Topic: Does MC16 support BluRay playback out of the box? (Read 9948 times)

Dare978Devil · « **on:** September 28, 2011, 08:13:31 am »

I have MC15. I have no other means to play back BR on my computer (no PowerDVD, or anything else). I have a BR burner which reads any BR disc as a data disc. It did not come with any software (was OEM), I use ImgBrn which works perfectly . Without installing any codec packs or anything of that nature, if I have a brand new installation of Win7 64-bit, will upgrading to MC16 allow me to play back BR movies?

Thanks,
DD.

Sandy B Ridge · « **Reply #1 on:** September 28, 2011, 08:46:58 am »

Hi

It depends what you mean by out of the box.

It will play the main feature of the bluray rip without any other 'player' software like TMT or PDVD, however it does need 'something' to decrypt the discs to make it readable. See this thread for further info:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=64446.0

Menu or Java support isn't there yet, although it must only be a matter of time before opensource BD navigator filters appear. More simple stream or mpls playlist selection will come sooner.

SBR

Dare978Devil · « **Reply #2 on:** September 28, 2011, 10:26:09 am »

Thanks Sandy B Ridge (that's funny),

What I meant by "out of the box" is I already have a set top bluray player upstairs (PS3) hooked up to my plasma TV. I have a BR burner in the basement hooked up to a 27-inch LCD. I had hoped that if one of my kids was watching a BR upstairs, I could just walk to the basement and drop in a BR to watch it. However, I see that is not the case. It seems I will have to blow 90 bones on AnyDVD HD first in order to be able to do that (as well as the upgrade from MC15 to MC16), and even then that will be won't be the same experience as upstairs (no menus or advanced BR features). Thanks for the clarification.

DD.

Matt · « **Reply #3 on:** September 28, 2011, 10:29:46 am »

DVDFab Passkey is a bit cheaper and also works well as a Blu-ray reader.

CountryBumkin · « **Reply #4 on:** September 28, 2011, 11:35:47 am »

Quote from: Dare978Devil on September 28, 2011, 10:26:09 am

Thanks Sandy B Ridge (that's funny),

What I meant by "out of the box" is I already have a set top bluray player upstairs (PS3) hooked up to my plasma TV. I have a BR burner in the basement hooked up to a 27-inch LCD. I had hoped that if one of my kids was watching a BR upstairs, I could just walk to the basement and drop in a BR to watch it. However, I see that is not the case. It seems I will have to blow 90 bones on AnyDVD HD first in order to be able to do that (as well as the upgrade from MC15 to MC16), and even then that will be won't be the same experience as upstairs (no menus or advanced BR features). Thanks for the clarification.

DD.

If you're just going to pop in a BD from time to time, it is probably not worth it to upgrade to MC16 and purchase AnyDVD HD. But if you have hundreds of DVDs and BDs and you want to store them on your computer and see a nice listing of those movies to choose from, and playback (just) the movie with a single button click of you remote, then this program (with AnyDVD or DVDfab) is the way to go.

Sandy B Ridge · « **Reply #5 on:** September 28, 2011, 12:27:52 pm »

There are reportedly other ways of doing it with makemkv (currently still free I believe) but this won't be a 'put the disc in and press play' solution. I think you'll need to rip the movie to mkv file with it, so again you lose the menus and extras, but at least it's free. I haven't pursued this option as I stumped up for anydvdhd to 'backup' my discs so can't advise any further.

SBR

Sandy B Ridge · « **Reply #6 on:** September 28, 2011, 12:41:05 pm »

Quote from: Dare978Devil on September 28, 2011, 10:26:09 am

Thanks Sandy B Ridge (that's funny),

Thanks,

My girlfriend is called Ivy and when we get married in Q2 next year she will be Ivy B Ridge - my better half!

SBR

pjchappy · « **Reply #7 on:** September 30, 2011, 01:42:47 pm »

I am unable to play a Blu-Ray on MC16 (my first attempt at playing a Blu-Ray on my PC). I get error hr=0x80004005.

Here are some of the things I have tried:

- I had an older (expired) trial version of ANYDVD HD that I uninstalled (and reset computer)
- I installed a trial version of DVDFab PassKey for Blu-Ray (and reset computer)
- Audio goes to my Peachtree Nova; Video to HDTV --> tried sending both audio and video to HDTV, to see if it was audio related
- Tried various audio settings and output modes (forget all I tried)
- Tried Red October Standard and HQ

Video card: Radeon 5800 series; Windows 7 Pro (SP1) 64-bit; CPU: AMD 1055T; RAM: 8.0 GB; MC build 16.0.179

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Paul

fitbrit · « **Reply #8 on:** September 30, 2011, 02:14:29 pm »

Quote from: pjchappy on September 30, 2011, 01:42:47 pm

I am unable to play a Blu-Ray on MC16 (my first attempt at playing a Blu-Ray on my PC). I get error hr=0x80004005.

Here are some of the things I have tried:

- I had an older (expired) trial version of ANYDVD HD that I uninstalled (and reset computer)
- I installed a trial version of DVDFab PassKey for Blu-Ray (and reset computer)
- Audio goes to my Peachtree Nova; Video to HDTV --> tried sending both audio and video to HDTV, to see if it was audio related
- Tried various audio settings and output modes (forget all I tried)
- Tried Red October Standard and HQ

Video card: Radeon 5800 series; Windows 7 Pro (SP1) 64-bit; CPU: AMD 1055T; RAM: 8.0 GB; MC build 16.0.179

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Paul

If your PC supports it, set your audio output mode to wasapi and try again.

pjchappy · « **Reply #9 on:** September 30, 2011, 02:15:57 pm »

Have tried WASAPI (and use this mode to play music), along with all other output modes.

I have also ran MC as Administrator.

Paul

jmone · « **Reply #10 on:** September 30, 2011, 04:22:29 pm »

First thing to check is if the decryption is working. In Windows Explorer, navigate to the Stream Folder on the Blu-ray Disc and see if you can play the biggest M2TS file.

pjchappy · « **Reply #11 on:** September 30, 2011, 09:34:16 pm »

I am not able to play it. . .

Paul

fitbrit · « **Reply #12 on:** September 30, 2011, 10:49:43 pm »

Quote from: pjchappy on September 30, 2011, 02:15:57 pm

Have tried WASAPI (and use this mode to play music), along with all other output modes.

I have also ran MC as Administrator.

Paul

Sorry, I just want to make sure... you've chosen wasapi for video playback as well as audio, right?

jmone · « **Reply #13 on:** October 01, 2011, 12:27:20 am »

Paul - in that case I don't think you decryption is working but I use AnyDVD HD so I'm at a loss to help with DVDFab but another user may....

Z0001 · « **Reply #14 on:** October 01, 2011, 04:45:06 am »

Interesting thread. I've been reading about some who can make Blu ray work and some who have trouble with Blu ray in MC16. I'm having trouble. I have AnyDVD HD and all my movies are ripped by it to .iso files. TMT5 plays them fine to my flat panel. However with MC16 I get stuttering. The image looks clear, but just some frame jumps. I have an i7 870 CPU, 4GB RAM, W7 Home Premium x64 and a Radeon HD 6870 gpu, so the system is more than capable.

In the meantime while I get MC16 to play with Blu ray (which I am sure it will, everything else about MC is simply amazing) want to use MC16 as my library, launching TMT5 from Theatre View or another view. I saw this thread:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=55171.0

And followed the protocol for using third party players from MC Theatre View, but its not quite there as when i click on a movie in Theatre View and press Play, MC does not close and the movie starts playing in MC rather than the script working as i expected. I don't need the AutoHotkey script to change resolution or refresh rate, as AnyDVD HD does that, i simply need it to mount a movie .iso on VIrtual Clone Drive, activate TMT5 and close MC all when a movie is selected from Theatre View. Unmounting the movie when TMT5 is closed and then taking me back to Theatre View in MC would be a nice feature.

Any help, guidance or ideas much appreciated. In the meantime I'll continue to try and get MC16 playing my Blu ray .iso files, but this would be a good stop gap (plus I have 3D Blu rays which I don't think MC16 can handle yet, correct me if Im wrong).

Cheers

Would anyone out there have a helpful script yo do this?

tls62dk · « **Reply #15 on:** October 01, 2011, 07:39:23 am »

I have used AutoHotkey and Jmone's script for a long time. I used it to start PowerDVD and close it again when the stop button was pressed in PowerDVD. I don't use this method any more, since I am able to play my ISO files and bdmv folders directly in MC. From what I remember of the method above, you do need AutoHotkey and the script to start and stop TMT5. It is not just used to set the refresh rate.

As to your hw configuration, it should be more that enough to play your blu-ray ISO's directly in MC. Your time may be better spent finding out why it doesn't instead of trying to get TMT5 to do it.

TLS

JimH · « **Reply #16 on:** October 01, 2011, 08:10:12 am »

Quote from: Z0001 on October 01, 2011, 04:45:06 am

I'm having trouble. I have AnyDVD HD and all my movies are ripped by it to .iso files. TMT5 plays them fine to my flat panel. However with MC16 I get stuttering. The image looks clear, but just some frame jumps. I have an i7 870 CPU, 4GB RAM, W7 Home Premium x64 and a Radeon HD 6870 gpu, so the system is more than capable.

Are you using Red October Std or RO HQ?

jmone · « **Reply #17 on:** October 01, 2011, 04:13:15 pm »

If you want another program to play BD Discs and ISO by default you need to go into Windows Control Panel --> Default Programs --> Change AutoPlay settings --> Bly-ray disc movie to TMT etc. You may also then want to change the settings in MC Tools --> Options --> File Type --> Other --> Blu-ray (blurarydisc) --> Playback Method: to External Program (Default).

These changes will let you manage the ISO, and mount them in MC yet TMT will play them. Without a script however you have no automated way of getting "back" to MC at the end (or closing / restarting MC, or changing refresh rate etc).

Z0001 · « **Reply #18 on:** October 03, 2011, 05:25:27 pm »

Thanks.

Quote from: JimH on October 01, 2011, 08:10:12 am

Are you using Red October Std or RO HQ?

I have tried both. I get the same problem with both, which I'd describe as screen tearing and also some jumpyness and slow/fast playback. With RO HQ I'd say the picture quality (aside from these artifacts) is improved and better than TMT5, hence i want to persist to get this fixed.

Quote from: jmone on October 01, 2011, 04:13:15 pm

If you want another program to play BD Discs and ISO by default you need to go into Windows Control Panel --> Default Programs --> Change AutoPlay settings --> Bly-ray disc movie to TMT etc. You may also then want to change the settings in MC Tools --> Options --> File Type --> Other --> Blu-ray (blurarydisc) --> Playback Method: to External Program (Default).

These changes will let you manage the ISO, and mount them in MC yet TMT will play them. Without a script however you have no automated way of getting "back" to MC at the end (or closing / restarting MC, or changing refresh rate etc).

Let's say i simply want to mount an iso in MC Theatre View. How do I do that? I mean just mount, not play. Double clicking or clicking "watch" simply does what I'd expect and plays the iso. Making TMT5 the default player simply opens that app when i press watch in MC, but does not mount the iso.

I am running MS Security Essentials, so will try disabling that. The iso files are stored on an external storage box behind an Addonics port multiplier (in non-RAID set up) and connected via eSATA to a host controller card with a Silicon Image 3132 chip. So I'll also try running them even more locally on the internal HDD.

Any help with the mounting question would be much appreciated, plus any views on a collection of good Options settings to get video to run smoothly welcomed!

Would there be any other settings external to MC I should look at? Eg I've heard about limiting services but am not too confident about tweaking this. It's a dedicated HTPC, so it only needs to do music, video, TV, images.

Thanks!

Z0001 · « **Reply #19 on:** October 05, 2011, 06:57:01 am »

I've been playing around with this and discovered that checking VideoClock in Options>Video and excluding my media folders and Media Centre 16 (.exe) from MSSE scanning has helped. But I'm wondering why that VideoClock selection should help? I'm sure my pc has enough grunt to process video. Is this a necessary selection for Blu ray, 24p, any video? And if so why is it optional? Or is it to do with my audio card (Xonar Essence ST) and 2ch stereo (I've read about clock syncing). I'm so very glad it now works, but wish I understood why!! Now on with the tagging!

jmone · « **Reply #20 on:** October 05, 2011, 03:28:06 pm »

Videoclock is a neat bit of code who's job it is to specifically keep the Audio Track in sync with the Video Track (on a PC the default is actually the other way around so you tend to get dropped Video Frames as the Audio and Video Tracks use different clocks so they tend to drift apart). This only works if you are changing the refresh rate of your Monitor/PC to suit the media FPS (eg changing the refresh rate to 23.976/24hz for a 23.976fps blu ray etc). What VideoClock is doing is decoding the audio, resampling it using the DSP to change the clock rate then outputting it as LPCM. This only works of course if the refresh rate is a close multiple of the fps.

JimH · « **Reply #21 on:** October 05, 2011, 03:45:31 pm »

jmone,
Thanks for the description. I added it here:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Videoclock

Jim

Matt · « **Reply #22 on:** October 05, 2011, 03:57:04 pm »

Another neat little feature of VideoClock is that it gets the refresh rate of the display directly from madVR when possible. This way, the video renderer and audio renderer perfectly agree on the exact monitor refresh rate so there's no error introduced by the varying ways to precisely monitor refresh rates on Windows.

jmone · « **Reply #23 on:** October 05, 2011, 04:04:04 pm »

Neat - how do you grab it for EVR etc?

Z0001 · « **Reply #24 on:** October 05, 2011, 06:12:07 pm »

Thanks for the tutorial, really very much appreciated. I think I'm getting it!

Image quality is outstanding (i have ROHQ set at a default). Initially audio was coming at me twice with a split second delay. I'm on 2ch stereo and was using WASAPI. Changing to ASIO gave me the ambient "surround sounds" but no dialogue. WASAPI Event Style gave me the audio I needed (as far as I could tell while minding my little boy!). Critical for me above video is hi fi audio playback, which I understood WASAPI was giving me. With Event Style, what's changed? I'll do a listening test this weekend, but a pointer for what to listen for would be good.

Also, is there any difference between 23.976fps and 24p? Are all Blu rays the same and are they "24p"? When i tag FPS as 23.976 in MC it seems to change to 23.98, and my TV only seems to recognize "24" (1 year old Samsung c7000 3D set). Do any displays or TVs actually give 23.976fps? Sorry if these are dumb questions. I find the whole PC AV arena fascinating, and MC is a wonderful medium to learn and and enjoy it.

Thanks again for any help!

jmone · « **Reply #25 on:** October 05, 2011, 07:14:21 pm »

Warning - this is like peeling an onion (there is always another layer and I'm only partway through!) Anyway, If you are using Video Clock then don't sweat the small differences between 23.976, 24 etc but for background:

The following is the (historical) number of frames per second used when recording:
- Film = 24fps as this is what the film cameras ran at
- PAL = 25/50fps (including 50 interlaced fields ps) as it originally matched the Hz used for power in these countries
- NTSC = 30/60fps (including 60 interlaced fields ps) as it originally matched the Hz used for power in these countries.

Things then got all bent out of shape when Colour was introduced to the NTSC spec as the playback frequency was changed slightly by 1/1000th so you now have 29.97/59.94hz. This craziness continued on in the Blu-ray spec so while the original film based material was shot in 24fps, it is flagged on the disc to playback at 23.976fps as this can be telinclined into 29.97 using 2:3 Pulldown for backwards NTSC compatibility reasons.... more here --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecine

Add to that and your GPU / TV / Monitor all will have different clocks and the frequencies will all be slightly different.

deandob · « **Reply #26 on:** October 19, 2011, 07:54:12 am »

Hi, first time user here downloaded a trial to see if MC16 is a viable replacement for TMT5, and if it can offer better quality audio/video. I have a number of questions:
1) Does it support all the HD audio codecs? It seems like it picks up my TMT codecs automatically, or is there more setup needed so that I get true HD audio not the lower resolution streams
2) Is it possible to have MC autostart when inserting a blu-ray, select the best stream and go straight to play a movie, without having to push buttons to load and play?
3) If the TMT HD audio codecs are being used, can it output in 24bit / 96Khz as TMT will downsample as I use an analog audio soundcard
4) I have used the red october HQ settings, and sometimes at the start of a movie the movie refreshes at about 1Hz, yet will fix itself if I open the setting screen???
5) Should I be seeing a difference in video quality between TMT5 and MC with the Red October HQ settings? I have a large screen and a new JVC projector so any video differences should be noticeable. I *think* I see a slight improvement with MC but its not much.
6) I don't care much for bluray menus, but if there is planned to implement a simple menu (eg. stream selection) that would be useful
7) When I play a movie, does the red october HQ setting automatically select the highest quality stream? In TMT5 I have seen some blu-rays that start with the 640K audio codecs when the HD streams are on the disk!

I get a lip sync problem when using the setting to smooth the video by syncing to the audio (I assume this is reclock??). I can't work out how to adjust the audio/video delay to remove lipsync delays.

Great product, very rich in features & tweakable. If I can get answers to the above questions MC16 will be my next media player!

Regards
Dean

jmone · « **Reply #27 on:** October 19, 2011, 02:57:18 pm »

Quote from: deandob on October 19, 2011, 07:54:12 am

Hi, first time user here downloaded a trial to see if MC16 is a viable replacement for TMT5, and if it can offer better quality audio/video. I have a number of questions:
1) Does it support all the HD audio codecs? It seems like it picks up my TMT codecs automatically, or is there more setup needed so that I get true HD audio not the lower resolution streams

Yes, MC supports the option to both decode on the PC at full bit rate and depth (default) or bitstream, though to enable this for DTS-HD you need to just need to copy the "dtsdecoderdll.dll" from your Arcsoft TMT installation to any of the following folders so it can be used (eg where LAVAudio can find it):
- C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\J River\Media Center 16\Plugins\lav , or
- C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\J River\Media Center 16. or
- Windows\System32 folder for Windows 7 32-bit / Windows\SysWOW64 folder for Windows 7 64-bit

Quote

2) Is it possible to have MC autostart when inserting a blu-ray, select the best stream and go straight to play a movie, without having to push buttons to load and play?

Just register MC as the default player in Windows for Blu. When inserted MC will auto play it (or auto rip, or do nothing etc pending on what you have set in MC's Tools --> Options -->CD, DVD, & BD --> AutoPlay)

Quote

3) If the TMT HD audio codecs are being used, can it output in 24bit / 96Khz as TMT will downsample as I use an analog audio soundcard

MC's is using LAVAudio as the Audio Filter that in turn uses libav. The only limit on libav was that it can (presently) only decode the "core" of DTS-MA. Thankfully if you add the dtsdecoderdll as above this will be used automatically. You will get full bitrate and depth regardless.

Quote

4) I have used the red october HQ settings, and sometimes at the start of a movie the movie refreshes at about 1Hz, yet will fix itself if I open the setting screen???

You may need to post some more info on this. I take it you are talking about madVR OSD, and in which case you may find setting madVR to exclusive mode helps.

Quote

5) Should I be seeing a difference in video quality between TMT5 and MC with the Red October HQ settings? I have a large screen and a new JVC projector so any video differences should be noticeable. I *think* I see a slight improvement with MC but its not much.

In general, it should be better thanks to the higher quality renderer being used (madVR). There are lots of settings in madVR that you can play with to tailor the algorithms used for scaling etc that you may prefer. If you are watching interlaced material and are using a nvidia GPU then you will find a very big jump in quality on this material thanks to the GPU assisted adaptive deinterlacing.

Quote

6) I don't care much for bluray menus, but if there is planned to implement a simple menu (eg. stream selection) that would be useful

During playback you can use the up/down arrow keys on your remote control access various options and left/right arrows to change them (eg turn on/off subs, select audio etc)

Quote

7) When I play a movie, does the red october HQ setting automatically select the highest quality stream? In TMT5 I have seen some blu-rays that start with the 640K audio codecs when the HD streams are on the disk!

Yup, this problem is solved. You will get the "Best" audio track (based on the one with the most number of channels, and the highest quality encoding used).

Quote

I get a lip sync problem when using the setting to smooth the video by syncing to the audio (I assume this is reclock??). I can't work out how to adjust the audio/video delay to remove lipsync delays.

Out of interest try setting madVR to Exclusive mode (this fixed my lip sycn issues on 24hz matterial...but rest was fine).

deandob · « **Reply #28 on:** October 22, 2011, 04:57:16 pm »

Thanks Jmone for the feedback. I have played with the video settings in MC16 and in MadVR but I still get times where the video is very fluid then it goes into 1Hz refresh rate mode, and I noticed with higher bitrate (more demanding) blu-rays it is worse. Also my CPU utilization is heading up to 80%+ at times which is a bit of a concern. I tried the standard video quality mode but only got a black screen (audio OK).

I have an AMD 4850e dual core CPU, 1GB RAM and a Nvidia 7600GT video card (although not with the latest drivers) which should be enough as I am not upscaling the video. I have read that it is possible to use a splitter called LAV CUDIA which offloads some of the CPU processing to the GPU - is it possible to use this splitter with JRiver MC, which may help my CPU utilization problem?

Also, is it possible to validate the actual audio bit depth and sampling rate being used (eg. like in the "Information" OSD option with TMT5) so that I can check that I am using the HD audio codecs?

Another question, how does the video smoothing option compare to reclock?

Great program BTW - I used JRiver for audio over 5 years back and the latest version is a real swiss army knife! I like that it combines some of the features of tools like reclock and ffdshow in a much more integrated manner.

jmone · « **Reply #29 on:** October 22, 2011, 07:45:57 pm »

OK - you are going to have some issues with you setup:

1) I'd stick with RO Std as I don't think you have a the horsepower to not drop frames on some material with RO HQ

2) Your Nvidia 7600GT is too old to use CUVID (enabled when the HW Accel box is checked and your GPU meets the following)
Requirements/Recommendations
- NVIDIA PureVideo HD capable graphics card (VDPAU Feature Set A or better - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_PureVideo#Table_of_PureVideo_.28HD.29_GPUs)
- At least 256MB of Video RAM, 512MB recommended
- Recent NVIDIA Drivers - CUDA 4.0 compatible driver recommended (270 series), older drivers may work with the "Old CUDA" build.
- Vista/7 recommended due to much improved driver handling, but XP SP3 "should work" (see hints below)

2a) If you did upgrade your video card to a later nvidia card (say a 450 or 540Ti with DDR5 Mem) you may then have the horsepower for a good RO HQ.

3) You can get details of what the Audio is doing by looking at the DSP windows during playback

4) The video smoothing option does the same thing as reclock by resampling the audio to match video playback. If anything it is better than reclock when using madVR as the two talk to each other on the frame rates.

deandob · « **Reply #30 on:** October 22, 2011, 07:55:24 pm »

Thanks Jmone for the feedback.

I just double checked, and I made a mistake about the video card. I have the 8600GTS which is VDPAU A compliant and should work, but I run an older driver so I'll update that later today and check again (as well as try some more tweaking of settings).

Video smoothing looks promising, I could never get reclock to work properly and hate the lack of smoothness that I get from the HTPC.

Have a few other things to experiment with as well, like trying to get a 10' UI experience so that it is easy for my kids & wife to use (like Windows Media Center).

jmone · « **Reply #31 on:** October 22, 2011, 09:06:47 pm »

You may be in for good restuls with the updated driver, you never know!

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Author Topic: Does MC16 support BluRay playback out of the box? (Read 9948 times)