I am trying to watch some videos which have a .mkv file extension.

I have done a lot of searching about this already today and can't seem to find out what I'm doing wrong.

I am currently trying to open it in VLC. Here is the result I get:

Unrecognized format for '/home/jason/download/rtorrent/movie.mkv'

I don't really know what to do from here.

Thanks,

Jason

mplayer and kaffeine can play *.mkv (well, if there is a decoder available for video stream inside mkv).
Don't know about VLC, maybe mkv support should have been enabled during compilation or something.

Or maybe your file is broken/corrupt, or its extension is incorrect.

I may be wrong but I would rule out the possibility of incorrect extensions. Linux appears to be capable of determining video file types dynamically. I have actually found that it will play things even without an extension.

mkv should be supported by gstreamer. Make sure that you have all the gstreamer plug-ins installed.

I'm pretty sure I remember using VLC to play MKV files before. And you're right, Linux (erm... linux programs) usually doesn't care about file extensions, instead it looks at the file headers within the file itself. Usually file extensions are only used to identify the correct program(s) to use for a file by the window manager. It's pretty safe to say VLC can play almost anything, followed by gstreamer (after installing tremendous amounts of plugins depending on your distro).

I see that you downloaded the file via a torrent, is it possible that the file itself is corrupt? I know there is a free mkv file converter for micro$uck if you need to convert it to see, not sure if there's one for linux... google should tell all.

I think that file was downloaded by bittorrent (see movie path) and is corrupt, or download wasn't complete. I think it is most realistic scenario.

I have played mkv files in VLC on both linux (gentoo) and OSX. It has more to do with the codecs you have for it. What distribution are are you using? Some defaults might not include codecs that are covered by intellectual property rights.

I am using 2.6.23-grml.

A friend of mine said he has watched .mkv on mplayer and suggested I just install some new codecs. So far this hasn't worked, but I may have done it wrong.