Video playback woes: 720p mkv - h.264 w/ AC3 audio

[lykofos]

Video playback woes: 720p mkv - h.264 w/ AC3 audio - SOLVED

...After much trial and error, the solution that finally worked / synced the audio correctly was using MX Player and having the video stay on hardware decoding and putting only the audio stream on software decoding...

Anyone else having problems with this combination? Suggestions?

Like the title says, I have several 720p .mkv files - the video is encoded with h.264 and the audio is AC3. The AC3 audio seems to be the problem. Tried several different players and still nothing. Here are my results so far:

1. Mobo player: Hardware decoding - video but no audio, Software decoding - video & audio but audio is out of sync by 5+ seconds
2. MX player: video but no audio
3. QQ player: video & audio but audio is out of sync by 5+ seconds
4. Dice player: doesn't seem to work at all on my bionic, get a multi-colored static screen no matter what type of video file I try to play
5. Rock Player Lite: Hardware decoding - locks up bionic (had to do battery pull), Software decoding - very choppy video & audio is out of sync by 10+ seconds

 

[liftedplane]

Anyone else having problems with this combination? Suggestions?

Like the title says, I have several 720p .mkv files - the video is encoded with h.264 and the audio is AC3. The AC3 audio seems to be the problem. Tried several different players and still nothing. Here are my results so far:

1. Mobo player: Video plays fine but no audio
2. MX player: Video plays fine but no audio
3. QQ player: plays audio & video but the audio is out of sync by at least 5 seconds behind
4. Dice player: doesn't seem to work at all on my bionic, get a multi-colored static screen no matter what type of video file I try to play

Try mobo again long press the file and try soft decode that works for me sometimes

Sent from my ROOTED DROID BIONIC using DROID forums!

 

[lykofos]

Try mobo again long press the file and try soft decode that works for me sometimes

Didn't know about that option. Tried it but it only worked partially. Thanks for the suggestion tho. The audio played but was 5+ seconds ahead of the video (so basically the exact opposite of the QQ player result).

 

[Mbk]

you tried RockPlayer Lite?...haven't tried MKV but have h.264 encoded MP4

 

[lykofos]

Still no luck. Updated the original post to reflect my results with rock player lite.

Seems like the .mkv container encoded with AC3 audio isn't very friendly on the bionic and doesn't play well with others. Might just have to re-encode those files to .mp4 or something. .mkv with AC3 is the first file type I've ever had trouble with on the bionic, it's played everything else flawlessly: avi, mpg, divx, xvid, etc. with MX player (which is the primary player I've been using for awhile).

 

[Mbk]

what are you using to encode the videos?

 

[lykofos]

what are you using to encode the videos?

I didn't encode the mkv's so I'm not sure what program was originally used to encode them.

Finally got them to play tho!! It's working on MX Player now. Was going through all the video player programs again and playing around with settings. How I got it to work was when the video is playing in MX player and you tap the screen, a "HW" icon and a "music note" icon come up in the upper right corner of the screen.

I left the video decoding on hardware decoding mode, but clicked on the music note icon and selected the "Audio Track #1 (S/W)" software decoding stream for the audio. With video on hardware decoding and only the audio on software decoding, it played both audio & video and synced up perfectly!

 

[docluv01]

Hey Thanks for this suggestion...you wouldnt happen to know an effetcive way to get 2 partitions on the SD card would ya? My intent is to put mkv's larger then 4 gig , which FAT32 doesnt allow. I know how to partition the card, just can't figure out how to mount it on the phone.

Thanks

 

[lykofos]

Hey Thanks for this suggestion...you wouldnt happen to know an effetcive way to get 2 partitions on the SD card would ya? My intent is to put mkv's larger then 4 gig , which FAT32 doesnt allow. I know how to partition the card, just can't figure out how to mount it on the phone.

Thanks

Nope, I don't think it's possible for the phone to recognize / mount the card if there are 2 different partitions on it. I think android phones only recognize "FAT32" and the linux "ext#" formats. Formatting it in ext will probably give you more problems though if you're using a windows system to transfer files.

Not very convenient, but the best way is to just split the larger file into smaller sections that FAT32 can deal with. I've used MKVtoolnix mostly: MKVToolnix 5.0.1 - VideoHelp.com Downloads. Here's a pretty thorough write up on the steps: - Split Videos into Multiple MKV Files (Without Quality Loss).

Here's another one discussing different programs you can use to split mkv's into smaller sections: MKV x264 editor? - Doom9's Forum. The post is a bit old but the info is still applicable since there aren't any new mkv splitting programs out aside from he ones mentioned in that post.

 

[z96Cobra]

Are you watching these videos on the Bionic or streaming to TV over HDMI? Just curious, if watching on device, why you don't convert to mp4 and save tons of space/processing power?

 

[docluv01]

Thanks...I actually tried that tool. but for some reason MX player says the smaller files arent playable via the HW encoder. did you have luck with it?

 

[lykofos]

Hmm, I'll try it and report back. The mkv I started this thread about was only 1.93GB so it all fit on the sd card. I'll have to transfer one of the mkv's i have cut up to fit on dvds over to the phone and see if it plays for me.

And z96Cobra, definitely not watching these on the phone alone. lol. That would be a bit overkill. Streaming it over hdmi mirroring to my girlfriend's tv. Sweet being able to watch videos on the bionic in 1080p on the tv!