Has anyone gotten the Mini to play MP4 or MKV? How are you encoding?

Community Archives WD TV Mini
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I bought the Mini to be a cheap 480p player and can’t get it to play MP4, M4V, or MKV.  I’ve encoded test videos using Sony Vegas and HandBrake, and all I get is an error that the videos are in the wrong format.

I can play VOBs but would prefer to have a smaller filesize for the videos I’ll be playing.

Has anyone gotten MP4 playback to work?  What software are you using to encode and what are your settings?

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Excellent question

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Personally I like the pixel resolution and near HD quality of uncompressed VOB from double sided DVDs.  Western Digitial likes it when you have a USB hub with many 2Tb My Book essential external hard drives attached.

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I have the same question.  Have searched the web for a solution for weeks and was about the try the conversions suggested, but then read further that the conversions did not work well.  So, I have a file I want to watch and can only watch it on the computer, but not on tv.  If anyone finds a good solution, would love to hear about it. 

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Same question here.  I have numerous mkv and mpg4 files that I can only watch on the computer.  Would love to be able to watch on the big TV screen without having to turn on the computer, which defeats the purpose of the Mini.  I bought the Mini so that I would not have to turn the computer on and keeping it on till the video finishes. 

Would love to hear if there will be a new firmware update.

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i have succeeded as far as mp4 no luck with mkv yet, i used the following programs to convert avi to mpeg-4[*mp4] daniusoft media converter and iskysoft video converter u need to lower the bitrate for audio down to 96kbps whichis set to AAC cannot be changed resolution no higher than 720x480[ntsc] 720x576[pal] and works fine you can adjust video bitrate to shrink the size of the avi or whatever format you are converting.also i have converted mov files i will upload samples for ya to try on your wd mini tv player. im now testing mkv avc or x264 will not work at all sorry tried them but failed  i will keep ya informed on my progress as far as mkv  i am currently uploading 3 files to mediafire will provide linx after upload has been completed.


http://www.mediafire.com/file/nzznmz3jwmm/Taylor Swift - Fearless(1).mp4

http://www.mediafire.com/file/jmwztwwzedn/Taylor Swift - Fearless(3).mov

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Hi all

Why doesn,t  wd just update firm ware so we can enjoy are mini player …

cheers all

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MKV is not listed as a supported format.  I am using Xvid and while it generally works well there are some problems with random colors.  Other than that the picture quality on our 1080 LCD tv is really good.  I have found good general settings, but not the optimal settings.  I will start a new thread for this.

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I don’t know if anybody has sussed this yet but I play files converted to mp4 by audialsone. The settings are audio MP3 video MPEG4 -VBR Q95.

Hopes this helps.

redbaron

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Does anyone playing VOB files or MPEG2 files has an AUDIO VIDEO DESYNC after he pauses or forward plays then resumes playing again??.

I Have this problem with all my files and all my DVDs which i copied to my hard drive ,the only format now that doesn’t have this problem is the RMVBs ,which was having the same problem after i upgraded my firmware to the current 1.00.60 ,then i requested the previous firmware (1.00.37) from WD and thanks to them they supplied me with , i downgraded again my device and then the problem with RMVBs dissappeared but remained with all other formats;(.

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What’s with the huge font size?

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I bought this soon to discover its not good at all…best advice is dont open the box take it back and get the HD intead.

The function(menus work well) IT JUST DONT PLAY MP4 and AVI !!!

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Unless you have a defective unit, it plays both MP4 and AVI very well.  It does not play every possible version of these files.  There are known isues with some with different types of encoding and certainly with more a resolution over 720.

Learn how something works before you start telling people “it doesn’t work”.  It does work, you just need to know what works and what doesn’t.

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I was going to buy a mini but might wate till it can read and play MKV and DIVX as all of my collection is in one or the other!!! But I keep in touch with the community on a regular basis.

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If you want something to play MKV files, you don;t want the mini.  If you read the specifications MKV is not lisetd as a suported file type.  Look at other units, all the other units support MKV, but none support DiVX.  If you require Divx, parhaps you should look to another manufacturer, there are a lot out there.  Seagate has 2 players and both support DiVX and MKV.  For some reason WD choose not to.

I can’t understand why people complain about tthe mini not doing what it isn’t designed to do, but they do.

There are several good things about the mini, it is small, cheap and does play AVis very well, if they are encoded properly. 

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The Live’s all support DivX (in various forms, but not all options).  I’m guessing they don’t list it due to licensing restrictions.

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Sorry if my first post is to contradict someone but the SD mini

_do_ actually support MKV as clearly stated in the user manual (see APPENDIX).

The only limitation for the matroska container (because it’s only a container)

are about the video and audio codecs supported (and DIVX is one of them because

is MPEG-4 ASP, while the one not supported is DIVX6 that is proprietary and is also

a container, not only a codec).

That’s stated, the initial question is still valid even though I can assure that some

MKV and MP4 are correctly played but not all, even though I’m sure that the codec

I use are always the same.

It’s 6 months that I’m waiting for a satisfactory answer from the WD support other than

“strange, our engineers say it’s all ok”.

They asked me for mp4 and mkv files infos (extracted with mediainfo) and say that everything

seems fine; yes, “seems” because some file are actually not played.

Anyway, mkv IS supported, even though not always.

Regards

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Hmmm, perhaps I should have looked at the manual rather than trusting the specifications on the WD web site.  Sorry to all for the misinformation.

I did read about a problem with video files using a particular encofding option.  Unfortunately I don’t remember what it was as I use DVDfab which does not have the option they discussed.  I believe it was some sort of additional compression which the WD TV was not able to deal with and the file became an “unsupported format”. 

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I always encode video with a MPEG4 Part 2 codec (XVID, DIVX5…) but the

result is always unpredictable even though the manual states that I’m right.

Someone from the support told me that for MKV and MP4 multiple audio

and subtitles should be in another file.

This is partially wrong and, from a conceptual point of view, totally wrong.

Partially, because vobsub (not SRT) are recognized by the mini even if

embedded in mkv (I made few tests with mp4) whilst for audio there is no

hope.

Totally because, IMHO, if a player support MKV, MP4 and AVI the only formats

supposed to have multiple audio and subtitles embedded are the first two,

as the AVI standard format (without extensions) is not supposed to have

multiple audio and subtitle. But, incredibly, this player has no problem at

all in reading avi with multiple audio and with subtitles (!!!).

You can’t say that mkv or mp4 are supported if multiple audio is not! It’s

part of the standard (MPEG4 part 14, if I’m right)

It would be nice to have some sample of working mp4 and mkv that WD engineers

uses for their tests. The excuse “we cannot provide you samples because of the copyright”

is pathetic: few seconds do not violate any copyright.

Sorry for this long post but, although I like messing with stuff, I don’t like to have things

not working as stated. I paid for this decoder. If I wanted an AVI and a "more-or-less-

mkv-mp4-working-player" I’d have chosen a less expensive “only AVI” player.

If anyone can suggest a predictable way to produce mkv and mp4 readable by this

player, please…

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I agree it is total BS that they cannot provide samples, as anyone can create a short video clip.  However what WD should provide and I have never seen is what settings it does not support.

I use fairly straight forward settings, without multiple audio or subtitles on AVI files and have no problem.  Now that it has been pointed out that MKV does work, I will see if I can figure that out as it sems to be a better container han AVI. 

I’ll see if I can download a movie preview or somwthing to use.