Playing .mkv files

Have you tried MPlayer?

http://mplayerosx.sourceforge.net/

A quick google search found this:

Mkv file viewer software by John Lau and others
Puma Video Converter a powerful, universal AVI MPEG WMV MOV 3GP RM DVD (S)VCD OGM MKV H.264/MPEG-4 AVC converter. Video converter can convert video file ...

www.freedownloadscenter.com/Best/mkv-file-viewer.html - 39k

Mkv files mac software by Paqtool and others
VideoZip is designed to meet all your needs of convert file between AVI, MPEG, DivX,Xvid, RealVideo,Rm, Mov,Mkv, QT,VCD, SVCD, DVD, WMV, ASF formats. ...

www.freedownloadscenter.com/Best/mkv-files-mac.html - 44k -


Network police here block that site, so I can make no guarantees...

Well, that's nice, but I was hoping for something...
free.

Thats why I had the disclaimer the internet police blocked the site 🙂

Here's another:

mac mkv player Download free mac mkv player free
Download free mac mkv player software mac mkv player free.
www.freetodownload.com/free-mac-mkv-player.html - 27k

try here to see if there is a Mac codec/player:

Matroska
Almost all you need to play .mkv (matroska video) and .mka (matroska audio) files under DirectShow players, such as Windows Mediaplayer, MPC, Zoomplayer and ...
www.matroska.org/downloads/windows.html - 23k - Jul 12, 2006

Matroska Pack Download
... (.mkv and .mka), but it will also allow playback of most modern video formats on any DirectShow player, even with WMP 6.4/7/8/9 (Windows Mediaplayer). ...
packs.matroska.org/ - 9k -

You need to turn on frame dropping in the preferences if the video is lagging.

Now that I'm at home and can actualy look at those sites...

One of the directories is source code, the other historical builds.

It appears for Mac playback, they are referring you back to mplayer or VLC.

Poking around in the Forums on that site, I also ran across this:

All the files ... are encoded with x264 in a mkv container. For episodes 1-8 (old files), I went through a lot of frustration trying to get them to play in VLC, then gave up when I discovered that MPlayer (ver 1.0pre8) can handle it. Now, MPlayer still plays episodes 9-12, but I'm finding that the video lags way behind the audio on all the files.

[emphasis is mine]

someone replied:

Well if the video is lagging, it is likely the common problem with playing H.264 content. It requires a huge amount of CPU power, and if the resolution and bitrate are large enough you might just not be able to play it.