Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[marskid2]

i have some simpsons episodes with 4 different layers of dolby digital .ac3 sound.  before an update in MC 10, it would actually play english, spanish, french and directors commentary all at once.  now, it only plays the first (default) channel.  

unfortunately, i had to find another program to use for this, so i found meda player classic (get it at http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/, its a stand alone program so no install necessary ) an incredibly powerful but yet lightweight media player.  it has incredible codec management, and lets me select whether i use an internal codec to play or the default external one.  if use the external codec, it gives me a shortcut to codec properties to select options for each individual coedec that i would otherwise have to go hunting for.  this is especially handy because i have an S/PDIF optical digital audio connection to a surround sound dolby digital/DTS receiver, and mediacenter cant get either of those surround sound modes with my S/PDIF, only stereo.  
it also lets me select which audio track to play if there are multiple tracks, and tons of features during dvd playback.   you can customize so much, every pan and scan, subtitles, the whole deal.  it would be awesome if media center integrated the same kind of stuff, especially the codec management.  
one other cool thing to have that neither MC or Media Player Classic has is a codec identifier, something that could tell me that i dont have the newest divx codec needed such and such a file, and it would give me a hyperlink for that, like in the program AVIcodec.  AVIcodec (http://avicodec.duby.info/) is a program that scans any files to see what kind of video and/or audio codec it is, and whether or not my computer supports it.  it then gives a link to somewhere on the web where i could get it.  it even gives a very complete list of all the external codecs installed on your system.  some sub-action menu kthing in MC for managing codecs would be great


i know this may seem kinda petty, but its potential is great, to use MC as my usual player for DVD and video playback.  better codec selection, some kind of codec manager, audio track selection, more detailed audio output selection (s/pdif) would make MC even better.

lastly to the programmers, i am guessing that if you were to try to do ANY of this it would be difficult, so dont feel rushed by this request.  just throwing this out there.   maybe for MC 10.1??  thanks!

[loraan]

ii know this may seem kinda petty, but its potential is great, to use MC as my usual player for DVD and video playback.  better codec selection, some kind of codec manager, audio track selection, more detailed audio output selection (s/pdif) would make MC even better.

I basically agree with what you're saying. The ability to manually select playback filters would start to put MC on par with programs like ZoomPlayer or TheatreTek for DVD playback.

FYI, currently, I CAN cause MC to playback via S/PDIF passthrough. I click "audio properties", which pulls up the PowerDVD audio filter that I use as my default audio filter. In the PowerDVD setttings, I check S/PDIF passthrough, and voila! This didn't work in some older versions of MC, however.

[akak718]

Along the same lines, it would be really nice if MC had the ability to download missing codecs. When I install a new system, and try to play my large collection of Real Media files, I quickly find one that does not have the correct codec. The Software Update window from RealPlayer immediately pops up, then MC crashes. Then the update fails.

To fix this, I have to open up the RealPlayer app, play the same file, and it will then go download the needed codec. When this is done, I can go back to using MC.

It would be really nice if MC could do the update itself, or al least work with the RealPlayer update and not crash during the process.