Can't play h.264 mkv files

English Multimedia
#1

Hi.

I have been trying to play h.264 mkv files, without success.
I already installed the restricted formats from Restricted Formats/11.1 - openSUSE-Community, and still no luck. I have no trouble playing DivX or XviD encoded videos. I have installed packages JM, libx264-64, libx264-67 and x264 (which are supposed to be x264 encoder/decoders) and libmatroska.

I’m using openSuSE 11.1 (x86-64) and VLC 0.9.9a to play the videos (but the same happens with xine).

Any help is appretiated.
Thanks!

#2

Can you define “without success” ? What symptoms do you get ? Did you try “ffplay” or “mplayer” ?

Its possible you have a mix of Packman and videlan codecs and that is causing you a problem. If so, you could try working your way through this: Check your multimedia problem in ten steps - openSUSE Forums

Also, the bitrate in some h.264 files can be encoded such that one needs a powerful computer in order to play them (or if one has a supported video card use VDPAU and offload the video decoding to the GPU on one’s graphic card). For example, I find the h264 files on this web site are a good test for one’s capability to play h.264 files. Again, typically, because of their high resolution and high bit rate, one needs the sort of setup I mentioned above: H.264 Demo Clips « H264info.com

But I can play those videos with only a 10% CPU load on an old 32-bit athlon-2800 PC with a PCI card (nVidia 8400GS w/512MB on card RAM) via VDPAU technology implemented in the nVidia proprietary video driver and by also using an mplayer build that uses that technology.

#3

Video and audio didn’t play. The position bar moved, but no video or audio. xine gave an error message saying it couldn’t decode the H264 format.

It worked lol! I “downgraded” all VideoLAN packages to the Packman alternatives, and now everything works fine lol!

Thanks a lot!

#4

Real? I’ll give it a try.:wink:
In the past, I used to convert mkv file to avi to edit or watch.

#5

Super! Congratulations.

In case there are any users monitoring this thread who are curious about nVidia cards and vdpau on openSUSE, there is an openSUSE wiki here:
Video editing/avchd - openSUSE

#6

You may try this video converter, it can help you convert mkv video to wmv video, then you can play it with windows media player.