How to get MKV files to play on Chromebook without issues

How to get MKV files to play on Chromebook without issues

Fixing the no sound problem on a Chromebook

Chromebooks have been around for a while now, and they keep growing in popularity all the time. As more and more people become Chromebook users, more questions surface all the time with some of the Chromebook peculiarities that leave us confounded. Right now, one of those problems has to do with video playing without sound. If that is you, then read on my friend, I have the answer you are looking for.

Chrome states that they support all of the major video types, which are also called containers. The problem some people are having is that their Chromebooks (regardless of the manufacturer) does not support certain audio codecs as they’re proprietary and Chrome/Google would have to pay license fees to the owners. In general, all MKV containers are supported, but if the audio within the container is encoded in a proprietary codec, it won’t play. This applies to other video formats as well, what people did not realize is that some of the audio is encoded in proprietary codecs, and some of these simply will not play on your Chromebook.

The solution is to convert your video into another format/container and that fixes the problem. There are numerous apps out there, just for this purpose. The unfortunate reality here is many, and most of these app's require registration and then they also charge some subscription type of fee.

It really depends on how much video you use on your Chromebook and if converting files is really worth all of the trouble.

What I've found is, most video works fine without any sound problems on Chromebook. Only rarely have I found a file that plays with no sound.

If you want an easy, and FREE way to fix your video without sound problem, your best option is to use the web app clipchamp.

With clipchamp you can convert, and fix your video. The downside of this, is that the process is a little bit slow, and you can only convert 5 videos for free per month. For myself, that's more than good enough, and I can easily have a file converting on one tab while doing other things in other tabs.

One last tip, if you are going to use this clipchamp web app, you should also be aware that if your machine goes to sleep or your screen saver pops up, your video conversion will probably fail or just not work. This is also easy enough to fix, just add the extension to your Chrome browser called The Great Suspender and select never suspend this site from the drop down menu. This will allow you to keep a video actively converting in a tab that you can ignore.

Rock On!

Extra: I've read elsewhere that you can fix your video by uploading your video to Google Drive, hoping that it will work by playing it from there. I tried that, and it DID NOT work. Don't waste your time.

The Great Suspender

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-suspender/klbibkeccnjlkjkiokjodocebajanakg

clipchamp

https://clipchamp.com/dashboard

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