Windows 10: Audio disappeared - got it back but now have odd mkv problem

Hi. While working at my Windows 10 PC yesterday, I realised there was no sound. My media players gave video only and Avidemux gave a warning “Trouble Initializing Audio Device”. All the obvious checks suggested that there was no problem, drivers were up to date etc.

I went to the sound icon in the system tray and clicked 'Troubleshoot sound problems' which told me it had fixed something but didn't say what. I now have my sound back but with some new issues:

• my WMP no longer plays mkv files
• my mkv files no longer show a 'thumbnail', just the logo of whichever media player is set to play them.

Can anyone suggest what on Earth happened yesterday? Many thanks.

UPDATE: I've found one or two mkv files that DO work with WMP and show thumbnails(!!). But the vast majority of my mkv's have the highlighted problem. All very odd...

:)

 

CANT GET AUDIO WITH A MKV VIDEO

Is it just one MKV video or all MKV videos?

Usually this is not a Windows Problem, the problem is that there is so many MKV encoders out there and there is no consistency with the way MKV files are being encoded . . .

I have seen this with certain MKV videos, that were downloaded from the Web. The problem is that sometimes the MKV file contains 5.1 Dolby sound and this is not supported on many devices and applications for playback.

There is a very good tool MKVToolnix downloadable from
HERE, which will allow you to look inside the MKV file to see if this is the case. The tool will allow you to extract the audio stream, re-encode it and put it back into the MKV file. Then hopefully the MKV file will play as normal.

I hope this helps!

 

Video is stuttering when playing mkv files with any media player. It's a Surface Pro 4.

Which media players have you tried? MP4 and MKV are containers, so did you ensure the audio and video codecs used in both types of test files were exactly the same? If not, take any MP4 that plays back smoothly and convert it to an MKV
without re-encoding using
mkvmerge GUI (basically just drag & drop onto that app and save as MKV, preferably with the header compression option turned off). It should not take very long to do this and you'll end up with the exact same contents of the MP4 in an MKV container instead.
Now play the MKV with various media players and see if it stutters.

 

WMP does not natively play mkv files. Did you add a codec package before to do this ?
You can download VLC player which will play virtually any audio/video codec out there. The thumbnails show fine on my system when VLC is the default play program for all video files which you can choose on setup. Worth testing if nothing else, making sure to choose correct bitness for your system -
Official download of VLC media player, the best Open Source player - VideoLAN

 

I'm fairly sure it was after the recent Fall Creators Update that I noticed WMP could play mkv. I just assumed it was an upgrade to WMP. I don't use codec packs (unless they come with something else - MeGUI or suchlike). I'm more interested in what caused the audio to stop more than the mkv issues but I'll have a look at VLC. Thanks for your time, mrgeek.

 

I have WMP disabled for years but does the file play in Win10 Movies & TV app ? This does play mkv's w/o codec packages. Even if it does, I prefer VLC for the abundance of playback features. Good Luck

 

No, the Films & TV app 'Can't play' an mkv. Error 0xc00db3b2 which some reddit users are also having a problem with.