x264 MKV not playing

[fegul]

I've been playing with encoding in x264 and adding in audio tracks and subtitles and have run into two problems.

1. In Virtualdub mod, I open up my x264 encoded AVI (I encoded it with Vdubmod to begin with) and add the audio and subtitles as streams as well as the chapters. When its done making the MKV, and I open it with MPC, I dont get the subtitles.

2. When using MKVmerge, the only way I could get it to mux the MKV was by setting a FourCC option for the video track. I set it to XVID, and it muxed fine. However when I try to play it back, it doesnt seem to play. It shows the time code (e.g 00.00) but doesnt actually play, no matter what chapter I tell it to play.

What could be causing this not to work properly? I have the latest FFDshow (stable) as well as x264, Vdubmod and MKVtoolnix

[fegul]

One thing I should also mention is that I am writing a tutorial on converting DVD's to high quality h.264 MKV files with subtitles and audio, so any help is great. I will put your nick in the credits if I can get this issue solved.
Thanks! :)

[Koti]

x264 is not Xvid so it cant use its 4cc code. x264 , avc1 , VSSH are valid 4cc for ffdshow to decode avc (x264 codec)

[celtic_druid]

For mkv you should be using native AVC, not VfW compatibility mode. Encode with x264 cli instead of VDubMod. Especially if you are writing a tutorial.

[bond]

all correct what was said till now, additionally you can extract the avc stream from avi with the avi2raw tool from mpeg4ip

than you mux the resulting raw avc .264 file to .mp4 with either mp4box (yamb gui) or mp4creator to .mp4

than you either keep that .mp4 and be happy or you remux the .mp4 to .mkv with mkvmerge

[fegul]

Thanks for the tips! So I should be using the command line interface of x264 rather than its VFW counterpart? I found this thread; http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=89979
So I'll be reading a little more on that. If I have any more questions, I'll know where to ask! thanks guys

EDIT: I found some GUI interfaces for the CLI commands, so those will come in handy for the tutorial, since most people wont want to mess with command prompt :)