Playing MKV Files on Gear VR No Sound - The Solution

Gear VR, also called for Samsung Gear VR, is a mobile virtual reality device developed by Samsung Electronics in collaboration with Oculus VR. Combined with a compatible Samsung device (Galaxy Note 5 or Galaxy S6/S6 Edge), users are allowed to jump into the world of virtual reality gaming and entertainment. At present, more and more customers choose to buy it for viewing 3D movies with 3D terrific effect at home. However, a series of technical problems are coming to us likewise. Among them playing MKV video files on Gear VR without sound would be the most typical one. If you are unfortunate to stuck in the same trouble, you won't miss to read on this article!

In essence, MKV files in 2D or 3D SBS(Side-by-Side) work on Gear VR, but the audio has to be encoded in AAC or MP3 for stereo. On the contrary, AC3 audio and DTS Dolby don't seem to work due to high licensing costs. In order to fix such annoying issue, there are two options you can choose: convert your video files with AC3 audio to a Gear VR compatible video/audio or root your phone and add codecs for AC3.

Solution 1: Convert MKV with AC3 to Gear VR supported format

By this way, a video converter is absolutely needed. Here I'm going to take Brorsoft Video Converter as an example to fast walk you through the process of converting. Overall, the program is a professional HD Video Converter, which comparatively has better output quality, in particular HD videos and intuitive interface. With it, you can convert MKV format to 3D SBS MKV with AAC or MP3 audio codec just with one-click. Also there are other 3D formats for you to choose, such as MP4 which is supported by Gear VR, too. If you are Mac users, please turn to Video Converter for Mac.

Step 1. Load video files

Run the program and load your source video files MKV into it.

Step 2. Decide output format

Tap on "Format" bar and find "3D Video", there are a lot of format options for you. "MP4 Side-by-Side 3D Video (*.mp4)" is recommended for Samsung Gear VR. Of course, "MKV Side-by-Side 3D video", "MP4 Side-by-Side 3D video" are also supported.

Step 3. Specify video/audio parameters

Click Settings button to adjust video/audio parameters like video resolution, bitrate, audio codec, audio channel. According to my experience, anything over 720p does nothing but turn battery energy into heat, due to the screen resolution.

Step 4. Start encoding MKV to Gear VR

Click Convert button to start converting MKV to Samsung Gear VR friendly video. After the conversion, you can get the resulted videos by clicking the Open button.

Solution 2. Root your phone and add codecs for AC3

Following is the guide:
1. Put the file media_codecs.xml in the folder system/etc
2. Put the files libsac3d.so & libsomxac3d.so in the folder system/lib
3. Set permissions to all 3 files: 0644 (owner: root/root)
4. Reboot

Above are two solutions for Gear VR playing MKV movie with AC3 audio. You can try both of them to enable MKV with AC3 playable in Gear VR.

P.S. Besides viewing MKV video on Gear VR, if you also wanna put other media files like MXF, VOB, 3D YouTube videos as well as DVD, Blu-ray movies to Gear VR for stunning playback, you can turn to Blu-ray Video Converter Ultimate to get help, which is an all-in-one video app that helps you to convert AVI, WMV, MOV, TiVo, VOB, MPG as well as Blu-ray, DVD to Gear VR friendly video. For those who are running on Mac OS X(Sierra, El Capitan included), you can get iMedia Converter for Mac to achieve your goal.