MKV Files stop playing on XBOX 360

[mr.niceguy76]

Hi,

i have a little problem playing my MKV files on the XBOX 360. Before i bought Mezzmo i used TVersity as my media server. Last week, my dad bought a new TV with LAN connection and i wanted to connect it to my old media server. That didn't work due to an DLnA incompability of TVersity. I found Mezzmo and tried it. It worked wonderful with my AVI files and i decided to buy it. Yesterday i tried to play my MKV HD files on my XBOX and it started as usually. But after a couple of seconds it stops rendering and goes back to main menue.

I use Mezzmo version 2.1.12.0 (Full Version!)

My XBOX has the newest dashboard installed. I also tried to change the transcoding properties to a value which was proposed in the FAQs.

My Server (Quad core XEON, 2,13Ghz) runs a MS Windows Server 2008 R2 with 8 GB ram (where 6GB is used) and a lot of hard disk space. It's also not very busy (especially after changing the transcoding properties!). My network is a GBit one where the XBOX is of cause only at 100 MBit.

What i said before: The MKV starts playing with sound and everything and then just stops... When i start to play the movie again it might play a couple of seconds longer. The rendered files are up to 50MB large (or small) and they don't grow...

Hopefully someone had the same issues and can tell me what i did wrong.

If you need mor info about the different MKV files please ask :)

Best regards

mr.niceguy76

[Paul]

Hi,

MKVs need to be transcoded for the XBox (to WMVs) and that is one of the slowest transcodings in FFmpeg (the transcoder that Mezzmo uses). It's actually single-threaded, so that's the biggest problem. If you turn on logging (see this thread: http://forum.conceiva.com/showthread.php/419-FAQ-How-to-turn-on-diagnostic-logging) then try playing that MKV again and check the transcoding log (or send it to us), I believe we'll see transcoding at a rate slower than what is needed to play the files in real-time. We can reduce quality of the files to increase transcoding speed.

We're investigating using another transcoder for this operation, as FFmpeg is not coping well in this case, so hopefully a future update will have this fixed. For the time being, you can start playing a file, then pause for a while to let it build up and then play it.

[mr.niceguy76]

Thanks, thats what I thought was going on. Everything is being played well, only MKV not.

It's a little bit anoying that the most important transcoding is only be done by FFMPEG. it seemed to be quite a nice transcoder but if it's not capable of transcoding MKV (quickly) it's not really worth of speaking about...

I paid for Mezzmo Server and i think it's really preatty. It would be nice to see a real good transcoder being implemented to Mezzmo...

Greetings

mr.niceguy76

[Paul]

The "prepare library" feature will help a bit in this regard (when you can pre-transcode files overnight or whenever and then have them ready when you need them) and we're also thinking of using something else for WMV transcoding.

[mr.niceguy76]

Nice idea... But where can I find the "prepare library" feature???? I'm on a german system. I can swap but before i do i would like to find it in the german environment... ;-)

Thanks that you reply that quick!

[Paul]

Sorry, that feature is not available yet :) It will be implemented as one of the next major features in Mezzmo.

[mr.niceguy76]

Oh, great :-p

At least that is one of the nice features if you pay for a product: You get quick answers... ;-)

I hope it doesn't last that long to implement the feature... There are a lot of free servers which do the same. I don't like to pay for "crap"...

But what i said: I PAID because it (Mezzmo) did do a lot of things which I didn't find in the free versions of other servers... :-D

Thanks

Jens

[Paul]

Yes, it's high on the priority list, so hopefully will be out first quarter of 2011 (development is now pretty much stopped till after the holidays).

[mr.niceguy76]

Sounds good... Thanks for your advise! I'll wait till then!

I didn't realize that CONCEIVA is from Australia...

But it makes thinks easy... When i'm upset (in the evening) it's your morning and it's a fresh day for you ;-)

Cheers to you!

[Paul]

Cheers! :)

[PowerMan572]

Hello, I just wanted to say I'm having the same issue with my xbox 360 and Mezzmo not playing the mkv files properly. It's weird though, because it only happens on some mkv files. Then if I restart them they sometimes work the whole way through. However, today 1 file kept stopping in the same exact spot.

I too have a decent enough computer to handle the encoding, AMD Quad Core, 8GB DDR3 memory and everything is wired via 1Gigabit router / Cat 6 cabling. :-)

I just bought Mezzmo TODAY after switching over from TVersity. Just wanted to let you know I too am patiently waiting for a more permanent fix ;-) didn't want to let this fall off the radar.

So far everything else is going great! I am loving the software and it is much smoother than TVersity and I love how it's able to go out on the internet and grab the artwork for each of my movies! Awesome feature ;-)