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Blu ray Qs

L

lowres

n00b
Joined
Apr 6, 2010
Messages
37
I've recently built up an HTPC and have used Crim's very helpful guide in the stickies but started to hit a couple of problems. Been googling a lot to try and find a solution but not found one yet.

First question is: How do you get PowerDVD to play Blu-ray rips (both in folder and mkv format) from Media Browser. I have it in the external player config, it launches but then just sits there at the start screen waiting for me to navigate to the movie under the video tab?

Second question, what is the preffered software for mkv encoding? I tried DVDfab Blu-ray to MKV on the .264 setting, worked fine but puts a DVDfab logo in the top right corner. I want to be able to take the folder rips (50Gb) on the hard drive down to (12Gb). Problem i encountered is that MC/B plays the mkv rip at double speed, while PowerDVD plays everything normal, hence the first question. Think the double speed playback might be codec related, but not sure how to successfully remove or disable certain codecs - or even how to determine which ones MC is using.

I have:
ac3 filter
ffdshow
Haali Media Splitter x64
CCCP codec pack

I have tried TMT3 but not WinDVD yet. PowerDVD is 10 Ultra. I play DVDs through MB directly but the Blu-rays are becoming a headache, i thought Media Center could now play the bluray from a folder structure, but I get the "cannot play file blah blah", hence trying the mkv route, but thats double speed so i'm back to an external player.

Really appreciate any suggestions, thanks
 
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I have used PowerDVD 10 and found that it does not work well as an external player. It doesnt take the redirection sent by Media Browser, so it never plays whatever you select.

I use 2 things with media browser. TMT3 for iso/bdmv/ts/dvd play and Media Player Classic Home Cinema (MPC-HC) for everything else.

In Media Browser advanced settings, go to External players tab and for Blu-Ray/DVD/HDDVD/ISO go to the TMT3 folder and select uMCEDVDPlayer.exe

For MKV/MPG/everything else you will select MPC-HC executable and under optional parameter you will use "{0}" /fullscreen /close

Whats great about mpc-hc is that it doesnt need any codecs to work. It will even play the blu-ray m2ts file if selected. But if you have a full Blu-Ray copy and want to see your menus and what not, you will need to use P-DVD or TMT3.

For ripping blu-ray, blurip is easy and fastastic to use.

You will still need a program like AnyDVDHD to remove the copy protection from your media.
 
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Great, thanks for your help. I'll give it a try tonight. Sounds like i could just use TMT3 for all playback through media browser. I bought the wrong one...from the trial edition TMT3 was sharper for DVDs than WMC, but PowerDVD was probably even better. No good to me if it won't integrate nicely with WMC though.

Don't know if i'm seeing things but the difference between bluray and SD DVD seems even larger on the HTPC playback, compared to playing through a PS3.
 
PowerDVD and TMT3 both use sharpening for DVD's. PowerDVD 10's is definitely better between the two. You can also do this with MPC-HC.

TMT3 will also not work with mkv's.

The thing that isnt too obvious is that both PowerDVD and TMT3 use different programs for straight up Optical Disk playback and pc media playback.

For example in TMT3, the program that actually plays Blu-Ray/BDMV folder is called uMCEDVDPlayer.exe. However, the executable that is needed to play MKV's, Avi's, is uDigital Theatre.exe.

For both PowerDVD and TMT3, the programs that play media files dont seem to accept the redirection by Media Browser.

That is why i use MPC-HC for media files. I would probably use MPC-HC for blu-rays too if I didnt care about menus.

Also, since you have ffdshow installed. Media Center itself will play .mkv, .avi, etc files. So you dont need to set external for it if you dont want to.
 
Thanks for clearing that up. Very good info! Makes complete sense to use MPC-HC for everything except DVDs which i'll use TMT3 for - as you described.

On a side note, as you say WMC plays the mkv file, however for me its played back at double speed, you mentioned ffdshow is the codec that allows this - could there be a setting in there that would be causing the accelerated playback? As i mentioned earlier this doesn't happen with P-DVD.

Just thinking for the sake of ultimate convenience (at the cost of DVD playback quality) I should be able to play the DVDs and MKVs directly through WMC. Be nice if WMC had the sharpening too. But as you say if I can't get that working, the alternative (MPC-HC and TMT3) is better quality anyway.
 
PowerDVD doesn't support playback of Blue ray movies from an HDD, they removed it when PDVD 8 came out which is why it doesn't play the video. Yet another reason to go with TMT instead (which is what I suggested). If you're ripping just the movie then using MPC is the best option.
 
Thanks, got TMT3 playing DVDs through MB, however i still have problems with the mkv through either MPC or straight from Media Browser. Plays at 2x rate. Stupid P-DVD plays it perfectly. I think one of the codecs is configured wrong. How do i remove them and start over without having to do a fresh install?
 
This double speed thing is really strange.

I would uninstall every codec you have on the machine and just try playing it from MPC-HC directly.
 
Well it turns out - after i downloaded a sample mkv that everything was fine. I must have got a bad encoding with the 2 i was trying. How they played fine in PDVD i'm not sure... So i tried blurip and that worked very well (would recommend this actually). Everything now plays very well using MPC and TMT3.

Thank you for your help, very much appreciated.
 
Here is the simple fix, Get VIRTUAL CLONE to mount Isos, And powerdvd will play them. But i suggest downloaded My Movies and it will incorparte all your Iso into Meadia Center it is fantastic, works flawlessly and its free.
 
Marcdaddy said:
Here is the simple fix, Get VIRTUAL CLONE to mount Isos, And powerdvd will play them. But i suggest downloaded My Movies and it will incorparte all your Iso into Meadia Center it is fantastic, works flawlessly and its free.
Click to expand...

This is my setup to play dvd and blu-rays that i have backup to my server.

one this to note, is that i leave all my iso uncompressed. which takes up large chunk of my server, but i rather do that then spend 3+ hours encoding and shrinking down the video.
 
You can use DVDFAB and if your lucky enough you can strip all the extras out of it and get Isos under 25 Gig leaving just the main audio track you want and the movie. I dont mind ripping the full Isos, 2 terabyte drives are so cheap i really dont care hehe.
 
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