Problem with Samsung Blu-ray playing certain .MKV files

[avdoubleu]

Hi everyone.

Iv'e been trying to fo my own research and there aren't many out there that use my set up. I have a Samsung Blu-ray player (BD-C5500) that Iv'e had for about two years now and started playing around with hooking my 250GB external to. To my suprise the damn thing worked flawlessly reading movies. 250 GBs was not going to cut if for me though as I went out and purchased a 2TB iOmega Prestige External and I must say never having to change a DVD again is probably one of the greatest things ever.

Anyways, for some reason the player wont read some MKV files and even a few MP4 files. Ive looked and the manual and it describes the supported file types I'm just not that techy when it comes to file types and all that Jazz.

Please any help would be greatly appreciated or at least pointed in the correct direction.

Thanks a billion

 

[avdoubleu]

Come on people!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[TLS Guy]

Come on people!!!!!!!!!!!

I have experimented with sending MKV files to both my Oppo and Marantz pre/pro. For reasons beyond me, and my eldest son, who is a good software engineer, one player will read some the others won't and some files neither will read. Now both my units are nearly 2years old. I understand that this was in its infancy then and newer units may perform better, but I understand this technology is still not mature, so expect problems.

I use mainly disc for now and I bet you will to.

 

[BMXTRIX]

If you aren't creating the MKV or MP4 yourself, then you truly have no idea of the resolution, bitrate, or CODEC (for MKVs) which was used. All of these things affect compatibility within a player.

If you are doing all of the encodes yourself, then there must be something within the file which is getting messed up. I know that I had an external BD drive I was creating my rips from and I had a number of discs which did not rip properly. I recently switched to a better internal BD drive and all of my rips have been flawless.

So, doing it yourself is really critical to get the best quality.

 

[avdoubleu]

If you aren't creating the MKV or MP4 yourself, then you truly have no idea of the resolution, bitrate, or CODEC (for MKVs) which was used. All of these things affect compatibility within a player.

If you are doing all of the encodes yourself, then there must be something within the file which is getting messed up. I know that I had an external BD drive I was creating my rips from and I had a number of discs which did not rip properly. I recently switched to a better internal BD drive and all of my rips have been flawless.

So, doing it yourself is really critical to get the best quality.

This is pretty much what I was thinking. Ill share this little tid bit though, upon searching for hours on how to fix this I came across a thread that recommended this..... Download mkvmergegui > select an MKV file > file > options > MMG > disable header removal compression > then his muxing.

I have no idea what its doing but it has fixed all mine so far. Takes about 5 minutes for a blu-ray quality movie.

Hope this helps someone else.

 

[BMXTRIX]

While I'm glad that you have found a solution and I hope others can use it, please be aware that if a file is under about 20GB, it is not Blu-ray quality.

Studios spend a lot of money on the encoding and authoring process of Blu-ray discs to ensure that the quality is top shelf 1080p. As soon as consumer encoders start messing with that original H.264/MP4 encode to make it smaller, you are moving away from studio grade Blu-ray quality to something lower.

The ONLY way to get Blu-ray quality is to get a bit-for-bit copy of the original video without reencoding the video or audio in any manner.

I've seen more than a few 'HD' copies of Blu-ray movies, and while they do have very good quality, they are not as good as the original 1080p from the disc itself.

 

[Driftwood83]

I've got a question. I have the exact same blu ray player as the original poster. I downloaded MKVtoolnix, I clicked the option "Disable header removal compression for audio and video tracks by default" and muxed a file. My blu ray player will now somewhat play the video, but its choppy and freezes after 15 seconds. If I try to play the video that was muxed (not sure if Im using the term right, but you know what I mean) on my computer using VLC, it plays smoothly, but with no audio.

Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong?

 

[BMXTRIX]

Are you using a hard wired or a wireless connection for your BD player? If you are using wireless, then if possible, try running a hard wired connection to your network for testing purposes and see if that has any affect on things.

Really, I don't think that using a BD player to act as a media player is the right way to go about things. Samsung can't even build a BD player with discrete power commands, I certainly expect far less from them in terms of media player compatibility.

 

[Driftwood83]

Are you using a hard wired or a wireless connection for your BD player? If you are using wireless, then if possible, try running a hard wired connection to your network for testing purposes and see if that has any affect on things.

Really, I don't think that using a BD player to act as a media player is the right way to go about things. Samsung can't even build a BD player with discrete power commands, I certainly expect far less from them in terms of media player compatibility.

I do have wireless, but I also put it on a USB drive and it did the same thing. My TV doesnt even recognize it, neither does my xbox 360

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

I do have wireless, but I also put it on a USB drive and it did the same thing. My TV doesnt even recognize it, neither does my xbox 360

360 doesn't play MKVs.

Read the manual, google for player/tv specs - find out what exactly is their codec support and encode your videos to their specs exactly.. MKV is simply a media container and can include many different data types - the format is open source and rather loose then strict like closed sourced WMV

btw: BMX is right - if you want media client functions - get a media client - I know my 2011 Panasonic TV Viera which costed me almost a grand is a far cry even from $85 Netgreat NeoTV-550 - which plays almost everything (except some rare DIVX files)

 

[Driftwood83]

Is there a way to down convert from MKV 5.1 to MKV 4.1? Or if I convert it to another format will I lose quality? I'm pretty new to this

 

[avdoubleu]

I've got a question. I have the exact same blu ray player as the original poster. I downloaded MKVtoolnix, I clicked the option "Disable header removal compression for audio and video tracks by default" and muxed a file. My blu ray player will now somewhat play the video, but its choppy and freezes after 15 seconds. If I try to play the video that was muxed (not sure if Im using the term right, but you know what I mean) on my computer using VLC, it plays smoothly, but with no audio.

Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong?

I've also had the same problem with certain movies. My solution was just give up and find a different copy. With them being choppy I have found that if you let the video play for a few minutes and rewind it and the movie plays fine. But yes, some MKV files just wont play right.

 

[avdoubleu]

btw: BMX is right - if you want media client functions - get a media client - I know my 2011 Panasonic TV Viera which costed me almost a grand is a far cry even from $85 Netgreat NeoTV-550 - which plays almost everything (except some rare DIVX files)

I'm curios about the Netgear NeoTV player. Does in have a USB input for a hard drive? Also do you need to have wifi to stream media from a computer or does it have its own wireless data connectivity? I've never heard of this before and I think I'm going to try it. I don't have cable or internet at my house is why I ask.