Cannot Play 2K/4K MKV Videos on Surface Book 2/1?
Microsoft is rumored to be releasing the Surface Book 2 in 2016 or 2017, which is likely to sport a 13.5-inch screen with 4K resolution support and its performance is said to be improved with better battery life and graphics support. However, it has been complained for incapability of playing 2K/4K MKV videos on Surface Book (2).
What programs would you guys recommend to play 4k and 2k mkv files on Surface Book? VLC is limping along with a ton of visual artifacts.
– I hope there are 3rd party apps or driver updates for the Surface Book 2/1 to play more than just mp4 and avi format. Can’t believe it won’t play MKV out of the box.
– When I click play now, the program indicates ‘now playing’. However, there is no sound or video playback. Does anyone know what this conflict is with Windows 10 Surface Book and my mkv videos?
– Any Apps for Surface Book 2/1 that can play .mkv files smoothly?
– What is the best MKV file Media Player for Surface Book (2) in the Windows store?
Reason Why MKV can’t be played on Surface Book 2/1
MPEG-4, H.264, H.263, MEPG-2, VC-1, WMV 9 can be supported by Surface Book (2), but MKV, the Matroska Multimedia Container is a media format that can hold a number of video, audio and subtitle tracks in one single file, and serves as a popular format for storing movies or TV shows. It is not included in the Surface Book 2/1 supported video formats list, this is why MKV is not supported by Surface Book 2/1. Living up to the promise to provide native support of MKV codec in Windows 10, the inability to play MKV files without MKV codec on Surface Book 2/1 seems to remain there unchanged.
Which is the best way to play MKV files on Surface Book 2/1? We’ll see here.
Surface Book 2/1 can open MKV when getting the help from additional programs, like MKV player for Surface Book and MKV to Surface Book converter. Here, we will show you the best program to enable MKV playback on Surface Book 2/1, to help you play MKV files on Surface Book (2) tablets, including MKV files backed up from Blu-ray, downloaded online, received from others, etc.
Download Surface Book 2/1 MKV Player? No Hurry
When we have some MKV files for playing on Surface, going to Google Play and downloading an Surface Book MKV player seems to be the most direct way the majority could think of.
Option 1: PressPlay Video
Editor rating: 8.4| User rating: 7.5| Supported OS: Windows 8.1, Windows 10
Overviews: PressPlay Video is a free media player for Windows 8 providing the best experience for playing your local MKV and FLV files. It is a full featured Windows 8 MKV player that supports advanced touch, mouse and keyboard controls. Integrated with an explorer, it also displays the folders in your libraries, portable devices, HomeGroup and media servers.
Pros: Easy to use; play MKV/FLV videos side-by-side; remember playing position; advanced touch, mouse and keyboard controls.
Cons: Often start with an error message.
Option 2: DAPlayer
Editor rating: 8.5| User rating: 7.7| Supported OS: Windows 8/8.1/10/7, Mac OS
Overviews: DAPlayer is a sleek and powerful MKV player that comes with 400+ video and audio codecs, so that you can play almost any video on Windows 8/8.1 64 bit or 32 bit. Thanks to the support for high definition video, you are allowed to watch full HD 1080p MKV, AVCHD, H264 videos with this free MKV player for Windows 8. Besides, DAPlayer provides a wide selection of configuration options.
Pros: Play lots of video audio formats; support more than 400 built-in codecs; Complete setting menu.
Cons: The default skin is too dark to browse.
And unfortunately, there are only few apps that bolster MKV playback on Windows Store, excluding those paid ones. So we particularly compiled the best free MKV players for Windows 8, 8.1 64/32 bit.
There is no denying that it is a fix, but you need to figure out a few things before any further.
1. Installing an extra player on storage-limited Surface will take up precious memory footprint and may make your device run slower. Do you really need to use a special video player just to play a few MKV files on Surface Book 2/1?
2. Most players are not compatible with all video audio codecs. Even if a player is advertised to support for MKV file format, it may be unable to play all MKV files flawlessly. This is also why some people submitted posts online saying “Surface Book player play MKV with DTS without sound”, “Surface player play MKV with sound only, but in a black screen” or other similar questions.
Play MKV on Surface Book 2/1 Using MKV Converter
Apart from downloading MKV player on Surface Book, a video converter that can convert MKV files and others to Surface Book will be also a good solution. Besides MKV, you are likely to meet other formats incompatible with your Surface Book (2) and your player.
If you try to use HandBrake to free convert MKV to Surface Book (2), you will find there is no specific profile for Surface, since HandBrake is no more than a video transcoder freeware for Apple (and has few Android profiles).
To play 2K/4K video (.mkv) on Surface Book (2) tablet, there is another video tool that can do it for you. As one of the alternatives of Handbrake, Pavtube Video Converter Ultimate converts MKV to Surface Book 2/1 supported MPEG4, AVI or WMV video file in low, mid and high video resolutions, and it compress 2K/4K movie size to fit for Surface Hub. Only several mouse clicks are required: load downloaded 2K/4K movies -> select output profile for Surface Book -> hit “Start conversion” to begin compressing/converting -> once finished, simply transfer the compressed/converted movies to Surface Book.
Meanwhile, this tool also enables you to convert MKV to all popular mobile devices directly, like Surface Book 2/1, Surface RT, Surface Pro, Samsung Galaxy Note 5/S7, iPhone SE/6S/6S Plus, Kindle Fire, Google Nexus, etc. In addition to help play MKV on Surface Book 2/1, it can also help play other incompatible videos like AVI, FLV, MOV on Surface Book 2/1 with no limits via converting.
Free Download and Install Pavtube Video Converter Ultimate:
Other Download:
– Pavtube old official address: http://www.pavtube.cn/blu-ray-video-converter-ultimate/
– Cnet Download: http://download.cnet.com/Pavtube-Video-Converter-Ultimate/3000-2194_4-75938564.html
How to Convert 2K/4K MKV for Playing on Surface Book 2/1
Firstly, you should download and install a MKV to Surface Book converter on your computer. Here, let’s take Pavtube Video Converter Ultimate as an example. It is fully compatible with Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7, etc. And the Mac version can work well on Mac OS X 10.6 and higher including OS X 10.10 Yosemite and 10.11 El Capitan. And then follow the steps below to convert 2K/4K MKV for watching on Surface Book 2/1.
1. Add 2K/4K MKV files
Install and run MKV to Surface Book Converter. To import MKV files that you want to convert, you can click “File” > “Add Video/audio” or “Add from folder” button or directly drag and drop them into the main display window of this program. Batch conversion is supported so you can add many files at a time to save the conversion time.
Tips:
a. You can join several MKV files for Surface Book 2/1 via checking the “Merge into one file” box.
b. If you have a large MKV files and wanna split the video to several small parts, tap the “Split selected task” icon on the main interface to make it.
2. Choose output video format for Surface Book 2/1
Generally speaking, H.264, MPEG-4, AVI, WMV are supported by Surface Book 2/1. Also, this MKV converter provides optimized formats for Microsoft branded Surface devices; choose “Microsoft Surface Windows RT/Pro H.264 Video (*.mp4)” from “Surface” catalogue.
Tip 1: Profile Settings (Optional)
Click “Settings” to change the video resolution, bit rate, etc. for full screen playback smoothly or select the corresponding device as the output format. Please remember the file size is based more on bitrate than resolution which means bitrate higher results in bigger file size, and lower visible quality loss. You can compress/downscale 2K/4K MKV files to lower resolution in this way.
Tip 2: Video Editing (Optional)
Click “Edit selected task” to trim, crop, add special effects/watermark/subtitles to your videos. Just customize the videos as you like. If you want to keep the original video effects, just skip to the next step.
a. Trim: You can trim your 2K/4K MKV files to capture and convert your favorite video clips for playing on Microsoft Surface Book 2/1.
b. Crop: You can crop 2K/4K MKV area to remove the black video sides for playing on Microsoft Surface Book 2/1 in full screen.
c. Effect: You can adjust 2K/4K MKV effects by setting video contrast, brightness and saturation.
d. Watermark/Subtitle: Add image/video watermark or insert .srt, .ass, .ssa subtitle to 2K/4K MKV
3. Start converting MKV to Surface Book 2/1
When all the settings are OK, tap “Start conversion” button to start the MKV to Surface Book (2) conversion. After the conversion, you can click “Open” to get the result videos. Then you can easily transfer the converted mkv files to your Surface Book 2/1 for playback without any limit.
Related Software:
BDMagic for Windwos/Mac – The best Blu-ray solution to rip and backup any commercial and region-locked Blu-ray to Surface Book (2).
DVDAid for Windows/Mac – Capacity of ripping copy-protected DVD to Surface Book (2) with suitable format.
ByteCopy for Windows/Mac – It can rip Blu-ray/DVD to lossless MKV keeping all chapter markers for playback on Surface Book (2).
ChewTune– Remove DRM from Rental & Purchased iTunes movies, Digital Copy, Amazon videos, etc and easy get the DRM-Free for Surface Book (2) playback.
Related Articles:
- Microsoft Surface Book vs. MacBook Pro
- Play Blu-ray movies on Surface Book 2/1
- Top 3 Free MKV Players to Play HD MKV Movies
- Playing DVDs Discs on Microsoft Surface Book
- Play iTunes DRM Videos Movies on Surface Pro 4
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