AVI does not work nice but MKV does?

General Discussions
21

From my experience there is no shortcut to playing/testing sizes and format and compression

Most software lets your stipulate a variety of specs.

e.g get vidcoder (it uses handbrake) and is free then set it to make 1gb, 2 gb, 3gb mp4
and see what u like.

Personally any movie (h264-mp4) over say 3-4gb is a waste of storage. (I have plenty of storage so space is not an issue).

22

AVI is a CONTAINER, like MKV not a codec like h264. Google mediainfo and download it. You can then see what the codecs are that your AVI files use. There are a lot of programs that will take the AVI as input and convert it to another container format without re-encoding at all. MKVtoolnix is my personal preference as it makes the underlying mkv apps easier to use with its GUI.

But to be honest anything you have in AVI is most likely a very old file and can be easily reencoded to another format such as mp4 or better yet MKV.

FYI AVI was created by Microsoft in 1992 making the format over a quarter of a century old. While it was a very popular container that was mainly because for a while it was the only one that Windows supported out of the box. Microsoft itself no longer uses it anymore as far as I am awareā€¦

Also DIVX/XVID is not used as much anymore. Itā€™s still around but I have not seen many files that depend on it much in the last 10 years.

Good luck and if you need more help just send a message.

TimT

23

If space inā€™t an issue why would you worry if a movie is over 4 GB?

No offense but shouldnā€™t you stipulate that with regards to 3 and 4 GB movies, it is very dependent on the original source file, resolution, audio etc? If you make a rip of a BluRay you own and compress it down to the size of a single layer DVD itā€™s pretty much going to look and sound a lot worse than what you started with. Of course more modern codecs allow a lot more compression without losing as much quality so if say you took a h264 BluRay and re-encoded it to h265 file you could theoretically get it to half itā€™s BluRay disc size with the same quality, if you had the time and a good encoder. Handbrake is great for casual encoding but the faster you want the encode to be done the less quality you will get in the end. Granted there are far less h265 hardware decoders out there than h264 so you have to always know your target for playback.

Compression is always a factor, and any consumer video file, DVD, BluRay and UHD are already compressed by quite a factor. Getting one of those files even smaller means giving up quality.

I am a purist myself and due to how cheap multi Terabyte HDā€™s are I just donā€™t bother compressing anything anymore. At least from the original BluRay or UHD.

TimT

1 Like
24

I think we are getting a little off topic. The OP doesnā€™t really want to have to change the container of every AVI he has even though he could batch it, or of course he could reencode it to many other formats and codecs not of his choosing.
Essentially he would like to know why AVI isnā€™t working but the same streams in an MKV do work and is there any simple way round it?
I suggested to force a transcode but not sure if that worked?

25

mm yes I was just wonder but to tell the truth I did not like to have xvid/divx. Give me alot of problem so right now I use ffmpeg and convert all my divx/xvid files.

26

If you have the original sources available it is better to reencode from sourceā€¦or find someone else who has already done it and nick theirs :slight_smile:

27

Not off topic at all.

Suggestions are how to fix AVI.
Consensus is CONVERT/REMUX

If he want to stuff around with AVI go for itā€¦
He wants a fix - convert

28

Yo Tim,

I have a big enough box that can transcode most if required.
My movies are that size as i have several remote friends.
and smaller files just make it easier.

And I am all for KISS

29

I donā€™t think it was established it was a faulty AVI, just it wouldnā€™t play properly. Still I am sure if something similar happens to mp4 containers you will be happy to move to another

30

Understood, why not use whatever size you want and if space is not an issue then create optimized versions for your friends? I think I remember that Plex is supposed to deliver the best version based on the profiles and matching the remote clients needs. Although as you said, KISS.

31

There is always a chance that the problem is just with the way it was originally encoded etc and may have nothing to do with AVI, MKV or MP4. Although if he/she is having the problem with multiple files it is unlikely. Perhaps he can copy one of the problematic AVI files to a USB drive etc and test it out on a friends PC or Mac.

TimT

32

Recently ran into this myself with some avi files. Changing them to mkv containers did not help. Got nothing but the eternal spinning circle when attempting to play them on the Shields.

The video was encoded in an Xvid MPEG4, Part 2 format. Recoded the video with Handbrake to an x.264 format and dumped it back into an mkv container with the original audio track and it played just fine then.

33

From my experience stay away from XVID.

34

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