Playing Matroska Files

§Daisuke · Post by **§Daisuke** » Sun Apr 20, 2008 7:26 pm

I'm having trouble viewing high definition .mkv files. The video plays, but it's incredibly choppy and skips scenes. And it's not just one video that I'm having trouble with, it's any .mkv file (most are usually encoded in the H.264 standard), anime or otherwise.

I've been wondering, could this be an indication to the fact that my computer's getting old and that I should get a new one or is there a relatively easy fix that I've missed?

My computer
Intel Pentium 4 - 2.93 GHz processor
512 MB DDR of RAM
ATI Radeon™ 8500 128MB Graphics Card

I ask this because I'd rather not spend $3000 buying a new computer when I could simply replace my video card or get additional to remedy the problem.

Thanks in advance.

Kariudo · Post by **Kariudo** » Sun Apr 20, 2008 8:11 pm

yeah, it's your computer showing its age

if you want to play HD stuff smoothly, you would need to get a new graphics card that has h.264 decoding acceleration (at the very least)
this is an option (I assume that your system has an agp 8x slot. If you don't have an agp slot or pci-express slot I'd just get a new computer)

another option is to get one of the computers listed here

AK.E · Post by **AK.E** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 3:05 pm

alright, thank you.

AK.E · Post by **AK.E** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 3:08 pm

I was having the same problem. But my computer is a lot older than yours.

§Daisuke · Post by **§Daisuke** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 3:33 pm

umm, okay anyway. Thanks a lot. One question though. Whenever I try to import a matroska file into VDubMod, it starts parsing but then I get this error:

"A frame at Stream 1 had only a forward reference (maybe broken file)."

Any particular reason for this?

LivingFlame · Post by **LivingFlame** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 3:39 pm

Eh, I get the same error (like a thousand times) when I open up MKV files directly in Vdub. I suggest using an AviSynth script to open the file with DirectShowSource. Just don't try to edit the .avs file directly in an NLE. (DirectShowSource isn't frame accurate from what I hear. Maybe someone else can confirm that?)

JaddziaDax · Post by **JaddziaDax** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 3:47 pm

directshowsource isn't frame accurate... but in some cases it works

Mosc · Post by **Mosc** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 4:20 pm

Indeed, DirectShowSource is not guaranteed to be frame accurate. DSS2 is though, so try that instead. Other than that it's mostly the same, but it always converts to a constant frame rate and doesn't return audio. It comes with Haali's Media Splitter as avss.dll (can be found in %programfiles%\Combined Community Codec Pack\Filters\Haali if you're using the CCCP), which you'll have to import into your AviSynth scripts or just put in your AviSynth plugins directory.

Kariudo · Post by **Kariudo** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 8:26 pm

ffmpegsource is another option