MKV file has no sound on Xbox One

I've got an MKV file that runs perfectly with VLC player on Windows 8.1. I want to play this file on my Xbox One. When I try to play it directly from a server, it can access the MKV fine, but there is no sound! As a possible work around, I used VLC Player to convert the MKV file into an MP4 format, but now it has no sound at all, even when I play it on my PC.

Note: this question has a similar title but it does not address the same issue. VLC playing mkv file without sound

This is a similar issue but I am not using Chrome or Youtube, it appears to be a sound or media format issue (it also has no solution): YouTube web no sound but VLC has sound

Oman

Posted 2015-02-26T00:25:46.747

Reputation: 53

This sounds like a codec problem. While XBox One will recognize the mkv container it still needs a codec. – Ramhound – 2015-02-26T04:57:26.523

Answers

MKV and MP4 are container formats. Internally they contain video and audio which could have been encoded in a variety of formats, commonly referred to as codecs.

Examples of video codecs include h.264 and mpeg2. Examples of audio codecs include MP3 and AAC. There a many more codecs and some are more widely supported than others.

It appears that your file contains an audio format which the Xbox One does not support. Converting the file from MKV to MP4 probably only changed the container format leaving the audio and video contained inside unaltered, so your problem was not fixed.

You need to transcode the audio using a program such as Handbrake (GUI) or ffmpeg (command line) to a codec supported by the Xbox One.

Mike Fitzpatrick

Posted 2015-02-26T00:25:46.747

Reputation: 15 062

I had been thinking that it might be the audio encoding, several other posts suggested similar things. I'm curious as to why the MP4 conversion doesn't have sound on my PC though - could there be more than one audio track? – Oman – 2015-02-26T01:54:35.250

you can use a utility like G-Spot to analyze the file, and it will tell you what type of codec it is. http://www.headbands.com/gspot/

– Frank Thomas – 2015-02-26T02:26:49.630

This was exactly on the mark - the audio format was a DTS variant, I assume the Xbox One cannot decode it. Handbrake was able to convert it very easily. – Oman – 2015-02-27T06:02:18.873

Microsoft is pretty lame as it's just a software issue, you have to degrade to no hd audio add no-hd sound track

Tony

Posted 2015-02-26T00:25:46.747

Reputation: 1