Can a PS3 play x264 MKV from USB stick?

[divine]

Going to be left to occupy myself elsewhere for a day soon, wondering if it's worth sticking a couple of HD films on a USB drive to play through the PS3 that's there.

[Streeteh]

No but use a free application called MKV2VOB to remux the file to a format the PS3 will play and then it'll work. It usually takes less than 10 mins for a film and won't touch the image quality at all.

In some rare cases (when the codecs used aren't supported by the PS3) the file will need to be completely reencoded which will take more like 30 mins and will marginally reduce the image quality. The issue is the PS3 doesn't support MKV as a container but does support nearly all of the codecs used within MKVs, so it simply remuxes the file as a VOB/MP4 so it will play.


Oh and, the stick needs to be formatted as FAT32 iirc. If the video file is too big for the 4gb per file limit FAT32 imposes MKV2VOB has an option to split the file down into chunks so the whole film will fit on the stick.

[divine]

FAIL my sticks are all NTFS :p

Thanks for that though, i'll have to remux a couple tomorrow!

[SidewinderINC]

this is the reason I put Fusion on my mac and installed windows - to use MKV2VOB as it's a great app for this.

Not found a suitable one for OSX.

As streeteh says, the quality is the same and it's a very quick process.

[divine]

Just noticed the file I wanted to use is 6.5GB, so if I have to use FAT32 then this is probably a no go :p

[Briggykins]

You can format bigger FAT32 volumes using fat32format (http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htm). We use it quite often in work and it works a treat.

[divine]

I can format in FAT32 fine, it just has the 4GB per file limit doesn't it? CBA splitting the film up into seperate volumes :p

[Briggykins]

Good point! Forgot about that.

[Streeteh]

I can format in FAT32 fine, it just has the 4GB per file limit doesn't it? CBA splitting the film up into seperate volumes :p

As i say MKV2VOB has an option to break it into 4gb chunks automatically while remuxing, takes 2 seconds to switch between files when watching a film. It's not ideal but it's better than nothing.

Alternatively if they have some form of media streaming set up at their house you can just stream the film over wireless and/or transfer it directly to the PS3s hard drive. The internal hard drive in the PS3 doesn't have the 4gb file size limit.

[divine]

So you did ¬_¬

I've no idea how anything is set up, hence wanting to just be able to plug in a stick and watch some films :p

[NokkonWud]

Just noticed the file I wanted to use is 6.5GB, so if I have to use FAT32 then this is probably a no go :p

MKV2VOB will split to FAT32. Not a problem.