I got an MKV file that plays fine on VLC but not with K-Lite with MPC-HC, it's stuttering and skipping with no sound on MPC.

Hello

I came across a file which is a trailer for the new released Doom Eternal DLC, the file plays fine on VLC but not with MPC-HC or WMP with K-Lite codecs, I get stuttering and skipping with no sound. I tried on several PCs and can confirm the issue only happening with K-Lite codecs. My PC specs can't be the issue as I have an i9 with 1080Ti and 32GB of ram.

Here's the file to download and test:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kO7ynnZS8AvjlleLRhTCIr2BLLwKIXUH/view?usp=sharing

Am I missing a codec or what? Please try to play the file on MPC. I only have the K-Lite Mega Codecs and the MPC-HC that came with them installed. I only installed VLC to test. Thanks in advance.

My K-Lite Mega version is 15.7.5
Win 10 64 v.2004

I can confirm the audio decoding problem.

I don't have a solution for you yet at this moment. I will investigate the problem.

Thanks a lot Take your time.

I recommend to also report this problem to the creator of Internet Download Manager. Because I think they are creating a "broken" file. The audio differs from the original AAC audio track from this Youtube video. VLC might be using a workaround for that bug to play it properly.

Tip: if you put youtube-dl.exe in same folder as MPC-HC, then you can open Youtube links directly in MPC-HC.

I see. It's true, that file came from youtube and downloaded with IDM.
The video itself is also skipping for me (sometimes freezes for ~10 seconds and then continues with distorted audio for a split second, not only audio is missing/skipping. I am using the default MPC Video Renderer. I left everything on default while installing k-lite.

But yah the issue started only recently, it must've been an IDM update or something that triggered it. I will try to contact IDM devs.

and wow I didn't know that youtube-dl.exe thing. It's really nice!
Thanks again.

Edit: I tried to download another video with IDM from youtube, looks like any MKV file downloaded from youtube with IDM suffers from the same issue.

To be more specific about what they do wrong. They seem to be converting the downloaded audio to AAC with "LTP" profile. That is a non-standard form of AAC, which is the reason why some programs have issue with decoding. And I suspect they might also mux it wrong in MKV.

They should either fix their encoding parameters to use normal AAC, or they should simply download the available AAC stream from Youtube instead of the Opus audio stream.

As an alternative I can recommend "Youtube Audio and Video Downloader" extension for Firefox browser (plus FFmpeg plugin it needs).

IDM fixed the issue with their new update. Thanks admin for your help and detailed explanation.