OGM & MKV playback

[len0x]

I thought that it would be enough to have DS filters to play them in any win-based player, but apparently not.

OGM files are played nicely (say in Real, PowerDvD etc...) only if you have .avi extention.

MKV files cannot be played by anything apart from WMP (I have to admit that mkv DS filter 0.4.3 playback even in WMP is soo not perfect (I'm trying to avoid the word "crap" here :) ))

Any thoughts on that ?

[ChristianHJW]

len0x, you need the CoreVorbis DShow filter if your mkv has a Vorbis audio track .... and what were the other players you tested besides WMP ?

[len0x]

well I had AC3 sound track. What I tried was PowerDVD, WinDVD, MicroDVD, RealOne - none of them was able to play MKV (with the same extention or renamed to AVI)

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by len0x well I had AC3 sound track.

OK, so thats certainly not a matroska problem then. Install AC3Filter (http://sf.net/projects/ac3filter) and your movie should play fine in MicroDVD.

RealOne is NOT DirectShow based, so it cant play matroska files at all, unless someone makes Helix DNA aware of mkv files, so thats not astonishing and also not intended to happen from our side for the time being.

As for PowerDVD and WinDVD, they are using highly sophisticated semi-automatic graph generation to protect their own proprietary filters from being used by other players, but i'd expect that they at least will have some basic DirectShow playback capabilities also, so i dont understand why they shouldnt work. Maybe a problem with AC3, as they expect it only to come from VOB/DVDs ? Did you test a MKV with MP3 or Vorbis also ?


To make a statement here :

All the players you are mentioning above are proprietary pieces of crap IMHO ;) .... the mother of DirectShow is Graphedit, and if a file plays fine in Graphedit and does NOT in a DirectShow based player, then its clearly the players fault, and not the fault of the container makers going through the hell to launch a DirectShow parser filter for their container format ....

[len0x]

My point is: OGM with it's extention is not played by any of those players either, but if you rename it to avi - it works perfectly!
So why matroska doesn't do that ?

Another two points :)
As a consumer who pays for players I'd like them to be able to play anything. You're right that it's not direct MKV problem - but there is a marketing issue - popularity never comes for free :)

As GK project admin - I see OGM support going public very soon, but unfortunately I can't say the same for MKV. It'll be tested internally, but public stable release won't come until I'm sure ppl can play those files properly...

P.S. MicroDVD doesn't work. And of course I do have ac3filter...
(In fact it actually tries to play it(I see window resized properly) but crashes, so I think DS filter is far from perfect actually - it's not a bad thing, but developers should be aware of that).

[robUx4]

Originally posted by len0x
My point is: OGM with it's extention is not played by any of those players either, but if you rename it to avi - it works perfectly!
So why matroska doesn't do that ?

This is because of a very simple reason : we don't use the ASyncReader but directly access the file. A part of the deal is in the Windows registry and we can only fix that when we use the ASyncReader (someday). Until then you can only play files with .mkv and .mka extensions. You may also be able to play it with Gabest's filter as it uses the ASyncReader but I don't know if it works in WMP or not.

[len0x]

Originally posted by robUx4
You may also be able to play it with Gabest's filter as it uses the ASyncReader but I don't know if it works in WMP or not.

I couldn't find DS filter on his guliverkli page (only muxer/splitter)...

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by len0x As GK project admin - I see OGM support going public very soon, but unfortunately I can't say the same for MKV. It'll be tested internally, but public stable release won't come until I'm sure ppl can play those files properly...

Thats sad :( ... however, we have a clear shedule of where we want to go with our container in the next weeks and i am sorry to say that adding the AsyncReader structure to our DSF has a lower priority than doing other things first, so i dont see this coming soon. Gabest' matroska splitter filter works great with XCD, which requires AsyncReader also, so we dont see the immediate need to react here ....

P.S. MicroDVD doesn't work. And of course I do have ac3filter...
(In fact it actually tries to play it(I see window resized properly) but crashes, so I think DS filter is far from perfect actually - it's not a bad thing, but developers should be aware of that).

Again, if the filters work fine in Graphedit but not in another player, thats bad, but we cant change. There are so many DShow players out there and MicroDVD isnt used anymore from anybody AFAIK, except if he wnats to play MicroDVD subs, we have to invest our time more carefully than trying to fix the behaviour of our DSF filter such that players using AVI related hacks for their graph generation can handle it correctly ....

If MicroDVD people want to offer a neat player to the people, they should adapt it to our DSF, just like TCMP, Zoomplayer, BSplayer, VLC and Radlight are doing it, and not the other way around ...

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by len0x
I couldn't find DS filter on his guliverkli page (only muxer/splitter)... yes, he called it 'matroska splitter' ....

[len0x]

Gabest's splitter indeed works if you rename mkv to avi (tried WinDVD/PowerDVD, which I really care about)

[len0x]

Originally posted by ChristianHJW
Thats sad :( ... Gabest' matroska splitter filter works great with XCD, which requires AsyncReader also, so we dont see the immediate need to react here ....


It's not that sad. I believe in first impression, so for end user having something which is not playable in his favourite player it's a huge disappointment. But when it's fully stable and ready to be played everywhere, then yes it'd be a shame if GK doesn't support that :)

P.S. Now that I found that even RealOne plays masquaraded as avi MKV files with Gabest's filter I have more room for testing. That is good :)

[Doom9]

well, software DVD players are somewhat less than ideally suited for divx & co playback. There was an old poll once which indicated that a large number of people uses wmp6.4 for dixv playback, then there's bsplayer coming in second and I think powerdivx 3rd. I don't think number one has changed since, yet I don't think I could place bsplayer, tcmp, zoomplayer and mpc accurately, but software DVD players would most definitely be ranked really low in such a "favorite player" list. In fact, more and more people are using those abovementioned media players to play their DVDs as well (I'm part of the conservative faction so I'm still using mostly WMP 6.4 for DivX/XviD and PowerDVD for DVDs).

And I wouldn't necessarily hold the no renaming issue against Matroska. Imagine people naming their Matroska files AVI.. then people start taking those files to their friends or offer them on p2p services.. on the other end... what the heck, I cannot play this file. So they come here asking "why can't my avi be played" and we have to strike them. Naming ogms avis was a dirty hack (heck, Xiph still calls ogm a dirty hack to begin with;) that should not have been done in the first place because it did more harm than good (now imagine people burning those "avis" and expecting their divx standalones to play them.. )

[len0x]

I agree about DVD players (although I never used anything but PowerDVD to play stuff, only before divx5 I was using windvd because it wasn't stretching widescreen AVIs), but in general there is very little difference between players if they support DS filters (apart from extention recognition).

I don't think renaming to AVI is problem (well, we can do that right in GK automatically anyway), but as you said it causes lots of confusion afterwards. Now actually I don't really know what direction to follow:

1) On one hand support of new formats is good for GK
2) On another - GK was always self-sufficient package, i.e. didn't require anything special to play what it produced. Now it looks to like we might need to bundle "approved" players which is not a good thing to do, I guess...

[Animaniac]

WMP9 can open .mkv, .mka, .mks files if 1) you associate it with WMP9 using the File Types settings and then drag the file to WMP9 icon (this needs to be done only once) and finally say yes, and don't ask again to the prompt. 2) you create the correct registry keys (I have a package in an old thread, but it's out dated, I have a new package with support for lots of new formats, and if people want it, I'll post it.) WMP9 needs to learn if a extension is playable when you play such a file for the first time. As far as other players, WMP6.4 and MPC, I've had none of these problems. I am sure that other players have similar mechanisms for "getting to know" extensions. Extensions are independent of DS Graph building.

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by len0x
2) On another - GK was always self-sufficient package, i.e. didn't require anything special to play what it produced.

Is it possible to bundle Tobias OggDS and Gabest matroska splitter in the GKnot full package ? It shouldnt add too much to the total size ? And for your installer it shouldnt be big issue to register the DLLs ...

[len0x]

Originally posted by ChristianHJW
Is it possible to bundle Tobias OggDS and Gabest matroska splitter in the GKnot full package ? It shouldnt add too much to the total size ? And for your installer it shouldnt be big issue to register the DLLs ...

Installing and registring filters is not a problem at all. I was talking about bundling players which can play *.ogm & *.mkv properly...

[Gaia]

which can play *.ogm & *.mkv properly...= all true Directshow players...

[cweb]

The only thing he had missing was the file association of .mkv with his favourite player (e.g. Zoom player). Just set that manually or within the player and you're set to go!

[bond]

Originally posted by Gaia
= all true Directshow players... yup
i also dont have problems with matroska or .ogm in directshow players like bsplayer, mpc, zoomplayer (dont use dvd players)...

and yes, if a file can be played in graphedit the file itself should be fine

and no, i really dont like the idea of renaming to .avi :scared:

and no matroska support in gknot would be :(

[rjgn]

I'm really very surprised by this thread. Even before I knew anything about encoding it wouldn't have occured to me to try and play divx or any other type of video file in a software based dvd player.

I'm astonished that there is actually someone out there doing so :)

The likes of WinDVD and PowerDVD aren't true DirectShow players. They are dvd players first and foremost, with the ability to play avi's tacked on as an after thought. I doubt even the developers expect anyone to use them for anything other than playing dvd's.

You don't need anything special to play ogm's and mkv's all you need is an ordinary DirectShow media player and the relevant filters. It's the software dvd players which are the problem in that they are not designed as media players but simply as dvd players.

[len0x]

Originally posted by rjgn
I'm astonished that there is actually someone out there doing so :)


Be astonished more then - I started using PowerDVD to play everything way before DIVX and other players appeared (starting with version 1 probably). So I just don't wish to change my preference. The same way as someone don't want to go from encoding in 3.11 :)

[Animaniac]

Originally posted by len0x
Be astonished more then - I started using PowerDVD to play everything way before DIVX and other players appeared (starting with version 1 probably). So I just don't wish to change my preference. The same way as someone don't want to go from encoding in 3.11 :)

But it's backwards thinking... >.<

[cweb]

I believe they (WinDVD and PowerDVD) only play AVI's besides DVD's and VCD's of course. They are not sold for playing other media in fact. You can always install another player -e.g. Zoom Player for playing other media files.