MKV video files

GfromHull said:

Is there a way to play .MKV through media center onto my xbox 360?

Hello GfromHull,

You can not, unfortunately, play .mkv files directly on your Xbox 360. But, there is a fast and easy way to change that.

I'm assuming the video in your .mkv container is H.264 and the audio is either MP3 or AC3.

In this case, download a small program (that doesn't even need to be installed) called tsMuxeR (available here).

After extracting that program, run tsMuxerGUI.exe. Click the "add" button and select your .mkv file. Check to make sure that your audio and video match what I said above in the "Tracks:" area.

Click the "Change level" checkbox and select 4.1 from the dropdown menu.

In the "Output" section choose "M2TS muxing." Click the "Start muxing" button. In a couple of minutes you should have a new file in the same location as your old file that is playable on both your PC and your Xbox 360, in FULL HD, along with surround sound audio (as long as it's AC3 audio... if it's DTS come back here and I'll show you how to convert to AC3).

The great thing about this method is that it's FAST and you lose ZERO quality from your file.

NOTE: This will not carry over subtitles, if the .mkv file has them. I haven't quite worked that out yet.

Enjoy,
Brian

Xbox 360 playback is achievable in Windows 7 if you use the Divx Tech Preview as this takes advantage of the Windows Media Foundation architecture.

I have heard a lot of people playing MKV on their Xbox's, unfortunately I run 7 RTM 64bit and have not managed to work out why the quality is so poor when I playback on my Linksys extender. I have video and audio but the video quality is degraded and playback choppy, files play fine on the Pc just can't seem to crack the extender :-(

I have now tested the Divx Tech Preview R3 which enables MKV playback on xbox 360 Media Center. I'm running Seven 64 bit RTM.

It work flawlessly, and it is really worth to check out. I had to install ac3filter to get audio working, but apart from that theres is no problems. Keep in mind that it only works in Media Center mode, it doesn't work if you try to play MKV from dashboard.

whertigo said:

I have now tested the Divx Tech Preview R3 which enables MKV playback on xbox 360 Media Center. I'm running Seven 64 bit RTM.

It work flawlessly, and it is really worth to check out. I had to install ac3filter to get audio working, but apart from that theres is no problems. Keep in mind that it only works in Media Center mode, it doesn't work if you try to play MKV from dashboard.

Wow that's really impressive, I'll have to check it out!

whertigo said:

I have now tested the Divx Tech Preview R3 which enables MKV playback on xbox 360 Media Center. I'm running Seven 64 bit RTM.

It work flawlessly, and it is really worth to check out. I had to install ac3filter to get audio working, but apart from that theres is no problems. Keep in mind that it only works in Media Center mode, it doesn't work if you try to play MKV from dashboard.

I tried Divx Tech Preview R3 with Seven 64 bit too. Now, I can play flawlessly mkv files, but audio is lower than playing mkv files with VLC. Do you have that same problem? Do you know how to solve it?

or download gomplayer plays alomost all media format :)

kstrike155 said:

GfromHull said:

Is there a way to play .MKV through media center onto my xbox 360?

Hello GfromHull,

You can not, unfortunately, play .mkv files directly on your Xbox 360. But, there is a fast and easy way to change that.

I'm assuming the video in your .mkv container is H.264 and the audio is either MP3 or AC3.

In this case, download a small program (that doesn't even need to be installed) called tsMuxeR (available here).

After extracting that program, run tsMuxerGUI.exe. Click the "add" button and select your .mkv file. Check to make sure that your audio and video match what I said above in the "Tracks:" area.

Click the "Change level" checkbox and select 4.1 from the dropdown menu.

In the "Output" section choose "M2TS muxing." Click the "Start muxing" button. In a couple of minutes you should have a new file in the same location as your old file that is playable on both your PC and your Xbox 360, in FULL HD, along with surround sound audio (as long as it's AC3 audio... if it's DTS come back here and I'll show you how to convert to AC3).

The great thing about this method is that it's FAST and you lose ZERO quality from your file.

NOTE: This will not carry over subtitles, if the .mkv file has them. I haven't quite worked that out yet.

Enjoy,
Brian

Brian,
How do I do the DTS to AC3 bit?

Thanks
Ben

masterB said:

If you have a mkv file with DTS audio you can use PopCorn MKV AudioConverter to convert DTS to AC3.
Here's a nice tutorial:
Tutorial for converting audio tracks with HeartWare MKV Audio Converter

After that you can convert your mkv with AC3 audio with tsMuxeR.

Cheers.

You can either do that or use the same program I mentioned earlier but choose the DEmux option. This will extract the audio and video streams to separate files.

Then use another small program called DTS2AC3 (see this post).

At this point, open up tsMuxeR again and choose the M2TS muxing option. Open your extracted video feed from earlier, then add your new AC3 feed you just created.

There's a million ways to do this, this is just another method.

Brian

rpachecoh said:

whertigo said:

I have now tested the Divx Tech Preview R3 which enables MKV playback on xbox 360 Media Center. I'm running Seven 64 bit RTM.

It work flawlessly, and it is really worth to check out. I had to install ac3filter to get audio working, but apart from that theres is no problems. Keep in mind that it only works in Media Center mode, it doesn't work if you try to play MKV from dashboard.

I tried Divx Tech Preview R3 with Seven 64 bit too. Now, I can play flawlessly mkv files, but audio is lower than playing mkv files with VLC. Do you have that same problem? Do you know how to solve it?

Yes I do and I've experienced this with ac3 sound on my computer as well, but got around it by adjusting settings in the ac3filter software. However, I don't think this will work for the extender, although I haven't tried yet - so far I've only been cranking the amplifier up real high :)