Playing mkv files

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live & Live Plus
1

Hi I’ve just bought a WD Live.

Everything worked well on set up, etc.

It has found all of my video files, except for  3 .mkv files which it does not show in the video file lists. They are the only mkv files I have, they are in different folders, all other files in those folders are shown.

Any ideas ?

Thanks, Mike

2

I don’t think the WD TV Live supports MKV files anyway.

3

Yes it does.

But what codex have you used for the files in the mkv?

4

Are you accessing the files through network shares or through a media server? If it’s through a media server, maybe it doesn’t expose the files for some reason. The WDTV Live does indeed show & play files inside MKV containers. However I mostly tried x264-encoded files, didn’t try that many codecs.

5

 I am having the exact same problem.  I cannot see the MKV files on my network attached storage.  If I copy the same file to a USB thumb drive and connect it to the WD HD Live it will play.  So, I don’t think it is a codec issue.  Would like to know how this works out.

6

http://www.divx.com/downloads/divx

Download the new DIVX codec and install n reboot… your MKV should show now.

7

Democritus wrote:

http://www.divx.com/downloads/divx

 

Download the new DIVX codec and install n reboot… your MKV should show now.

Why should installing the DIVX codec help in seeing MKV files?

8

For whatever reason connecting to a NAS or HD as Media Servers will not show mkv files. Connecting as Network Share makes them available.

They play fine. Codec support has nothing to do with being able to see the file.

9

I can’t get mkv files to show up on either Network Shares or Media Servers. They will only show up on the local drive.

10

The Wd Live networking seems very erratic.

Often I cannot connect to Network Shares although Media Shares remains connected, only after numerous restarts did the WD display the new MKV file in Network Shares,

When I select Media Share, the video files shown are from the playlist in Windows Media Centre. I could not add MKV files to the playlist, probably because Windows Media Player cannot play it.

Tried fast forward from x2 to x16, which works OK until one presses play, the MKV then restarts from the beginning.

MKV’s were created with makemkv.

11

The WDTV live supports .mkv files. However it is a different thing to play files from a network share and a media server. When you access a folder through a network share, the OS sends a lists of all files inside that folder, no matter if they are supported by the WDTV live or not. Unless you didn’t set the read permissions correctly, you should always see all supported files.

When you access a media server it’s more of an “interactive” process, that’s why it matters which one you use. When you add a folder to a media server, the program first looks for supported files (which is probably a different set than the files supported by the WDTV live or other media extenders you might wanna hook to it). Then when you connect a media extender to it, it will “talk” to the device and ask the list of files supported by it, and will decide what files it can stream to the device (because both support the file), and which ones are supported by the media server only, and if the server can it will transcode them to a compatible format. However the files supported by the extender only will not be magically supported by the server, and that is what causes some confusion.

For example, WMP can act as a media streaming server, but unless you install Divx 7 (which adds support for MKV files in WMP/WMC), WMP will ignore MKV files, and will always ignore FLAC files, which are supported by the WDTV, and the WDTV live will only display the files presented by WMP (.mp3, avi. ,mp4 etc…). That’s why you need a media server that supports the files you wanna play on your WDTV live, like TVersity, Twonkymedia Server etc…