Haali Media Splitter 1.13

Haali Media Splitter, still widely known by its earlier name Haali Matroska Splitter, was for years the default way to make MKV, MP4, OGM and MPEG transport stream files play on Windows.

It has no window, no icon in the tray and no decoders of its own.

Its whole job is to open the container and hand the video, audio and subtitle tracks to whatever decoders your system already has.

Frozen Since June 2013

Version 1.13.138, dated 23 June 2013, is the last build Mike Matsnev released. There has been no maintenance, no security review and no compatibility work since.

It still installs and still runs on Windows 10 and Windows 11. What it cannot do is keep up with what people actually play now.

HEVC, AV1, VP9, EAC-3, DTS-HD Master Audio, TrueHD and Dolby Atmos all arrived after that final build. PGS subtitles and HDR metadata sit outside its scope too.

Why an Old Haali Install Breaks Modern Playback

Haali does not sit quietly beside newer filters. It claims priority in the DirectShow filter graph aggressively, and it usually wins.

LAV Filters tells you to uninstall Haali or rename its AX file before installing, because otherwise Haali takes the splitter role and LAV Splitter never gets a look in.

The same clash applies to the dedicated Matroska Splitter and to MP4 Splitter, neither of which will share a filter graph with it.

What Haali Actually Does

The filter reads a Matroska, MP4, OGM or MPEG-TS file and separates it into streams the rest of the graph can use. The guide on codecs versus containers covers where that step sits in the chain.

• Multitrack, multisegment and concatenated files.
• Embedded TTF and OTF fonts, so ASS subtitles keep their styling.
• Audio and subtitle language priority, so the right track is chosen first.
• A configurable disk buffer, 8 MB by default.
• Per-track decoder priority, if you need to force one specific decoder.

The final 1.13 release added the TTF and OpenType MIME types for embedded fonts, TrueHD, MLP and ALAC audio, uncompressed twos audio in MP4, MP4 sample rates above 48 kHz, and EAC-3 in MP4. It also fixed a long-standing bug reading audio from MOV files where the esds atom sat inside the wave box.

Two old workarounds still circulate in fansub guides. Forcing Autoload VSFilter to Yes in Haali's Compatibility properties was the standard cure for missing subtitles, paired with a period build of DirectVobSub, and Vorbis errors in old OGG files were usually solved by updating CoreVorbis.

Both still work inside their original setups. Neither should be necessary on anything built this decade.

When Keeping Haali Still Makes Sense

There are three cases where leaving it installed is the sensible call.

• A vintage machine that already works. On a frozen Windows XP, Vista or 7 build configured around Haali, swapping the splitter out can break more than it fixes.
• Old AviSynth or VirtualDub scripts. Some encode pipelines call Haali's source filter or its GDSMux muxer by name, and rewriting them for a modern splitter is real work.
• Diagnostic comparison. Archival MKV files sometimes behave differently under Haali than under a current splitter, which tells you where a playback failure starts.

For that last case, keep Codec Tweak Tool to hand so you can switch individual filters off without uninstalling anything.

Every other use in 2026 is better served by a filter that is still being maintained.

What to Use Instead

Choose by how much you want installed, not by which name you recognise.

If you also want encoding tools and the extra filters, K-Lite Mega Codec Pack is the larger edition of the same pack.

On the player side, MPC-HC and MPC-BE both carry LAV Filters internally and need no external splitter at all.

The MPC-BE and MPC-HC comparison covers which of the two suits which workflow.

For subtitles on top of a modern splitter, xy-VSFilter and XySubFilter is the successor to the VSFilter builds Haali leaned on. FFDShow is still worth having if you want sharpening, deinterlacing or colour correction applied during playback.

If the job is editing the MKV rather than playing it - swapping audio tracks, pulling subtitles out, fixing chapters, remuxing - MKVToolNix replaced the muxing tools that once shipped alongside Haali.

Setting up HEVC specifically is covered step by step in the guide to playing HEVC and H.265 video with LAV Filters.

How to Remove Haali Cleanly

If you have inherited a machine with Haali registered and modern files will not play, work through it in this order.

1. Uninstall Haali Media Splitter through Add or Remove Programs.
2. Run Codec Tweak Tool and let it scan for broken filter registrations.
3. Install your replacement, then restart the player before testing anything.

If Haali was dropped in as a loose AX file rather than installed properly, unregister it by hand. The guide on installing and uninstalling DLL and AX files has the exact regsvr32 commands.

Quick questions

Older builds are on the download page as well, including 1.11.288 from September 2011 and 1.11.96 from March 2011, if your setup expects a particular one.

Otherwise the video codecs catalogue lists the maintained filters and decoders currently worth installing.

Download Haali Media Splitter 1.13 if you still need it, or tell us what you used it for if you have history with it.