Print

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

[EpF]

Why will MC11 (latest version) not play a DVD that WMP has no trouble with?

[marko]

what's the film?
perhaps it's a load of horse manure and MC's built in protection system is saving ~90 minutes of your life for you

[EpF]

perhaps it's a load of horse manure

Ah but it's not; it's The Fellowship of the Ring! I've noticed this before with other films.

With this one, I get a 'DVD Error' dialogue, telling me that 2 out of 3 DVD-Video streams failed to render properly. When I click 'OK' on that, I get another one (skinned with the MC skin) giving the '...encountered errors while trying to play...' message.

But why would MC have trouble if all the necessary decoders etc. are installed for WMP to play DVDs?

[marko]

the wife wouldn't agree, but I do. It's not horse manure.

I'm not really a DVD afficianado, so I'm not going to be much more help than perhaps wondering out-loud, if that setting in video playback options that goes something like 'use wmp player engine for video playback' has any bearing on the matter?

apologies for being a smartass without a real answer.

[EpF]

apologies for being a smartass without a real answer.

No worries; you made me smile anyway!

Just tried your suggestion, but it didn't work. I also tried 'DVD playback settings', but when I clicked on 'Decoder Properties' I just get an info box saying 'Unable to show DVD video decoder properties.'

It all looks, to my untrained eye, as though MC can't access whatever decoder WMP uses; but whether that's because there's something wrong, or because the decoder is proprietary to WMP, or because of some other reason, I don't know.

Does anyone know of a way to get MC to play DVDs that definitely works, but doesn't involve installing a whole separate application? (In previous computer setups, I didn't have this problem once I installed PowerDVD, but I don't need a third player on my system!)

[Yaobing]

MC11 uses DirectShow default behavior. We followed Microsoft documentation on that. It is therefore a wonder why WMP behaved differently 

You probably are right that the decoder is the issue. The default decoder that DirectShow loads happens to be one that does not work.  But the fact you cannot get to properties is actually a different issue.  There we try to locate the property pages of the decoder in use by name (looking for the words "video" and "decoder", but some video decoders do not have both of these word in names.)

Both of these problems (i.e. inability to manually pick a decoder, and not being able to display property pages of certain decoders) will be fixed in the next version of MC.

For a work around, you can try figuring out which decoder MC actually loads, (that decoder must have a higher merit value than other decoders for it to be automatically loaded over the other decoders). Try to uninstall or demote that bad decoder. By "demoting" I mean to lower its "merit" value. You can use ZoomPlayer to do it.

[EpF]

Thanks for the reply, Yaobing. In the end I reinstalled PowerDVD. I couldn't figure out ZoomPlayer (the free Standard version doesn't deal with DVDs, so it may not have been possible anyway). However, I then uninstalled PDVD and said 'no' to uninstalling any shared files, and now MC will play DVDs, so I'm happy

[EpF]

I'm happy

I take it back! With or without PDVD installed, MC takes around 15-20 seconds to start showing video (audio starts patchily first), and then when video starts it's torn and blotchy, with squares of colour moving randomly around the screen. I know this didn't happen with previous versions of MC (a year or two ago now) and the same version of PDVD... Any suggestions?

[glynor]

I'd try installing FFDSHOW.  I use it for my MPEG2 media now (including DVD playback).  When you're installing it make sure to select MPEG-2 on the install "page" that lets you "take control" of Video playback.

If you're just looking for the right FFDSHOW build... Have a gander at this thread over here.

It isn't a player.  It's just a DirectShow filter and codec pack.

[EpF]

Glynor; thanks for the input - extremely helpful, as usual!

I began the process of installing CCCP, but I encountered a stumbling block you might be able to help with: CCCPi lists no packs on my system, but one system device (DirectShow Filters) with 185 registered filters, including Cyberlink, Indeo and JRiver decoder filters - my problem is I don't know if or how I should uninstall them. A check on the web led me to the Video Codec Properties page of Device Manager>Sound, video and game controllers>Video Codecs, where there are 10 entries, including Indeo video and other *.drv and *.dll files with the option to remove them, but none of this is mentioned in the CCCP installation instructions, other than: "Uninstall all other individual codecs, filters (like DirectVobSub, ffdshow, CoreVorbis, CoreAAC, etc.)". Apart from DirectVobSub, there are no entries for any of the filters on my system in Add/Remove Programs.

Can you point me in the right direction?

[glynor]

You're probably fine.  Those cyberlink ones are probably from PowerDVD and I'd probably try to uninstall them since they don't work  You can safely leave the Indeo ones alone (and obviously the J River ones).  They won't hurt anything.

If you happen to have an ATI card with VIVO (video-in/video-out) capabilities you will also see some Cyberlink/ATI codecs listed, but they can be ignored.

To get rid of the PowerDVD ones properly, you'll (irritatingly enough) probably need to reinstall and then uninstall PowerDVD and this time actually choose to remove those shared components.  You could do this, or just ignore it and install CCCP and see if it works.

Most of what they're referring to in the CCCP instructions though are old errant versions of DivX included in some codec packs, old bad media splitters, older versions of the Oog Vorbis codecs and filters (which are now part of FFDSHOW), and other "hacked" filters that come from some of those nasty codec packs I mentioned in the other thread.  Doesn't look like you have anything too nasty (from what you listed anyway).

Generally, you want to uninstall them using Add/Remove Programs the same way you would any other program.

[EpF]

Glynor, you've done it again! Thanks a lot: DVD playpack is now sweet as in MC. No more WMP for me!

[JONCAT]

WMP & MC both use the newest Purevideo codec properly; I can change setting of the decoder through each player. I found a DVD that plays with tht e wrong screen size when using MC and I get large white squares on the screen. WMP plays perfectly. FFDshow resamples all audio to 96kHz. I don't see why MC can't play this disc properly using the exact same decoder as WMP.

DC

[JimH]

DVD filter selection is a feature of MC12, which you should see in open beta in the next several days.

[JONCAT]

Sounds good, thanks Jim.

DC