VLC&WMP is stopping at random with MKV files

[Ampera]

VLC and Windows Media Player (Using Shark 007 codecs) refuse to play MKV files stably. What ends up happening is I will start to play the video (This happens more with longer videos) and it will play fine for 10-30 minutes, and then the player will stop playing. If I attempt to seek/jump to another time in the video, it will usually happen on the first or second jump too.

These files are known good, running on windows off an EXT4 partition. I have also tried this on an NTFS partition on an SSD. There is 0 file system compatibility or speed limitations at play here.

Both programs will play any other video format imaginable just fine (Except for h.265, but that's another issue entirely) in any codec at almost any bitrate. I can skip from end to end of two hour long videos and run them at high resolutions just fine.

Here is a dump of the VLC logs when this happens.
http://pastebin.com/xb6bn4H7

An interesting thing to note is that
mkv debug: unknown (PN7libebml11EbmlElementE)
seems to be the issue here, but any attempt to google search results in dead end forum posts that neither solve my problem, or are just not answered.

Here is a mediainfo dump of the file I am attempting to play. It's never caused issues before now.
http://pastebin.com/dCJU1sFS

Thanks for any help.

[rrinker]

 I use the CCCP codec pack and I have yet to hit anything that won't play. The movie player app in Windows 10 sometimes won't play the file but media player classic will handle it just fine. For playback on my TV, I was using an old Popcorn Hour which handled pretty much anything I threw at it except certain newer audio encodings. I now have a Roku and installed Plex on my server (the Popcorn Hour just played the files directly) and that has been very stable.

[Ampera]

UPDATE: The video breaks the player on my Windows 7 installation on the same machine when jumping large areas. The thing to note here is that it took more long jumps for this to happen.

I have my HTPC with the CCCP pack on it, maybe I should try there.

[rdl]

What are these codecs for? I've never needed anything besides what VLC comes with. I almost always convert mkv to mp4 because opening, skipping ahead, etc. seems much quicker and smoother than mkv.

[Ampera]

What are these codecs for? I've never needed anything besides what VLC comes with. I almost always convert mkv to mp4 because opening, skipping ahead, etc. seems much quicker and smoother than mkv.

So you can use WMP with these formats, but more importantly, Windows Media Center for HTPCs.

Another interesting thing to note is that this only happens with my Star Trek: Voyager DVD rips, while my Top Gear TV caps are also in MKV and play fine. I will give a Mediainfo output on both.

http://pastebin.com/Z7mzrtxW

And I was thinking of turning the MKV files into MP4, but that takes a lot of time and a lot of processing power.

[Ampera]

I tried using a backup of those files, and 45 minutes files do fine, but 130 minute files do not. However memory use does not change between files, so it's not running out of it.

[rrinker]

 It's almost like why I got the Popcorn Hour player all those years ago - I had an Xbox 360 but they had a hard limit of a 4GB file size.

[rdl]

Ah, well I have no interest in any Windows Media Player anything. Just having Windows is bad enough.

I use MKV2MP4 to repack. The interface can be confusing, but it just repacks, so no quality loss and it's pretty quick. As in couple of minutes quick. If I want additional compression or resizing, smaller size/lower quality sound, etc. I use Handbrake, but yeah, that can take a while.

[Halcyon]

@TwoOfFive...

I've read a lot of your posts... can I just ask... why are you worried about WMP or Windows Media Centre? It's clear that you hate it.

Why not look at something like Kodi. You can install it with a clean Ubuntu install straight off a Live CD? No need for a pre-existing host OS (although you can run it under an existing install of Linux or Windows if you wanted to). It's far more customisable and works very well.

https://kodi.tv/

[Jeroen3]

Typical issue with corrupted files. It's an differential codec, this means with sufficient key frame interval you can skip past the defect. But if you hit the defect, the process could stops.

If vlc can't play it, its a bad file. Vlc skips bad parts. You could try setting vlc to cpu-only mode.

[Ampera]

@TwoOfFive...

I've read a lot of your posts... can I just ask... why are you worried about WMP or Windows Media Centre? It's clear that you hate it.

Why not look at something like Kodi. You can install it with a clean Ubuntu install straight off a Live CD? No need for a pre-existing host OS (although you can run it under an existing install of Linux or Windows if you wanted to). It's far more customisable and works very well.

https://kodi.tv/

You know, Windows Media Center/Player is actually a pretty good piece of software, and I have to say it's the closest thing to good Microsoft had gotten to in a while. Right before they removed it from Windows and it died. I also don't have Ubuntu, I have Windows Server 2016, which is actually pretty good. It's lightweight and it drops most of the stupid things about Windows 10 like the desktop bloatware (replaced with server bloatware, but some of it is more useful than the desktop rubbish), Cortana is gone, forced updates are gone.

I also do not think it is the file as they have worked for years. It's also not a specific point that the video breaks down. It doesn't reach any specific time before it stops, it just stops at a random point, or if you do a few jumps to different times.

I will however try MKV2MP4 and see if VLC/WMP like the wrapper.

Oh, and another thing I don't like about VLC is the UI. The thing about Windows Media Player is I can have it playing windowed and it will look fine. All it has is the title bar and I don't have to deal with the stupidity of fullscreen, especially since I often change videos, and I watch my videos while working/playing games (Yes I play games and watch videos at the same time. XD) I know you can probably mod the VLC UI, but the WMP UI is actually pretty good. I think it actually looks better than VLC's very simplistic UI. I like the translucent menus and minimalist features. Of course VLC is like a swiss army knife. It plays everything and it can do everything. In the lack of WinX DVD ripper (Which rips EVERYTHING, but it will cost you everything) it is probably the best DVD ripper you can have. It can even play region locked DVDs on locked players (Something WMP always yells at you about when you even put the stupid thing in)

But I will try MKV2MP4 and come back with my results.

[Ampera]

 

Didn't work. Not to mention it destroyed the sync between the audio and video.

I want to try a few other things. Handbrake might be next.

[Halcyon]

Fair enough.

In relation to your file, there could be corruption. My first point of call would be to demux/remux the file. That essentially splits the audio and video streams out (and depending on what software you use, detects and/or corrects errors in the process) then re-combining them. It involves no re-processing of the streams so you won't loose any quality like you would if you were to re-encode it.

[Ampera]

Fair enough.

In relation to your file, there could be corruption. My first point of call would be to demux/remux the file. That essentially splits the audio and video streams out (and depending on what software you use, detects and/or corrects errors in the process) then re-combining them. It involves no re-processing of the streams so you won't loose any quality like you would if you were to re-encode it.

I actually narrowed it down. I tried an application called Meteorite which is supposed to fix generic playback errors, but it cut half the bloody video out (I first thought it had somehow shrunk an hour and half down to 45 minutes somehow, but no it just cut some shit out)

So here is the deal. It happens on one video. That's it. I need to replace that video, and I'm fine. I may still have the DVD somewhere, so I need to dig that up.

The thing is I remember it doing this on multiple videos, but NOW when I test them I can skip front to back with no problems whatsoever.

My brain has been running in reverse these past few days, seriously. I probably am wearing my pants (trousers, I'm American, sue me) on my body and my shirt on my legs without realizing it.