What's up...

So I downloaded a film in .mkv format, and the video quality is excellent, but for some reason the audio isn't quite right. The sound is really muddy and echo-y. Sound effects and music are MUCH louder than the voices. I'm playing this with VLC... It's a torrent from demonoid which completed with no issues and no pausing/restarting and all of the comments on the torrent were noting good video and audio quality. I have played mkv files before with no issues, but could there be a plugin or codec I'm missing?

Thanks in advance for any help at all... A potential girlfriend is coming to watch this tomorrow night and I'd rather not download another shitty 700meg rip to replace this HD one...

1/13/2009 12:19:01 PM

if you've played other files of the same format with no issues, it's probably due to a bad rip rather than a missing codec.

just go rent it. $4 is a small price to pay for some trim.

1/13/2009 1:09:16 PM

too many variables with your situation... it could be a number of problems even if you have a great setup.

try http://www.videohelp.com/ for all your needs ;-)

also if you didnt already know, mkv2vob is a great little program to convert those 15GB blu-ray rips to mpg's to stream to your PS3 in HD with TVersity. its the best solution right now for downloading blu-ray's and watching them on your HDTV, now you just got to have the bandwidth to get the ~15GB mkv's in a decent time period... :-)

1/13/2009 1:34:41 PM

wait wait - a potential girlfriend....

and you're staying in and watching a shitty movie rip on your computer

1/13/2009 2:02:35 PM

^ lol, i missed that part

FAIL

1/13/2009 2:21:27 PM

mkv is for giant faggots.

1/13/2009 2:30:49 PM

what do you suggest is better than x264 ?

1/13/2009 2:38:44 PM

Nothing impresses a girl more than watching illegal movies after watching your date fiddle around with settings on the computer for half an hour to get it to play.

Don't ask us how to do illegal shit here.

Here's a pro tip: Rent the DVD/Blu-Ray, she will be more impressed that you can afford the 4 dollar movie, and you might actually score yourself some poonanny

1/13/2009 3:11:36 PM

ibt noen bittorrent rant

1/13/2009 3:15:42 PM

@ confusi0n, ablancas
Yes, I am staying in... Actually if you must know, it's an ex-girlfriend; we dated for 3 years and broke up a year and a half ago... So actually the movie doesn't really matter that much anyway. And no, it's not a shitty movie rip, it's an HD rip of a very good movie. And I'm not perching us in computer chairs in front of a laptop on a desk, I have a big-ass monitor to watch it on. And there is a nice comfy loveseat with a big soft blanket in front of the monitor. And she was here last week watching a different movie, though it happened to be in .avi format. But thanks for your input.

@ Shaggy
Matroska Video is probably the best format for high definition video available today. Plus, your name is Shaggy, so you really can't talk about me being a faggot.

[Edited on January 13, 2009 at 3:26 PM. Reason : grammar]

1/13/2009 3:17:43 PM

And who said anything about illegal? I asked you how to get a Matroska Video to playback audio correctly. Actually, it's totally not a copyrighted work, so it's not illegal at all. The question I posed had nothing to do with legality or illegality.

1/13/2009 3:20:59 PM

Quote :

"VERY GOOD MOVIE"

+

Quote :

"TOTALLY NOT COPYRIGHTED"

=

Quote :

"DOES NOT COMPUTE"

1/13/2009 3:26:50 PM

Quote :

"And who said anything about illegal? I asked you how to get a Matroska Video to playback audio correctly. Actually, it's totally not a copyrighted work, so it's not illegal at all. The question I posed had nothing to do with legality or illegality."

Bull-shit.

You said it's a RIP of a movie, which automatically means mkv is not it's native format.

You got it from demonoid, which is, almost exclusively, illegal torrents.

There is, to my knowledge, not a single CC feature film available legally, for free, on using an MKV wrapper for delivery. At least not in the US. Take your bootleg shit off this board.

1/13/2009 3:34:51 PM

^^^ yes, actually, it's copyrighted...i don't care what you say or how many times you say it, it's copyrighted by someone, somewhere

that said, copyrighted material can be downloaded via torrents, legally, so i take no issue with that

^ i'm not saying you're wrong, but you're such an ass that it kinda makes me wish you'd pegged with spitballs by the nerds that are cooler than you (which i'm sure you're convinced don't exist)...unless you've NEVER done ANYTHING illegal, gtfo your high horse

[Edited on January 13, 2009 at 3:38 PM. Reason : .]

1/13/2009 3:37:04 PM

@ shadowrunner

I really don't want to get into a flame war here, so I'll just say for the last time on the subject of legality that you posting your opinion on the film in question here has about as much to do with my original question as me posting up the fact that your last 15 threads-posted-in include "Sex Trek NSFW" and "World of Warcraft." Thanks.

1/13/2009 3:39:44 PM

I don't get it, he didn't say what it was, so there is no reason to do anything other than help the guy with his problems. I don't get the uppity shit in this section about stuff that may or may not be illegal. I doubt highly that any reasonable techogeek that has posted in this section has never done anything illegal relating to software. Willing to bet in the past Neon was highly involved in illegal shit be it newsgroups or whatever other underground shit is/was available. Just guessing.

1/13/2009 3:41:24 PM

Okay guys, I'm sorry I'm an asshole. I mean it, I promise. I just wanted some help figuring out why this thing won't play and most of you undoubtedly know more about the problem there than I do. I don't want to be a troll, I like these forums.

1/13/2009 3:42:33 PM

1/13/2009 3:51:00 PM

What movie is it? I know some of the pre-retail blu-ray rips of The Dark Knight had dvd-quality audio, quiet voices, loud fx/music. Did it come with a .sfv? You can check and make sure you didn't come across a corrupt peer.

VLC has problems with the mkv container, so you might want to try mpc with coreavc. With mpc or vlc, you can try to tweak the volume normalizer.

If the rip is from the scene, chances are high it's not a bad rip, as you would have seen someone mentioning it is nuked in the comments.

Quote :

"its the best solution right now for downloading blu-ray's and watching them on your HDTV"

or you can demux the audio/video/subtitles and remux into the mp4 container.

Quote :

"she will be more impressed that you can afford the 4 dollar movie"

A good dvd for $4? Okay... maybe. A good blu-ray for $4? GTFO. And still.. You tell your girl (I assume you have one) "Hey look! I bought this dvd for a WHOLE $4!! Be impressed by my enormous wealth and financial security!"

Quote :

"Take your bootleg shit off this board."

Take his bootleg words off the board? What? I see no http://www.clownpenis.fart/432418923/torrent/Babylon.A.D.2008.1080p.BluRay.x264-CLASSiC.mkv here.

1/13/2009 5:49:36 PM

ahahah thread of the year right here folks

1/13/2009 6:14:54 PM

Quote :

"A good dvd for $4? Okay... maybe. A good blu-ray for $4? GTFO. And still.. You tell your girl (I assume you have one) "Hey look! I bought this dvd for a WHOLE $4!! Be impressed by my enormous wealth and financial security!" "

It's called a rental. Dur.

Quote :

"i'm not saying you're wrong, but you're such an ass that it kinda makes me wish you'd pegged with spitballs by the nerds that are cooler than you (which i'm sure you're convinced don't exist)...unless you've NEVER done ANYTHING illegal, gtfo your high horse"

I've already explained this in detail. This has NOTHING to do with me thinking I'm better than anyone else, or that I'm some internet saint. This about not incriminating yourself, or this website. Read:
http://www.thewolfweb.com/message_topic.aspx?topic=552192&page=1#12419939

1/13/2009 7:37:42 PM

Quote :

"It's called a rental. Dur."

oshit. I completely missed that. yay4you.

but seriously.. if you get charged or get a letter based on what you said here, it's only because you fucked the mpaa/riaa/cop's wife and he just plain hates you.

1/13/2009 8:45:00 PM

mkv is a container format not a video or audio codec, so quality issues have nothing to do with it. What does suck dick about mkv is its a shitty open source format. Which means no real company is every going to offer serious support for it. The only reason it exists is because scene fags dont want to store their animes in a proprietary container. If they had just sucked it up and used asf and either 264 or better yet vc1 as the video codec from the start there wouldn't be any of this transcoding bullshit. It would play everywhere without you having to do shit.

1/13/2009 8:50:42 PM

Quote :

"What does suck dick about mkv is its a shitty open source format. Which means no real company is every going to offer serious support for it."

Except for Divx, PopCorn Hour, Netgear DEE and Western Digital TV.

Quote :

"The only reason it exists is because scene fags dont want to store their animes in a proprietary container."

And all HD-Rips.

1/13/2009 9:13:31 PM

^Its a TERRIBLE container. You listed 4 C list products that support it, which is just more proof positive that Shaggy is right on.

And the only HD content in mkv is illegal HD rips. There are several MUCH more popular and better media containers for HD content (quicktime namely).

1/13/2009 11:25:43 PM

I've seen the same 2-3 people repeatedly whine about what a shitty wrapper MKV is, but I never really see any actual reasoning except for "It's all illegal...waaaah!" The only thing I know for sure is that, illegal or not, I can download one file that contains a 1080p rip of a movie, the English audio track, 2-3 Commentary tracks, another 2-3 foreign language tracks, and the subtitles for 10-15 different languages. Then I can use my "C-list" Popcorn hour that I bought for $200 and display it on my TV in full HD quality, and choose which commentary track to listen to or what language I listen to/have subtitles for.

Or I guess I could use quicktime and watch the trailer for that same movie.

MKV may be, from a technical standpoint, the shittiest thing since RealPlayer. But why in the hell should end users give a fuck? Content is king. And I'll continue to believe that way until I actually see some facts that change my mind. Sorry but the strong technical argument of "mkv is for giant faggots." really isn't doing anything towards that end.

1/13/2009 11:45:30 PM

typically the scene is way ahead of everyone else in ripping techniques - can you list some actual reasons why you are saying they've made a horrible choice - i have a hard time doubting the group that has basically set the standard for many many years now - of all people on here you should know they have higher standards than most

also if those are C list products - what are some A list products that don't support mkv for a reason other than their firmware hasn't been updated since the scene adopted it (of course you can leave out products that only support proprietary formats)

1/13/2009 11:46:40 PM

Quote :

"And she was here last week watching a different movie, though it happened to be in .avi format. But thanks for your input."

AVI didn't get me laid, maybe MKV will!

1/13/2009 11:55:45 PM

Apparently there is a level of nerdishness where you can be uppity about a file format!

1/14/2009 12:23:50 AM

Quote :

"AVI didn't get me laid, maybe MKV will!"

It's okay... I have confidence that you'll find the cave woman of your dreams some day.

In other news, no, it didn't come with a .sfv file. I'll download CoreAVC tomorrow and maybe give that a try. Thanks for the help! And I'm with El Nacho on the MKV format arguement... Though I wish I had a Popcorn Hour and an HDTV to display it on.

1/14/2009 12:24:59 AM

mkv sucks:

reason numero uno: It has absolutely no streaming capability. That single fact makes it a completely worthless modern a/v wrapper. It's the same downfall of avi.

and it's exactly the reason why wmv, mp4, mov all are much, much better wrappers.

reason numbero dos: It is one of the absolute worst open-source managed projects of all time. For a NORMAL user, getting a computer to play back a mkv file is a complete crap-shoot. The chances of getting spyware, adware, completely botching your video codecs, and a myriad of other potential headaches can and do arise.

as a geek/scene codec, it does what it needs to: plays back pirated content rips. For commercial use, a blu-ray disc is a better offline medium, and any streaming wrapper is a MUCH better online medium for distributed, legal content.

Hell, even OGG is a FAR superior open-source container project. Too bad no one has ever ported popular video codec encoder/decoders for it.

1/14/2009 2:47:05 AM

Quote :

"as a geek/scene codec, it does what it needs to: plays back pirated content rips."

That was my entire point.

Different tools for different jobs is all I'm sayin'.

1/14/2009 2:56:53 AM

yea but asf would be better suited than mkv. Their only reason for the scene not using it is because its MiKKKro$oft's container.

Its a better tool for the same job.

1/14/2009 1:55:10 PM

Apparently there is a level of nerdishness where you can be uppity about a file format!

1/14/2009 3:24:51 PM

maximum level.

1/14/2009 3:27:11 PM

asf is dead, wmv is MS's new container.

And the scene DID pick up and use asf, for a very long time. DivX was originally just a tweaked microsoft video codec inside an asf wrapper. The problem was that asf was a restrictive container, and it didn't play nicely with hacked codecs (a good thing for real consumers, a bad thing for pirates), so it was quickly shifted to use avi as the container.

1/14/2009 5:39:48 PM

Quote :

"For a NORMAL user, getting a computer to play back a mkv file is a complete crap-shoot. The chances of getting spyware, adware, completely botching your video codecs, and a myriad of other potential headaches can and do arise."

http://www.google.com/search?q=mkv+playback

Well that wasn't too hard. No malware either. Cool.

1/14/2009 5:49:39 PM

1/14/2009 5:51:38 PM

^^Try clicking on that first link. Or any on the first 10 results for that matter.

You get pages of text explaining all of these different players and codec packs and tradeoffs and utilities to check mkv files to see if you have the right codecs installed, and if not which ones to download and how to go find them and BLAH BLAH BLAH.

Dude, don't be an idiot. MKV is not a consumer friendly format in ANY sense.

[Edited on January 14, 2009 at 5:53 PM. Reason : .]

1/14/2009 5:52:37 PM

^

Quote :

"In principal you can play matroska files on almost every Mediaplayer on Windows if you have the latest CCCP playback pack from our Download Page installed"

That is the first line under "How to play MKV files on Windows :"

1/14/2009 5:56:03 PM

tdub is fuckin up.

[Edited on January 14, 2009 at 5:56 PM. Reason : sasdasd]

1/14/2009 5:56:03 PM

Your problem is that your mkv is trying to output 5.1 surround on your 2-channel setup. The muddy audio you're hearing is actually rear speaker audio. Go mess with your settings to downmix the 5.1 to 2 channel audio.

OH by the way, you're welcome!

[Edited on January 14, 2009 at 7:35 PM. Reason : ]

1/14/2009 7:29:09 PM

^^And have you ever installed the CCCP pack? It's scary as shit both in installation and configuration.

If you fuck up, you can end up with duplicate directshow decoders in competition, or breaking one another, and have essentially no way to undo the damage.

Just keep digging that hole man

1/14/2009 7:32:05 PM

There are extremely easy ways to get MKVs to work (like downloading Zoom player and allowing its auto install center to detect and download all the codecs you need from official sources) but I will fully support Noen on this matter. If you've never heard of a MKV and you're a first time user trying to figure out how to get them to play, there are seemingly infinite ways to get them to work and about half of them result in spyware, viruses, duplicate and unnecessary codecs, and half a dozen other problems.

Yes, most people with half a brain will eventually figure it out, but it's not nearly as intuitive as it could and should be.

1/14/2009 7:45:21 PM

Quote :

"asf is dead, wmv is MS's new container. "

IIRC asf is still the container format. WMV doesn't specify a container, just the video codec.

1/14/2009 10:52:00 PM

Quote :

"Your problem is that your mkv is trying to output 5.1 surround on your 2-channel setup. The muddy audio you're hearing is actually rear speaker audio. Go mess with your settings to downmix the 5.1 to 2 channel audio. OH by the way, you're welcome!"

WOW, it was that simple all along... I can't believe I didn't realize that. I had my sound card set to 6 channel and plugged into some 2.1 speakers... I can't believe I didn't pick up on that, thanks thanks thanks!

For good measure, I actually ended up renting the movie in HD through XBox live, but at least now I know how to get the one I've got to play back correctly. Thanks again! After all that and muxing and extracting MKV files and codecs and whatever it turned out to be that simple. I am retarded.

1/15/2009 12:22:45 AM

Quote :

"Apparently there is a level of nerdishness where you can be uppity about a file format! "

1/15/2009 1:56:26 AM

MKV is easy to use, i don't know why everyone acts like it's difficult

i've been using the k-lite codec pack for years and, despite the assertions of some that it used to be infected (or whatever), every version i've used (since the early 3's) has been EXTREMELY simple - you download, install with default everything, and use wmp classic to play every format known to man

how complicated is that?

1/15/2009 7:58:34 AM

^ agreed. I'm pretty retarded when it comes to shit like codecs, and the first time i downloaded an .mkv file, i googled, found the k-lite codec pack, installed, and have had no trouble at all.

Maybe it's difficult for people who have the same level of computer proficiency as my 68 year old dad, but for anyone who can load google by themselves, it should be a cakewalk.

1/15/2009 8:48:00 AM

coreavc - http://www.coreavc.com - buy it only $14.95?
haali media splitter (matroska) - http://haali.cs.msu.ru/mkv/MatroskaSplitter.exe - updated version not in coreavc installer i believe
xvid 1.2.1 VAQ - http://www.koepi.info/Xvid-1.2.1-VAQ-04122008.exe
ac3filter - http://downloads.sourceforge.net/ac3filter/ac3filter_1_51a.exe

[Edited on January 15, 2009 at 10:31 AM. Reason : ]

1/15/2009 10:29:35 AM