MKV help

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Thall860

Weaksauce
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Apr 7, 2009
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for my blu-rays I ripped them into MKV format, storing them on my WHS box. I stream them to two identical HTPC's (core2Duo 2.13, 3GB RAM, Gigabit network).

My problem is that on the older blu-rays (twister, independence day, T3) they play fine over the network but my newer blu-rays (Indiana Jones - crystal skull, Sherlock Holmes) Shudder really bad. This problem is on both HTPC's.

I am using Make MKV to convert them and have CCCP installed on each HTPC.

What am I doing wrong?
 
First MKV is not a format.
Secondly CCCP sucks.

What OS do you have? What GPU do you have?
 
open ffdshow video decoder configuration, go to codecs, select ffmpeg-mt as the h264/avc decoder.

but as nitro says, depending on your graphics card, you might be shooting yourself in the foot performance-wise by using cccp.
 
u got giga lan or 100mb? 100mb isnt enough for high bitrate encodes.

what OS on the htpc?

and ditch CCCP or any of those codec packs you dont need them

media player classic with FFDShow and the mkv your golden.

Win7 can play most any .avi file.
 
nitrobass24 said:
First MKV is not a format.
Secondly CCCP sucks.

What OS do you have? What GPU do you have?
Click to expand...

CCCP does not suck.. It uses FFDShow and MPC which is probably the best media player out.

MrGuvernment said:
u got giga lan or 100mb? 100mb isnt enough for high bitrate encodes.
Click to expand...

10/100mb is more then plenty for bluray. Max you need for a bluray is about 6mb. gig is overkill. The problem is ALOT and boy do I mean ALOT of people use the wrong streaming protocol for movies. Samba wont cover everything.
 
grimreeferx09 said:
100 megabit is roughly double the max bitrate of a bluray.

so that shouldn't matter.
Click to expand...

Once decoded. Remuxing them into mkv has done some really screwy things. Just the birds test alone kinda proves that. .

EDIT: to be fair, my HD3410 (laptop) fared well in decoding every bluray I had, up until the Hurt Locker. That's just killed UVD1 like none other. Though Intel's newer 4500MHD mananged it fine :)
 
nitrobass24 said:
First MKV is not a format.
Secondly CCCP sucks.

What OS do you have? What GPU do you have?
Click to expand...


although i appreciate your wisdom i do disagree...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matroska

what exactly about cccp sucks? if you dont use cccp, what would you recommend installing for playing back mkv'd blu-ray files on windows 7 64 bit

i had some issues when setting up my new machine, and im sure the 64bit was the problem. my previous setup was 32bit and i never had issues with codecs.

installed ffdshow tryouts
Haali media splitter (64bit)...
i had video on all files, but some there was no audio
i installed cccp.
still no audio. did some more research...
installed ffdshow svn 64bit. now i have audio in all movies.
should i just uninstall everything and reinstall the haali and both version of ffdshow tryouts to ensure its cleaner or is there no need?
 
grimreeferx09 said:
open ffdshow video decoder configuration, go to codecs, select ffmpeg-mt as the h264/avc decoder.

but as nitro says, depending on your graphics card, you might be shooting yourself in the foot performance-wise by using cccp.
Click to expand...

whats the advantage/disadvantage to making this change? and if its a better thing to use why is this not a default setting? im trying to tweek my new htpc build as well and had some issues with codecs...specifically with some blu-rays in mkv.
 
I use Gigabit network for the sheer fact that I might have 2-4 people watching movies in different parts of the house. Therefore they are streaming from the server and need the bandwidth. Everyone says Cat 5e can do Gigabit, but I've noticed a significant difference using Cat 6 cables instead of Cat 5e. Plus the cost of Cat 6 isn't bad.
 
Cat5e makes a difference only in really long runs over a couple hundred feet and much more. I've been easily getting 100MB/s from my cat5e cables.

I also don't think CCCP sucks. Sure you can get away with less than what's in that pack, but it won't hurt to have more decoders. All the ones in CCCP are great decoders but the main thing you will use from it is FFDShow.
 
@rogue maybe you should read your own links.

the first sentence says Matroska is a multimedia container. Its not a format. Video is usually either VC-1, Mpeg4 (H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10 or AVC), or mpeg-2.

So before you go spouting off about something maybe you should do some research.

As it related to CCCP i dont think it sucks....i think all codec packs suck.

If you have win7 you only need the MPCvideodec.ax filter, and Haali, and the .mkv reg edit and every video you will will be decoded by your video card using DXVA and you mkvs will play in WMC.

Thats all you need. I dont want some codec pack to install all kinds of shit that i dont need and fuck up everything else.

Further, i like how everyone is making suggestions when you dont even know what hardware or version of windows and media player software the OP is running.
 
nitrobass24 said:
If you have win7 you only need the MPCvideodec.ax filter, and Haali, and the .mkv reg edit and every video you will will be decoded by your video card using DXVA and you mkvs will play in WMC.
Click to expand...

i havent seen anyone mention the mpcvideodec.ax before. all ive ever seen are posts saying to install ffdshow tryouts and haali. am i to assume you get that file by installing mpc, or is there somewhere else you can get it?
if im using win7 64bit, which file versions should i install? as i said before i ran into issues using haali 64bit and ffdshow tryouts(which are 32bit). only after i installed the "beta" ffdshow svn 64bit did i get sound from my mkv files.i seem to have everything running smoothly now, but ill be putting together another htpc soon, so id like to try the way you mentioned. bottom line is it needs to play all the files in wmc without using a mouse. if you could post some links that would be much appreciated.
 
nitrobass24 said:
@rogue maybe you should read your own links.
the first sentence says Matroska is a multimedia container. Its not a format. Video is usually either VC-1, Mpeg4 (H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10 or AVC), or mpeg-2.
Click to expand...

of course you are correct that mkv is not a video format....but yes i can read....

"The Matroska Multimedia Container is an open standard free container format, a file format that can hold an unlimited number of video, audio, picture or subtitle tracks inside a single file."

no, not a video format, but a file format. so to say a video file is in mkv format is still correct. i just didn't think op deserved to be told he was wrong when technically he wasnt.
 
jeremyshaw said:
Once decoded. Remuxing them into mkv has done some really screwy things. Just the birds test alone kinda proves that. .

EDIT: to be fair, my HD3410 (laptop) fared well in decoding every bluray I had, up until the Hurt Locker. That's just killed UVD1 like none other. Though Intel's newer 4500MHD mananged it fine :)
Click to expand...

i have had some movies spike to 300mb+ at times in some scenes of some ripped movies i have had that killed 100mb LAN, switch over to giga and everything went smooth again,
 
Rogue71 said:
whats the advantage/disadvantage to making this change? and if its a better thing to use why is this not a default setting? im trying to tweek my new htpc build as well and had some issues with codecs...specifically with some blu-rays in mkv.
Click to expand...

making that change would enable multithreading.

i'm not really sure why it doesnt default to that.
 
Two things, don't use 64bit for HTPC's. Second, what's your WHS looking like?
 
Rogue71 said:
i havent seen anyone mention the mpcvideodec.ax before. all ive ever seen are posts saying to install ffdshow tryouts and haali. am i to assume you get that file by installing mpc, or is there somewhere else you can get it?
if im using win7 64bit, which file versions should i install? as i said before i ran into issues using haali 64bit and ffdshow tryouts(which are 32bit). only after i installed the "beta" ffdshow svn 64bit did i get sound from my mkv files.i seem to have everything running smoothly now, but ill be putting together another htpc soon, so id like to try the way you mentioned. bottom line is it needs to play all the files in wmc without using a mouse. if you could post some links that would be much appreciated.
Click to expand...

Just go to the stand alone filters for your respective OS type (x86/x64).
Install Haali.

Ill try to do a short writeup this weekend. Ill be redoing my main HTPC cause my Ceton got delivered today and I want to start from a clean slate.

I will be using x64. (even though i still reccommend x86 because its just easier).
 
MrGuvernment said:
i have had some movies spike to 300mb+ at times in some scenes of some ripped movies i have had that killed 100mb LAN, switch over to giga and everything went smooth again,
Click to expand...

Huh? The maximum bit-rate for a BluRay is 40Mbit (the average is usually around 25 or so) so less than half a 100mbit LAN at peak. What possible source would your video have come from that it is taking 300Mbit?

Why would it be significantly larger than a BluRay?
 
nitrobass24 said:
Just go to the stand alone filters for your respective OS type (x86/x64).
Install Haali.

Ill try to do a short writeup this weekend. Ill be redoing my main HTPC cause my Ceton got delivered today and I want to start from a clean slate.

I will be using x64. (even though i still reccommend x86 because its just easier).
Click to expand...

thanks ill be looking forward to it.
 
This thread is so full of conflicting/miss/false information:

- “Max you need for a bluray is about 6mb[6mbs]. gig is overkill”
- “i have had some movies spike to 300mb+”
- “The maximum bit-rate for a BluRay is 40Mbit”

Now, here’s some real, but generic, truth based on real world testing:

100mbps networks, and sometimes even 1,000mbps networks don’t always provide “hickup” free playback of high bitrate blu-ray and other streams. It can happen w/ some hardware/software combinations. And, this is what the OP observed w/ his or her “newer blu-rays………………………………………….”. Yes, it can happen. No, it shouldn’t theoretically, but it does. Your mileage may vary.

.
 
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Best thing to do is move the file to the HTPC itself and rerun it, if it stutters you have setup issues, if it doesn't then you have network/share/streaming issues.
 
Omegas said:
Best thing to do is move the file to the HTPC itself and rerun it, if it stutters you have setup issues, if it doesn't then you have network/share/streaming issues.
Click to expand...

Excellent trouble-shooting step. :)

.
 
dekruyter said:
This thread is so full of conflicting/miss/false information:

- “Max you need for a bluray is about 6mb[6mbs]. gig is overkill”
- “i have had some movies spike to 300mb+”
- “The maximum bit-rate for a BluRay is 40Mbit”

Now, here’s some real, but generic, truth based on real world testing:

100mbps networks, and sometimes even 1,000mbps networks don’t always provide “hickup” free playback of high bitrate blu-ray and other streams. It can happen w/ some hardware/software combinations. And, this is what the OP observed w/ his or her “newer blu-rays………………………………………….”. Yes, it can happen. No, it shouldn’t theoretically, but it does. Your mileage may vary.

.
Click to expand...

Its not misleading at all. AVC blurays use profile 4.1. Look up the max bitrate it can handle and you will get your speeds required. VC-1 has an equal profile but i forget the number. The problem is people don't use streaming protocols and use the basic crap samba. I use UPnP and have zero issues with any movies.

100mb and Wireless N will handle bluray's with ease. Granted the protocol is correct. And for wireless obviously a solid link.
 
Dion said:
Its not misleading at all. AVC blurays use profile 4.1. Look up the max bitrate it can handle and you will get your speeds required. VC-1 has an equal profile but i forget the number. The problem is people don't use streaming protocols and use the basic crap samba. I use UPnP and have zero issues with any movies.

100mb and Wireless N will handle bluray's with ease. Granted the protocol is correct. And for wireless obviously a solid link.
Click to expand...

According to the High Profile (HiP) adopted for Blu-Ray, and using profile 4.1, the maximum bit rate allowed is 62.6mbps. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC

As to the streaming protocols, I have not idea what you are talking about, but I'd like to learn. I'm using Window 7, and various/different programs to stream blu-ray video over my network, like vlc....so are you saying i have some kind of choice in software to select my decode stream that will affect the throughput? That some how reduces, compresses the stream? Or reduces the bit stream rate?...........Are you talking about a Network card setting?

I thought, If I play move X, and move X at any time Y, may be streaming at rate Z, that rate Z is what has to be streamed over my network, hence my network must be capable of transmitting at rate Z, without hickups...........?


.
 
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Let me add a real world example/problem:

I have a Seagate FreeAgent Theater+ media player. It is well documented, and confirmed by me at my home, that this unit will hickup at >22mbps when streaming a blue ray over a network, despite the fact that it is UPnP/DLNA compliant, and it has a 100mbps network chip set/nic. It does not hickup w/ a local usb connection.

So why is this? My point is that "theory" and "reality" are often not the same, and that other considerations must be coming into play here. Just because you have a fast network, and it's UPnP, it does not mean you can stream blu-ray without hickups.

I have experience the same hickup problem w/ some scenes w/ some blu-rays using VLC, on a gigabit network too.

Is the Theater+ using Samba when connected to the nic cable?...and using UPnP when connected directly w/ usb?

EDIT: maybe this is my problem, re: vlc, "# VideoLAN Network Client (VLC), now has integrated UPnP-client support, but not on the Windows platform yet.[citation needed]"
.
 
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If your network is capable of 100Mbps (fairly standard stuff, Gigabit isn't that entrenched yet, few more years to go), that means you can have 100Mbps of traffic flowing over that network at any given time. It doesn't mean with 3 machines that machine 1 can max out at 100Mbps when sending data to machine 2, and machine 2 can max out at 100Mbps when sending to machine 3, etc - that would be 200Mbps of bandwidth, ain't happening passing over a 100Mbps router which can realistically only handle 100Mbps throughput across all the ports at any given time as well. Full duplex networks are capable of the speeds up and down at the same time, but if the data is being passed through a router, it's gonna choke at some point because the router is limited. A 4 port 100Mbps router doesn't have 400Mbps of bandwidth just because it's 100Mbps per port (up and down).

The math doesn't hold up even though the theory does.

It means you've got a max capability of 100Mbps to work with and as certain devices make use of the network, the bandwidth gets divided equally. If you're trying to stream a video - and realize that unless you're dealing with a CBR (Constant Bit Rate) video file which is very rare you're going to see a fluctuation of bandwidth all over the map, more or less. While a theoretical max for video as mentioned above could be 62Mbps that doesn't mean the video is going to be pumping out that kind of bitrate from start to finish.

Variable bitrate is the standard these days and as such you're going to see that bandwidth usage fluctuate based on the varying bitrates the video requires to be played back.

On a 100Mbps network, you could play 2 50Mbps streams (probably with some choking at times), 4 25Mbps streams, etc, give or take a few bits per second and definitely expecting some buffering to take place. Conservatively you should be able to play a true Blu-ray if it was sitting on the hard drive across a 100Mbps network and it should never skip or stutter unless a) your network equipment is fairly crappy, and there's a lot of that out there with cheap $10 routers, $20 wireless routers, that sort of thing, and b) something else hits the network bandwidth while the video is being streamed.

You've only got so much bandwidth and it's all you get, hence a lot of serious people with serious home networks simply won't do one without Gigabit at every device ready to roll. That's a helluvalot more bandwidth to go around - still limited to the 1Gbps max capable - and I doubt anyone should ever see a skip or stutter on such a network unless you're trying to play 20+ Blu-ray streams at the same time. ;)
 
To answer a few of the questions...

I am using gigabit LAN, Netgear JGS524 24 port gigabit switch. Intel server 1000/XT running in my WHS Box. Intel giga nics on board for HTPC's.

Both of my HTPC's have ATI 4550 Cards, running different cards but same GPU.

Both boxes are Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit. removed all I could to make it purely a media box.

I am using CCCP because I dont know any better, that is why I am asking these questions.
 
With all that, I'd say there's something potentially wrong with the encodes done with those newer Blu-rays, as odd as that might seem. That's pretty serious hardware for networking so I can't imagine that you'd have a problem ever with streaming simplistic Blu-ray content, even original straight bit-for-bit rips (meaning you're not re-encoding the content to the hard drive and keeping it in the native form, just inside an MKV container).

If particular rips are having issues, I would strongly suspect the problem(s) is with the particular rips, not the network.

What are you using for the actual playback application, MPC-HC, Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, etc...? CCCP is basically unnecessary in this day and age if Windows 7 is the OS on all the HTPCs, seriously. I wouldn't install that damned codec pack even if someone paid me - Windows 7's native multiformat decoder can handle most anything all by itself with an extremely minimal requirement for Haali's Media Splitter to allow WMP/WMC to read MKV containers, that's about it.

Windows 7 + Haali's Media Splitter = you should be able to play just about anything without a "codec pack" potentially - and I should stress that as potentially causing problems someplace.
 
Your network is upto snuff, the only thing I am curious about is what equipment makes up your WHS box but that's more then likely very capable. Have you tried playing the file off the HTPC's own harddrive, does it still stutter or play perfectly(I stress perfectly, not just pretty good)?
 
Omegas said:
only thing I am curious about is what equipment makes up your WHS box but that's more then likely very capable. Have you tried playing the file off the HTPC's own harddrive, does it still stutter or play perfectly(I stress perfectly, not just pretty good)?
Click to expand...

I am running the same board/setup in my WHS box as my HTPC - Core2Duo 2.13, 3GB RAM. I have (2) 500 GB drives and (2) 320GB drives all sata, but older.

The last rip I did was sherlock holmes and I left a copy on the hard drive. I will check tonight what happens with it.
 
as others have said i would first test the file out directly on the htpc. if it works then you know its not the file. if it still gives you problems i would re-rip a few blu-rays using a different program. im using dvdfab to rip the main movies, then again to convert it them to mkv. i know makemkv is used alot around here but i had issues with it when i tried it so i sent back to dvdfab and its working fine for me.
 
I think I am going to blame it on a slow hard drive in my server (maybe thats why some were fine and others not - on different hard drives) I upgraded a few of the hard drives and it works both locally and streaming now.

What should I be running (hard drive-wise) at a minimum to stream this stuff off my server?
 
Grats :D

and Not sure on the speed, I've got all Greens (wd and Samsung) in mine and eventually moved mine to the local HD because of network stuttering. Maybe is was my servers HD's causing the issue also for me.
 
Thall860 said:
I think I am going to blame it on a slow hard drive in my server (maybe thats why some were fine and others not - on different hard drives) I upgraded a few of the hard drives and it works both locally and streaming now.

What should I be running (hard drive-wise) at a minimum to stream this stuff off my server?
Click to expand...

what hard drives did u have? what did you replace them with?

im suspecting my wd20eads is crapping out on me as its dropped from my server twice now. im seriously thinking of replacing all 3 green drives (2x 1tb and 1x 2tb WD EADS) for 2tb hitachis. also thining my aged Amd 3000/A8N combo is showing its age.
 
grimreeferx09 said:
making that change would enable multithreading.

i'm not really sure why it doesnt default to that.
Click to expand...

nice ill make that change if it will improve performance from my athlon2 x4 640.
does using the ffmpeg-mt decoder have any negative effects compared to the default decoder?
 
Uhmmm... if an MKV has chapter markers (meaning the encoder did it the right way, which is pretty damned rare these days unless you do it yourself), there's no way for the media player to know where to 'skip' to, no index info, that sort of thing.

Not sure what you mean, actually - I mean I have a general idea but, unless you care to clarify it, I'll stick with what I just said: without chapter markers (like those on DVDs and Blu-rays which tell the media player "ok, the next chapter starts here" or allows the player to skip forward and backward) then you're stuck basically just watching it or manually picking a point on the media player's timeline scrubber to jump to.
 
Both Handbrake and MakeMKV include the chapter markers, unfortunately not alot of the players take advantage of them. WMC7 does not, and only skips forward/back on set increments of like 30s forward and 15s back. With reg edits you can change these to how ever long you want, within reason. I'm thinking of going 3min forward and 1min back for mine. MPC-HC does take advantage of the chapters as far as I know. Some stand alone media players are able to FF/RW, my WD TVLive does. It also lets you jump ahead or back in 10min increments so almost as good as chapters.
 
What is stated above is correct, but only in situations where the source material (meaning DVD, Blu-ray, or even pre-existing MKV files) already has chapters or chapter markers to work with.

If you feed HandBrake any old video file that doesn't, well, there ya go... no fast forward for j00!!! :p

HandBrake (and MakeMKV, which is not a transcoder, just a container multiplexer, if one tries to be accurate) can pull the chapters and chapter markers from pre-existing media files and make use of them. I've been doing that with my DVD transcodes for a long time, and I actually label the chapters as well with HandBrake so when I'm playing them back (most likely with MPC-HC) I see the chapter number and the chapter title if I'm skipping around.

Pretty neat stuff, when it all works. There some tools that will allow you to create chapter markers (basically just a text file) and you can embed them after the fact into an MKV file with a tool like mkvtoolnix rather easily, only takes a few seconds.
 
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