Unable to play MKV file

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live & Live Plus
1

I have a problem: so far my WD HDTV Live has been played every video file from my usb drive including ogm’s, however, I have 1 movie file with non-standard HD resolution (neither 1280x720 or 1920x1080) which cannot be played, it says the format is not supported (I guess it’s a standard error).
here is the mediainfo report:

VIDEO:
ID                                      : 1
Format                             : AVC
Format/Info                      : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                  : High@L5.1
Format settings, CABAC           : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames        : 8 frames
Muxing mode                      : Container profile=Unknown@5.1
Codec ID                         : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration                         : 1h 23mn
Width                            : 1 904 pixels
Height                           : 1 072 pixels
Display aspect ratio             : 16/9
Frame rate                       : 23.976 fps
Resolution                       : 24 bits
Colorimetry                      : 4:2:0
Scan type                        : Progressive
Title                                  : XXXXXXXXXXX (1080p H.264)
Writing library                  : x264 core 65 r1057 5f8a149
Encoding settings                : cabac=1 / ref=8 / deblock=1:-1:0 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=umh / subme=9 / psy_rd=1.0:0.0 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=24 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=6 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / mbaff=0 / bframes=4 / b_pyramid=1 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / wpredb=1 / keyint=300 / keyint_min=10 / scenecut=40(pre) / rc=crf / crf=18.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / ip_ratio=1.40 / pb_ratio=1.30 / aq=1:0.90

AUDIO:
ID                                    : 2
Format                           : FLAC
Format/Info                   : Free Lossless Audio Codec
Codec ID                       : A_FLAC
Duration                         : 1h 23mn
Bit rate mode                 : Variable
Channel(s)                     : 7 channels
Sampling rate                : 48.0 KHz
Resolution                      : 16 bits
Title                                   : 6.1 FLAC
Writing library                  : libFLAC 1.2.0 (UTC 2007-07-15)
Language                        : Japanese

by the way: my popcorn hour A-110 can play thsi video without problems (but not the audio, since PCH doesn’t like FLAC)

Do I have to downscale the resolution to a format it can play, and if so, what programs can anyone suggest?
I also have the latest firmware update.
Thanks

2

At a glance it’s more than just the resolution, there’s several things that aren’t exactly standalone-friendly there:

  • the resolution as you said is not standard, so it could be problematic, though both are mod16, it could be worse

  • level 5.1 . I think the WDTV confoms to level 4.1, though I doubt this will matter much since L4.1 is already a very high upper limit

  • 8 reference frames… would probably work, but it’s definitely on the high side, 4 is the recommended figure for decoders that support level 4.1

  • multichannel flac. This could be the deal breaker, I don’t think the WDTV supports multichannel flac, you could definitely start by reencoding the audio to something else (probably AC3)

3

Thanks

I will try to demux the audio and re-encode it to AC3 and see what happens. Hopefull it will work, although I had some bad experince when some time ago I muxed a srt subtitle file to an mkv video file: the result was that the new file didn’t play smoothly (I used MKVtoolnix).

I’ll let you kow.