MKV video files doesn't play on phone and tablet

[Nicola Jelmorini]

On the box of the Ubuntu BQ M10 tablet it is printed that the media player will play, among others, the MKV (Matroska) video files.
I have tried with some different videos, but an error message is always shown:
"Error playing the video"
"Video format not supported".

[Carlos Eklund (carloseklund)]

I have the same problem with my FHD.
Best regards, Carlos

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Leonardo Donelli (learts92)]

Same problem, on freiza (M10) with OTA 11.

[Doug McMahon (mc3man)]

Maybe it only plays open source codecs like ogg/vorbis. If so then the app is close to useless.

[Nicola Jelmorini (jelmorini)]

@Doug McMahon
I don't think so because it can play for instance mp4 or avi files.
Moreover MKV is a very popular container format, and not a video codec.
I'm not an expert, but the Ubuntu Touch platform should use the same infrastructure as the desktop, so it should use the Gstreamer multimedia framework that has no problem with any kind of codecs or containers.

[Nicola Jelmorini (jelmorini)]

Today, after the OTA-13 update, I have tried again with a couple of MKV video files.
One of them plays good, the other not. The difference is that the file that doesn't plays has an AC3 audio track, the other not.
So, I believe that actually the problem is the audio format, and not the video. I think that currently Ubuntu Touch has a problem with the AC3 audio format.