[Nottingham] Video containers. I fixed my DLNA, but don't understand how

[Neal Ponton]

 From my equally ignorant view on video containers: is it possible that the 
TV can read files if they are in an "old skool" format like .avi or .divx or 
.mpg? Once it has a peek inside a more esoteric container, such as mkv, and 
thinks "oh, it's just an avi file!" it then has a go at playing it. 
As a caveat, I know little about how (or why) we have video containers with 
different codecs in them either. 
Neal. 


19. Jun 2016 21:42 by nottingham at mailman.lug.org.uk:


> I am running a media server (Emby) and if it was on a powerful enough 
> server it could transcode them. Thing is, it's on a fairly lower powered HP 
> MicroServer and transcoding kills it.
>
> The files I rip myself I can handle (simply rip to a format that requires 
> no transcoding).
>
> I had some older files from my Windows Media Server days that were in 
> "dvr-ms" and they would need to be transcoded. The TV even refused to show 
> them in it's network file browser - it seriously did not like the files. To 
> "fix" this, I renamed on to ".mkv" and it started playing fine via the file 
> browser and DLNA. No transcoding, the TV just played the file.
>
> What?
>
> From my admittedly limited and somewhat confused understanding of video 
> containers etc, how on Earth can that work? The extension doesn't match the 
> container format, the TV appears to not know how to handle the container 
> (hence not listing it in the file browser) and yet....it plays fine.
>
> Although I'm happy it's working, I'm now more confused than ever.
>
> Does anyone have any clue on that?
>
> Oh, and it seems DLNA (on Panasonic and Samsung) cannot cope with multiple 
> audio tracks or subtitles. Something of a glaring omission for video 
> playing if you ask me.
>
> J.
> 
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