mkv playback on Samsung ht-f4500

Wise_Owl

I recently got a Samsung ht-f4500 home cinema and I am playing shared files on my pc (both wired to my home network).
I have all my files organised on a dedicated hard drive in folders for each tv show.
Most of my files are .mkv and work fine, however some files do not show up when I browse so cannot watch the latest episodes without having to transfer to a usb a play it that way.
Does anyone have any ideas why this happens or ideas on how to fix it?

Cycrow

most likely the other files that dont play are a different format, that isn't recognised by your player.

mkv is just the container, they can have files encoded with different audio and video codecs.

to fix it, you could re-encode the files into a compatible format.

another option is to see if there is a new firmware for the device, sometimes they add in new codecs allowing you to play more formats

Strider590

Don't get me started on MKV files.....

All the script kiddies rave on about them and all their benefits and I understand they are usually MP4/AVI files inside a container along with subtitles and audio and everything else, but when most devices only play straight MP4 or AVI, what use are they to normal people? :mad:

OP I suspect your issue could be something to do with file attributes, which can change when you move files to different drives.

Cycrow

Strider590 wrote: »

Don't get me started on MKV files.....

All the script kiddies rave on about them and all their benefits and I understand they are usually MP4/AVI files inside a container along with subtitles and audio and everything else, but when most devices only play straight MP4 or AVI, what use are they to normal people? :mad:

OP I suspect your issue could be something to do with file attributes, which can change when you move files to different drives.

many devices will play mkv files. In the case of the OP, some of the mkv files play, but others dont. Which means the device is able to read them, otherwise none would work.

mkv files dont have mp4/avi files in them, as you cant have containers inside other containers.

But the video and audio codecs inside them can be the same.

like most containers, mkv's can user a number of different codecs, and if the player doesn't understand the codec, it wont be able to decode the video/audio tracks, even if it can read the container

Wise_Owl

Thanks for the replies.

The player can read the files fine from my usb stick which is confusing me as to why they don't show when I browse for them on my pc :S

Wise_Owl

For anyone interested who may have a similar problem and come across this thread I fixed it by downloading and installing Serviio on my PC and used it to index my files. They now all appear when I browse and all play. (I also tried PleX but this kept failng to play)