Question to Surface RT owners: What video formats can it play?

[jhoff80]

Both mp4 and mkv file formats are containers which contains media streams(subtitles, audio, video, chapters), not codecs. If you have some mkv files just demux them and remux again as mp4. Converting instead of remuxing mkv to mp4 is waste of time and also quality degradation.

Well, that depends on the type of audio in the file. If you use DTS, you'll need to have the audio reencoded. Use something like MKV2VOB though, and it'll do that on the fly (if necessary), giving you an .mpg file that the Surface can play in the end.

I still want to see a video player for Windows RT that can handle MKV (including DTS audio, subtitle support, etc.) but this will do for now.

 

[tomm1ed]

Both mp4 and mkv file formats are containers which contains media streams(subtitles, audio, video, chapters), not codecs. If you have some mkv files just demux them and remux again as mp4. Converting instead of remuxing mkv to mp4 is waste of time and also quality degradation.

You are missing the point. I know MKV is 'just a container' and that I can remux the various media streams (although AFAIK I can't remux VobSubs / srts into MP4), but that's just a hassle! This is exaclty why I was so miffed with Apple when I bought my iPad2, but at least with Apple I could buy a player capable of handling MKV...
The _only_ thing missing is a MKV filter because the Tegra3 obviously can handle 99% of the streams contained in said container.

 

[Tikhonov Alexander]

Thanks

 

[jssqmaty]

After testing, the RT tablet supports AVI video in DIVX, XVID, MPEG code well, but if AVI in MSMPEG codec, it doesn't. I tried to use the Xbox video player, PressPlay Video and mobile.HD Video Player to play MSMPEG AVI, but I failed.

 

[11B1P]

No, just convert to .mp4 with HandBrake. The default iPad setting works fine for the Surface.

I too use Handbrake. Can you tell me how to get the english subtitles hard-coded onto the movie? I have high-pitched hearing loss and I like to have the subs on cause I will always miss some words.

 

[anon(5348929)]

Regarding MKV: I'm using mobile.HD ( mobile.HD Media Player-App f?r Windows in Windows Store ), which until now played every MKV file I tried without any conversion. I watched a 1280p movie at full resolution (surface connected to external monitor) and it worked smoothly. It even supports embedded subtitles.

 

[alterbridge86]

Another endorsement for mobile.HD - it is a phenomenal player. The developer is responsive as well and updates fairly frequently to fix bugs and add features. So far it has played everything I've thrown at it, and that includes stupidly massive MKV's with DTS-HD MA audio (I remuxed a lot of my blurays for HTPC purposes ). Though I don't use this feature often, it does support subtitles as well.

The best part compared to an iOS device is that there is no iTunes for managing the content. You simply drag and drop some files, onto your microsd or internal storage, and bam, your off to the races.

 

[jhoff80]

Yeah, mobile.HD is pretty good, though it does have its limitations (no .FLAC audio and no hi10p video- those are going to be really niche uses though).

Obviously that came out in the months since this post was originally made.

 

[jaimeastin]

Yeah, syncing through iTunes for me is why I don't want to get iPad 4 next. I have iPad 1 and my computer crashed last week and I had to reinstall Windows and everything including iTunes. I found out that I cannot add more stuff to my iPad via new install of iTune because library info is now different so it wants to wipe everything on my iPad before new stuff can be synced with new install of iTune.

It is good to know that there is at least 3rd party app to play commonly used video format.

I personally hate iTunes... Try copy trans manager. I have a mac and still won't use iTunes to sync my nano or my then iPad...

 

[Narr]

It's frustrating that Windows Media Center files don't play, converting everything I need is painful.

 

[Ridlah]

PowerDVD mobile for ultra is an app that plays MPEG and MKV. I love the surface and its office capabilities but to be honest some of the apps haven't been built to support arm processors, I see better performance on a windows 8 computer/laptop/tablet than on a windows rt table. That doesn't mean the surface is slow its faster than the iPad 4 but the apps in the iPad marketplace have been made to run on the iPad for example fruit ninja and jetpack joyride run smooth on my brothers iPad Mini while the two apps lag in some areas. The surface rt has a tegra quad core while the ipad has an A5 dual core

 

[Michael Alan Goff]

I also believe, not super sure, but VLC will be coming out with an app for RT. Don't qoute me on that though.

Yep, VLC will be coming eventually.

 

[TechAbstract]

I haven't test playing video from a file but Internet Explorer 10 on Surface RT can play any Adobe Flash video streaming from websites that I have tried.

 

[gilezzz]

I'm using an app called Mobile.HD (not free but cheap) from the Windows Store and my .mkv videos play just fine. I think there are other apps that do a good job, too. So far so good.

 

[Jen Carlson]

I'm using WALTR. I wanted to add AVI from Windows PC to iPad, i used video converter ultimate, tried Handbrake, but in my opinion the fastest and the most efficient way is WALTR app. It supports all the craziest formats, I mean MKV, AVI, FLAC, ALAC, and imports media in a sec. For those who need some info --- go to softorino web-site. Hope this will be useful)