playing mkv files with hw accel

[trueimage]

i have a few questions, since I've gotten some 720p mkv files with around 6000kbps bitrate and 5.1 sound.

I can get them to worth with mplayerc, ffdshow or zoomplayer and coreavc.

However, I was reading up on AVC encoded HD DVD and Blu-ray and it said nVidia's PureVideo HD worked only in 3 players, one of which I have - PowerDVD Ultra 7.3. It also said cpu usage was lower (naturally - hw vs sw) and that the quality was better than coreavc.

Here's the problem - I can't get .mkv files to play in PowerDVD - why not? and if possible - how?

Lastly, should I bother? I want to because sometimes the sound get really delayed in mplayerc and I can't figure it out so I want to see if its the player or the file.

Thanks

[Dark Shikari]

Its unlikely that PureVideo supports MKV; try changing to an MP4 container.

[trueimage]

Its unlikely that PureVideo supports MKV; try changing to an MP4 container.

is that an easy, lossless conversion?

[giandrea]

is that an easy, lossless conversion?

For the video it is lossless, for the audio it's lossless only if it's already in AAC. If your audio is AC3, you will have to convert to AAC.
Anyway it's not that easy, as you will have to demux the streams and remux them with something like MP4Box. Just pray your video is not Variable Frame Rate either...

[arfster]

Hardware support depends on the decoder, not the container type. You can have hardware acceleration with .mkv if you use a suitable decoder (eg powerdvd7)

[trueimage]

That's what I thought. I just can't get PowerDVD to open an mkv :(

[KoD]

I just can't get PowerDVD to open an mkv :(

Here's a trick: just rename your my_file.mkv to my_file.h264 (if it has h264 video inside) or my_file.DivX (if it has mpeg4 ASP inside like DivX or XviD). Now PowerDVD will see it and will play it happily (if you have Haali's Media Splitter installed on your system).

You can also bother Cyberlink with a request to allow the "mkv" extension in their file browser pane because the player can play those files, it's just that it ignores files with extensions not in its list.

[Jay Bee]

If you already have enough CPU power to playback your AVC file then you don't want GPU decoding. The output of all AVC decoders must be identical by spec yet the ATI and Nvidia have chosen not to respect the spec (no deblocking). So you won't be getting better quality.