Jump to content

Best Viewing App for MKV


ErikaJ

Recommended Posts

ErikaJ

Good day I have been reading about MKV files here in the various forums. Is it my understanding that our movie files should be trans to an MKV file format? If so, what is the benefit and/or what is the reason we should be doing this? Is MB going to have something in the future that would require this format in order to work better or what?


 


Also, I have a question regarding what is the best viewing app or browser to view our material on? I have found that Firefox fails to stream some media without any stutter such as some MKV media. On the other hand Edge browser seems to stream more comfortably. I use the server side when setting up my libraries of course and I have a test user account that I use to test the results via 162.168.xxx.xxx:8096. I know there are other ways to access the content like app.emby.media but in general what are most people using? I am on a W10 box and the MB server resides on another dedicated W10 box. Thanks for any suggestions. Cheers.. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest asrequested

Pretty sure the only app that supports everything that an mkv file can do, is theater desktop. If you have subs in your containers, all the other apps will require it to be transcoded. Emby for WMC might be the other exception.

 

https://emby.media/emby-theater.html

Edited by Doofus
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Roku plays MKV just fine without any issue. All day long change multiple audio streams and subtitles no issue. All in direct play depending on your choice of Roku model. You will not get full HD audio though. Those damn graphical subtitles(PGS,etc) cause an issue and force transcoding if you want to render those.The Roku ultra purports to support DTS-HD MA in 8 channels but yeah it is still passing the DTS core in direct play. TrueHD was never supported. So if HD Audio is what you want skip Roku. If you just want MKV to play with least amount of issues consider a Roku. The Roku ultra absolutely is near as issue free with MKV as it gets.

Edited by speechles
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

PuffyToesToo

Just second-ing this. 

 

 

The Roku plays MKV just fine without any issue. All day long change multiple audio streams and subtitles no issue. All in direct play depending on your choice of Roku model. You will not get full HD audio though. Those damn graphical subtitles(PGS,etc) cause an issue and force transcoding if you want to render those.The Roku ultra purports to support DTS-HD MA in 8 channels but yeah it is still passing the DTS core in direct play. TrueHD was never supported. So if HD Audio is what you want skip Roku. If you just want MKV to play with least amount of issues consider a Roku. The Roku ultra absolutely is near as issue free with MKV as it gets.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

But they are on a windows 10 machine.

 

Because they are playing on the same machine as the server. Notice they called Emby the name MB. Now Emby used to be MediaBrowser. So it is a cute name MB. But it also means they may not understand that there are apps not based on the server machine anymore. Emby is a server/client model now. Maybe they are not aware?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest asrequested

So the suggestion is to spend money and use something that can't do everything that theater desktop can do? When they can just download theater desktop for no extra cost be able to play anything in just about any way they want? Hmmmm...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

ErikaJ

Thanks to all for your suggestions. Well I actually called Emby as Mb because in the military we use a boat load of acronyms instead of wasting energy and spelling out everything. I am using MB server 4.1.1.0 and the native app that came with it. For me everything is done via the server side as far as setups go. I was asking for assistance on the viewing part for my family/clients so that I could test out what is available. Currently they use the app.emby.media and also the localhost connection for their viewing pleasure. I had heard of Theatre and read up on it a while back and I kind of recall some restriction it had so I may have to revisit that site.

 

I use both external and embedded subs so whatever way we go for an app it should handle both. I use to use Kodi but dumped that for Plex years ago. Then NPVR came into the picture along with Emby so I am in the middle of switching everything to Emby for now except my IPTV solution. That is currently on NPVR and I will most likely stay there until I have time to try out the Emby plugin for IPTV. I tried it out a year ago when I first got into MB (the original) but it would not stabilize and run as expected like NPVR does. So for now its going to be Emby for movie media and NPVR for TV media. Music Monkey is where all my music is and will probably remain there. I don't like having everything in one basket so to say but it would be nice. 

 

So as I stated in my original post, it seems that many peeps are migrating their visual media to MKV. Is there a reason why? Thanks for your input and cheers...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest asrequested

The MKV container is the most versatile of the containers. It supports many variations, ie multiple subs, audio tracks etc.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Rodiefs

I was also using MB when MB meant MediaBrowser. I'm in the process of converting my Blue-ray BDMV/ .M2TS files over to .MKV containers. In addition to the reasons listed above, the files seem to be slightly less in size (1GBtye or sometimes more) than their BD equivalent. I do bit-for-bit conversions of the Blue-rays and strip out unwanted audio and sub tracks. I also have a huge .TS movie collection that I'll be also converting next. I found out that MKVToolNix works the best for me for .MKV conversions.

 

I use an external player MPC-BE. It plays movies and TV series files (.M2TS, .TS, .MP4 and .MKV files) just fine and direct streams over my local network no problem, and I can control it better in my Win 10 environment than the internal Emby player.

 

I listen mainly to HI-RES music (.FLAC) externally from Emby because it doesn't allow for external music players.  I like to use Winamp for party music because I can get gapless mixes and normalization, and it supports everything up to Hi-RES .FLAC files. When doing critical music listening, I switch to HQPlayer.

 

Hope that helps..

Link to comment
Share on other sites

CharleyVarrick

I have been going in opposite direction for a while now.

The majority of content I acquire is .MKV which I then convert to .MP4.

Then again I don't need multiple audio track.

 

I once read that it was possible to have problematic .MKV payload, while .MP4 was deemed more universal.

Edited by jlr19
Link to comment
Share on other sites

ErikaJ

G'day mate...That's exactly where I am too. I have a mixture of content in various formats and various res. I also have some original content that my parents received from the studios back in the day which I think they called screeners. Some are on beta tape and some are in vhs. I would like to preserve this content by encoding into another format whihc is really why I wanted some suggestions on which way to go. I guess I will just have to leave it all as is and hope for the best solution. Thanks for the input jlr19...cheers...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

CBers

As others have said, MKV format is the most common format these days, possibly encoded with h265 where possible.

 

Also, IMO, the Android TV on an Nvidia Shield is hard to beat, although @ will disagree :D

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

scb99

More and more of the professional and national archives are using mkv. That‘s because of its xml format.

Yes you can embed stuff in an mkv and if you are getting mkv‘s from dodgy sources you might want to inspect them but this is trivial to do.

(And yes there are small functionalities that exist in mp4 with its atoms that mkv with its sequential timestamps cant replicate.)

But converting mkv to mo4 sounds like a giant exercise in futility to me. Mkv is a format with a lot of weight behind it, a lot of tools, and is going to be around a long time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sammy

As others have said, MKV format is the most common format these days, possibly encoded with h265 where possible.

 

Also, IMO, the Android TV on an Nvidia Shield is hard to beat, although @ will disagree :D

 

Well, he's a @.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

CharleyVarrick

I have both format (container is more appropriate term). Maybe 65% Mp4, 25% MKV and the remaining 10% is either AVI or VOB.

 

A small advantage for me with MP4 is when you want to remove/modify embedded titles, comments or other metadata.

Pîece of cake with mp4

Extra work+ exra sftwr needed for AVI, but some will refuse to comply.

Its advanced to expert stuff trying doing that with MKV.

 

Both MPC (MediaPlayer Classic) and VLC handle everything format you throw at them.

Interestingly, VLC must have a smart CODEC sensing feature built-in as for self experiment, I once renamed a mkv to mp4 (not convert, just rename the extension). MPC could not read the file, while VLC didn't fuss one bit.

Edited by jlr19
Link to comment
Share on other sites

PuffyToesToo

 I have been using Foobar2000 for SACD, DSF etc for quite a while, but I'm checking this out and it looks good! Thanks for the tip! 

 

 

 

 

I listen mainly to HI-RES music (.FLAC) externally from Emby because it doesn't allow for external music players.  I like to use Winamp for party music because I can get gapless mixes and normalization, and it supports everything up to Hi-RES .FLAC files. When doing critical music listening, I switch to HQPlayer.

 

Hope that helps..

Link to comment
Share on other sites

CBers

Its advanced to expert stuff trying doing that with MKV.

 

 

MKVToolnix

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

CharleyVarrick

MKVToolnix

Yes, exactly what I referred to as advanced to expert stuff.

With a MP4, you go file Properties/Details. You can also as easily do batch work.

 

For AVI, I'm using "abcAVI Tag Editor", its ugly and outdated but does the work most of the time in a few simple steps, batchwork also available.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

CBers

Yes, exactly what I referred to as advanced to expert stuff.

With a MP4, you go file Properties/Details. You can also as easily do batch work.

 

For AVI, I'm using "abcAVI Tag Editor", its ugly and outdated but does the work most of the time in a few simple steps, batchwork also available.

Fair enough, but I wouldn't call MKVToolnix as "advanced to expert", just a tool to enable you to make changes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

CharleyVarrick

Fair enough, but I wouldn't call MKVToolnix as "advanced to expert", just a tool to enable you to make changes.

Hi CBers.

Its been ages since I used it, but I believe it could not edit titles on its own and required a companion software to rename/remove embedded title/metadata, and it was counter intuitive to use (just my experience).

 

That's 2 extra programs needed to do (on MKV) what good old user friendly MS Explorer can do on its own (with MP4).

In the end, for my very specific needs, I'd rather do a couple of clicks of the mouse then 50-ish to achieve the same end result.

Edited by jlr19
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...