What front end app is everyone for reliable 1080p .mkv playback?

E

EazyM3

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 27, 2005
Messages
239
I'm an ex-XBMC and current Popcorn Hour user running YAMJ and both of these have really nice user interfaces IMO. Unfortunately, XBMC on windows seems to run better on an Intel 3.0 chip (also does not support GPU acceleration) and my Popcorn Hour gives me sporadic playability with my current .mkv files.

Now, I am in the midst of building a an inexpensive HTPC with these main components:
  • Asus M3N78-VM
  • AMD 4850e
  • 2 GB Crucial Ballistix

What application should I use for smooth 1080p .mkv playback? What application has a nice looking front end and will run smoothly with my limiting hardware? BTW, I don't need a tuner or a dvr interface and all my media will be streamed via gigaethernet.
 
i play all my HD mkvs(720p and 1080p) with vista media center(and media browser) with no issues, i even got AVCHD .m2ts files to show up and play good. if im not in media center i use media player classic home cinema......havent tried any other front ends in a while.

i have similar hardware to yours.
 
Hate to correct but MKV is only a container. Applications couldn't care less what container it is as long as it has the appropriate splitter. What should be more of an issue is what video format the MKV contains.

With that said, as I'm sure your 1080p MKVs are really 1080p H.264 videos in MKV, give WMC a whirl as long as you have the proper filters.
 
What's changes are needed for VMC to see/play .m2ts files?
Click to expand...

Just make a file on your desktop with the following contents.

Code: 
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.m2ts]
"PerceivedType"="video"

Make sure the file has a .reg extension and then double click it and restart VMC. The file should now show up, to make it play, make sure you have the necessary decoders.
 
thx, will try out when I get off work shortly (hopefully..)
 
worked great, however the .m2ts file I tried (DarkKnight) was jerky and audio quickly became out of sync, I'm assuming because of no Hardware acceleration in VMC. Now I need to trouble shoot that.
 
I'd suggest Media Portal with Media Player Classic. I've got an 8200 IGP board in mine with a spare copy of CoreAVC so that's what I'm using (but with VMC).
 
Omegas said:
worked great, however the .m2ts file I tried (DarkKnight) was jerky and audio quickly became out of sync, I'm assuming because of no Hardware acceleration in VMC. Now I need to trouble shoot that.
Click to expand...

Assuming you're not using Windows 7:
To get hardware acceleration working, you'd have to get MPC-HC's standalone filters and force the MPC Video Decoder to decode VC-1 and H.264.

Or just use a multi-threaded decoder like that one that comes with ffdshow. Your CPU should be fast enough to decode at least 50% of all Blu-ray content.
 
My 4850e at stock actually had trouble playing some H2.64 encoded videos with FFDShow. The videos were in the 10 to 12 megabit range. It would play fine for about half an hour, then it would stutter.

My suggestion is to use MediaPortal. Getting it to use MPC's standalone filter is easy since there's no need to mess with filter merits; you can just set it on MediaPortal Configuration utility. And as far as I know, as long as you have Haali's you can play m2ts files in MP.
 
Just checked out some screenshots of Mediaportal and WMC, and honestly, I like the look of the XBMC interface much better. Anyone running XBMC with the new Aeon Stark skin on Ubuntu? I'm just hoping my HW will suffice...
 
EazyM3 said:
Just checked out some screenshots of Mediaportal and WMC, and honestly, I like the look of the XBMC interface much better. Anyone running XBMC with the new Aeon Stark skin on Ubuntu? I'm just hoping my HW will suffice...
Click to expand...


I just set my HTPC yesterday. Im using XBMC on windows. Ive seen lots of free media centers over the years and this one IMO is the best. Now i just have to get my emulators up and working in it. Plays at least 720p mkv i know for sure.
 
XBMC will handle 1080p h264 in mastroka if you have a CPU capable of it. No support for GPU acceleration in XBMC last I looked which dashed my cheap nettop xbmc hopes. :(

If you are having issues playing h264 with MPC and ffdshow you should grab the latest ffdshow-tryouts instead. I found the performance to be /much/ better.
 
EazyM3 said:
Just checked out some screenshots of Mediaportal and WMC, and honestly, I like the look of the XBMC interface much better. Anyone running XBMC with the new Aeon Stark skin on Ubuntu? I'm just hoping my HW will suffice...
Click to expand...

check out the StreamedMP skin, it's what I'm using with Mediaportal:

http://code.google.com/p/streamedmp/wiki/Gallery


I just picked up the same setup you've got only w/ 4gb ram, should be getting it sometime next week. I'm probably going to run it on windows 7 and stick with Mediaportal
 
_cashel said:
check out the StreamedMP skin, it's what I'm using with Mediaportal:

http://code.google.com/p/streamedmp/wiki/Gallery


I just picked up the same setup you've got only w/ 4gb ram, should be getting it sometime next week. I'm probably going to run it on windows 7 and stick with Mediaportal
Click to expand...

That does look pretty nice. I hate to ask such in uninformed question, but what's the learning curve with Mediaportal and changing skins? I'm semi-familiar with XBMC and was wondering if it was the same or easier.

BTW, I just found out that XBMC does support external players. From my understanding, you can run XBMC and then have an external player like MPC to play the 1080P h.264 movies. Thanks for everyone joining in on here... it's already starting off to be a fun hobby.
 
I just use VMC. Well now Windows 7 media center.

I use AC3 filter for audio, Haali as a splitter and the powerdvd AVC codec gives me hardware acceleration. Everything plays back in Media Center.

Oh, and mymovies for organizing and cataloging it all.

I have used other front ends but ran into issues with pretty much all of them. VMC so far is the only one that works flawlessly for me.
XBMC is my runner up. It was a pain to get my remote working but once that was good I started working on getting all my shows to show up and they wouldn't. Everything must be named a certain way or XBMC won't display it. Which is frustrating as I sometimes just throw a bunch of stuff in a folder. You can get to it but it's just a pain.
I also tend to delete stuff directly on my server when i'm done with it. In VMC that show would disappear. In XBMC that show would still be there and i'd have to delete it there too.
But XBMC sure does look pretty!
 
I have been running VMC with MediaBrowser without issues. I love XBMC + Aeon Stark and am trying it out again, but I just never got it running flawlessly before. There would be video issues or library issues. VMC has been effortless.
 
New MacMini + Plex handles all my 1080p MKV's. Even the monster Cloverfield rip that hits 65Mbps.
 
another vote here for VMC and mediabrowser.

any of the movies i have encoded play fine and most of the mkvs i dl work without issue. 1080p no problem and i have a nearly identicla setup, 5050e, and 4 GBs though onboard 8200 video from asus.

my only prob is that some of the random movies i DL wont play right away of have audio probs. usually its because what i have dled isnt a mkv, or mp4. and whatever they used i dont have codecs for. i am just afraid of installing a codec pack and screwing up what is working now.
 
I use Windows Media Player Classic HomeCinema and I have CoreAVC Professional Edition installed as well.

All BlueRay video's play flawlessly.
 
criccio said:
New MacMini + Plex handles all my 1080p MKV's. Even the monster Cloverfield rip that hits 65Mbps.
Click to expand...

Uhhh... Blu-ray doesn't even hit 65mbps... that encoder is retarded and wasting space.

"BD-Video movies have a maximum data transfer rate of 54 Mbit/s, a maximum AV bitrate of 48 Mbit/s (for both audio and video data), and a maximum video bitrate of 40 Mbit/s"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc
 
I'm not going to get into it again, but anyone who does BD encoding knows how x264 works. Become a member of doom9...

And its not wasting space... the end result is a 13GB file. Might also want to read up on VBR.
 
Archer75 said:
I just use VMC. Well now Windows 7 media center.

I use AC3 filter for audio, Haali as a splitter and the powerdvd AVC codec gives me hardware acceleration. Everything plays back in Media Center.

Oh, and mymovies for organizing and cataloging it all.

I have used other front ends but ran into issues with pretty much all of them. VMC so far is the only one that works flawlessly for me.
XBMC is my runner up. It was a pain to get my remote working but once that was good I started working on getting all my shows to show up and they wouldn't. Everything must be named a certain way or XBMC won't display it. Which is frustrating as I sometimes just throw a bunch of stuff in a folder. You can get to it but it's just a pain.
I also tend to delete stuff directly on my server when i'm done with it. In VMC that show would disappear. In XBMC that show would still be there and i'd have to delete it there too.
But XBMC sure does look pretty!
Click to expand...


do subtitles work in MCE?? I can't them to work in vista MCE, however, they do fine in windows XP MCE... I'm using AC3 filter for audio and CoreAVC for decoder.
 
mjz_5 said:
do subtitles work in MCE?? I can't them to work in vista MCE, however, they do fine in windows XP MCE... I'm using AC3 filter for audio and CoreAVC for decoder.
Click to expand...

subtitles are working for me. I think it depends on the movie. Some movies I have the subtitles work fine and some others don't. All depends on how they are encoded I guess.

Do you have a video card capable of hardware acceleration? The reason I ask is because coreavc is a software decoder and if your video chipset has that capability it may be worth switching to a different decoder.
 
criccio said:
I'm not going to get into it again, but anyone who does BD encoding knows how x264 works. Become a member of doom9...

And its not wasting space... the end result is a 13GB file. Might also want to read up on VBR.
Click to expand...

We know how x264 encoding works. He was pointing out that your encode has a higher peak bitrate than the Blu-Ray spec even allows. This can very easily happen when re-encoding, as the re-encode is attempting to replicate the original compression artifacts as well. Capping your allowable peak bitrate to the Blu-Ray spec will help ensure compatibility of your encode with other decoders. This is pretty important if you ever want your encodes to play on standalone hardware.

I'm sure you can find discussion of all of this on Doom9's forums.



From what I've read in this thread, it looks like I should give VMC / Windows 7 Media Center a shot.
 
AgentQ said:
We know how x264 encoding works. He was pointing out that your encode has a higher peak bitrate than the Blu-Ray spec even allows. This can very easily happen when re-encoding, as the re-encode is attempting to replicate the original compression artifacts as well. Capping your allowable peak bitrate to the Blu-Ray spec will help ensure compatibility of your encode with other decoders. This is pretty important if you ever want your encodes to play on standalone hardware.
Click to expand...

All good points, but I (and many, many others) don't encode for campatibility, we encode for quality and transparency of the source.

Sorry, I just get annoyed with people who don't understand that to get absolute transparency, you cannot just cap the bitrate, that is a compromise I (and again, many) are not willing to take.
 
using XBMC with MediaSteam skin, cccp codec pack and love it.
I don't know what issues others are running into with XBMC but i have a TON of media and it all works flawlessly.
 
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