Playing 10-bit MKV files

[ANBU!]

Hi folks,

A lot of fansubbers are now starting to release 10-bit h264 encoded MKV's (also called hi10p). The problem is that you can open the files and hear the sound but the screen is frozen green or just the title screen. Typically they are encoded at 8-bit but 10-bit allows for higher color accuracy and therefor looks better. It also is able to maintain file compression equal to its 8-bit counterparts.

If you're on a Mac OS X Lion (like me) you'll need to use VLC 1.2 nightly build which is currently unstable but will play 10-bit MKVs. There's also a bug that plays the same video no matter which file you open unless you quit VLC completely and relaunch. Also Quicktime X even with Perian does not play MKVs at all. If you try it will prompt you to open with Quicktime 7 with Perian and that will work. Perian hasn't updated for OS X Lion yet, but they plan to.

For those on Windows using BSPlayer or VLC Windows let me know here if you can play 10-bit MKVs.

Cheers!

[Caliburxcm]

I haven't tested this at all, but after asking around for a codec which plays hi10p videos, I got pointed to this: http://www.cccp-project.net/

I prefer these solutions, since they typically make windows media player able to read the majority of video files, instead of downloading some stupid 3rd party player.

[Ian the Korean]

Yep, latest CCCP/MPC for windows plays it just fine, you're pretty much screwed if you play it on anything else right now, be it Boxee Box, Popcorn Hour, WDTV or alternative media player software like XBMC and GPU hardware acceleration like DXVA/VDPAU.

The entire reasoning for switching is kind of dumb too since the actual quality difference is negligible outside of really "dark" scenes. Most shows and scenes will only have visible differences like this but some scenes will show improvements like this which is a bit more noticeable.