Can't Play MKV w/ FLAC Audio on Panasonic TV; Could Before

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RamenHouse
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Joined: Fri Aug 09, 2013 7:15 am

Can't Play MKV w/ FLAC Audio on Panasonic TV; Could Before

Post by RamenHouse »

I've accidentally borked my ability to watch my precious videos on my TV.

I was using PS3 Media Server (I think 1.81?) and had things generally working. I'd set it up in a hurry, chopping together CONF files a while ago and selecting settings in the GUI in experimentation. I could watch my anime MKV files w/ FLAC audio on my US Panasonic UT50 TV. I could play the file straight, or go into the TRANSCODE folder and select which audio & subtitle to play thru Mencoder.

Yesterday I tried installing Jumpy to my PMS and didn't understand what I was doing at all, trying to ultimately get Twitch.tv to work. I discovered UMS through all the skimming and decided to download it. When I tried it, all my videos were showing with "!" icons and saying "Cannot read file". I updated PMS and didn't realize I overwrote all my CONF files and that was showing the "!" icons now. I uninstalled PMS and decided I'd just go with UMS from now on and try to fix the situation with it alone.

So, using the PS3.conf file as a guide, I edited the Panasonic.conf to match the specs of supported formats in the UT50's manual (I'll upload screenshots). I don't know if I'm really doing it right, but now it seems my Panasonic works better than before - I think I used to transcode everything because the buffer would always fill up when watching, and now I've learned about streaming since everything plays instantly w/ no buffer and I can seek with greater detail--but my MKV files aren't working at all! Yet they did before, obviously. I assume because the audio is FLAC, it's not recognized by the Supported settings, so it shows "!" and "Cannot read file".

When I try "StreamExtensions=mkv" in the CONF file, It will no longer show "!", but when the video is selected, it shows a pink/green scrambled screen, and says "Audio format not supported".

I've also tried updating Mplayer.exe, Mencoder.exe, and ffmpeg.exe. No difference was made. I've done a complete uninstall and clean re-install and can't figure out anything else to do. I don't know why it isn't just transcoding or remuxing or whatever.

Below I'm attaching screenshots of the UT50 manual showing supported formats, uploading my Panasonic.conf so you can see if I'm doing something wrong, and I'm uploading my debug of me attempting to play the MKV file with my Panasonic.conf edited with "StreamExtensions=mkv". Normally, I would think to not have that in the CONF file and would think it should just remux or transcode automatically if it doesn't match the Supported settings, right?

Thanks for any help.
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UT50SupportedFormats.jpg
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Panasonic.conf
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RamenHouse
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Re: Can't Play MKV w/ FLAC Audio on Panasonic TV; Could Befo

Post by RamenHouse »

Okay. I downloaded PMS 1.81 and my MKV files were playing. I thought I re-downloaded it earlier in the day and it didn't work, but I guess I must've done something wrong.

I worked through comparing differences between 1.81's Panasonic.conf and my own, ultimately finding out what the problems are. There are two.

1) DLNALocalizationRequired must be set to true.
2) My mime types were wrong for mpegps. They should be video/mpeg. While I was at it, I set it the same for mpegts. This was so obvious and I thought I'd experimented with it being video/mpeg like the default, but I guess I messed that up earlier, too.

There you have it. I'll upload my Panasonic.conf for anyone that might want to use it that also has a US Viera UT50 and is having problems. It seems like everything plays great now (except for WEB and Twitch thru Jumpy, but that's probably just its own can of worms aside).

Also, I'm not sure about my other mime types despite things all working, so if anyone would like to correct any mistakes in my conf still, please do.
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availablespace
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Joined: Thu Oct 29, 2015 2:28 pm

Re: Can't Play MKV w/ FLAC Audio on Panasonic TV; Could Before

Post by availablespace »

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