldn't play the file smoothly, was very stuttery. My Mac plays it smooth and fine. I used VLC Player to play it.

I don't know what codec it is though.

[Eidorian]

I remember when I downloaded Lost in Hi-Definition it was a .mkv file. The file was about 1.07GB's, but the detail was amazing.

My old HP laptop couldn't play the file smoothly, was very stuttery. My Mac plays it smooth and fine. I used VLC Player to play it.

I don't know what codec it is though.More then likely h.264.

[Kilamite]

AVC1 is the video codec, 1280x720 resolution.

[stupidregister]

well I think you can tell from my post that its not mkv I hate, its people and companies who choose to use non standard stuff when the standard is free, superior, and available to all. Codec or container, Mkv is clearly not a good choice and companies who use it will be on my personal boycott list.

They should have used h.264 in mp4.

Then you should be arguing for Apple to support the Ogg container and its free codecs by default. H.264 is patented and requires possible fees. And thus if free and standard are the criteria, Ogg would be the better choice.