Does native h264 playback work for MKV?

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cusquinho
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Does native h264 playback work for MKV?

Post by cusquinho »

Hi,

I've been wondering. Will the native h264 support apply to matroska raw h264 inside matroska container?? This would mean
we would start supporting 720p mkv in appletv more decently...

Thanks,

Fernando
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The_Tick
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Re: Does native h264 playback work for MKV?

Post by The_Tick »

You can try it on your mac. We're no longer interested in trying to get anything done on the appletv though.
gbooker
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Re: Does native h264 playback work for MKV?

Post by gbooker »

cusquinho wrote:This would mean we would start supporting 720p mkv in appletv more decently...
Ain't gonna happen, ever. Don't waste your time trying either. The ATV doesn't have the hardware to play 720p mkv (assuming the mkv is high profile, of which all that I've seen are). It's processor is too slow, and it's graphics card doesn't support decode of H.264.
cusquinho
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Re: Does native h264 playback work for MKV?

Post by cusquinho »

The_Tick wrote:You can try it on your mac. We're no longer interested in trying to get anything done on the appletv though.
wow, I'm very sad to know...

Most videos I get in mkv, If I remux them to mp4 (without re-encoding the video), they do work on ATV with no problem. So I'm guessing
the way apple handles mp4 720p videos makes a better use of the hw. If the new perian use that for playing raw h264 inside mkv, that would
do the trick for me...
cusquinho
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Re: Does native h264 playback work for MKV?

Post by cusquinho »

gbooker wrote:
cusquinho wrote:This would mean we would start supporting 720p mkv in appletv more decently...
Ain't gonna happen, ever. Don't waste your time trying either. The ATV doesn't have the hardware to play 720p mkv (assuming the mkv is high profile, of which all that I've seen are). It's processor is too slow, and it's graphics card doesn't support decode of H.264.
Well, for some reason it plays 95% of the mkvs I get If I remux them into mp4 (without re-encoding the video)...
gbooker
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Re: Does native h264 playback work for MKV?

Post by gbooker »

cusquinho wrote:Well, for some reason it plays 95% of the mkvs I get If I remux them into mp4 (without re-encoding the video)...
gbooker wrote:(assuming the mkv is high profile, of which all that I've seen are)
720p main-profile, under the right circumstance will playback on the ATV. That's likely what you have. Want to test it: If you try to playback high-profile without Perian, the ATV will crash.
cusquinho
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Re: Does native h264 playback work for MKV?

Post by cusquinho »

gbooker wrote:
cusquinho wrote:Well, for some reason it plays 95% of the mkvs I get If I remux them into mp4 (without re-encoding the video)...
gbooker wrote:(assuming the mkv is high profile, of which all that I've seen are)
720p main-profile, under the right circumstance will playback on the ATV. That's likely what you have. Want to test it: If you try to playback high-profile without Perian, the ATV will crash.
No doubt!

I'm just wondering if the RAW h264 inside mkv gets hw accelerated in ATV, like somehow happens with apple MP4 (yes, I know it's not fully hw accelerated since the GPU does not support it), that would increase considerably the number of 720p files in a medium profile that would work out-of-the-box.
gbooker
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Re: Does native h264 playback work for MKV?

Post by gbooker »

Since you have the source content, you can test better than I. If you open your MKV in QT Player, and save (not export), and play the resulting movie file, that is identical to the operation of opening the MKV on the ATV. Try it and see what happens. As The_Tick said, we are no longer interested in anything AppleTV, so this is the limit of the theoretical discussion for the device.
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