John Alexander Rowley

I recently acquired some video files in the matroska video’ (.MKV) file format. Using VLC Player I ran one, to find that the video worked perfectly, as did the background noise but not the actual speech. I did a bit of research into the issue and it turns out that MKV files send different audio tracks to separate speakers.

For example, the audio in this case was being sent to ‘rear speakers’ on a 5.1 system. Although I have a 5.1 system it wasn’t being picked up (or was very quiet, at least). To solve the issue I opened the audio settings of VLC player and set the playback to ‘Stereo’ rather than ’surround’.

Worked a treat, but it’s a handy little tip to know, and could save a lot of time googling the answer.

Catagories:#60SecondShout
Tags: 5.1 system, audio issues, matroska, MKV, MKV audio, MKV file format, VLC, VLC Player