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MPC-HC for DVD & Blu ray playback

post #1 of 45
3/23/09 at 3:10pm
Thread Starter 
Hi,

I'm trying to set up MPC-HC to be able to playback both blu ray and DVD. I've been able to set up the filters to perform each operation seperately, but I can't find a combination of merits for the filters that will work for both and I'm having to manually configure before watching.

For Blu ray I am using the following:
MPC-HC internal splitter -> ffdshow Audio (preferred) -> Cyberlink H.264 (preferred)

For DVD I'm using
MPC-HC internal splitter -> ffdshow Audio (preferred) -> ffdshow Video (preferred)

Haali unfortunately doesn't support TrueHD, so I'm having to use the MPC-HC internal splitter, which for some reason unless I put ffdshow video to preferred will using the Microsoft MPEG-2 Video Decoder even though it has a lower merit than ffdshow.

Oh, I should also add that I've tried adding the Microsoft MPEG-2 Video decoder (blocked) but it still runs, just marked up with the lower merit :-(

I think that I'd be able to achieve this by manually setting the media types, but this is going beyond what I currently understand. Any help anyone could give would really be appreciated.

Thanks,
~Dan
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post #2 of 45
3/24/09 at 8:08am
Just disable AVC/H.264 decoding in ffdshow properties and the Cyberlink decoder will be used when watching a Blu-ray while ffdshow will be used when watching a DVD (or a Blu-ray if it's MPEG2).
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post #3 of 45
3/24/09 at 11:29am
Thread Starter 
Hmmm, feeling a little stupid now; that was rather obvious. Was looking too hard at setting media types or merits.

Oh well, working perfectly now, thanks!
~Dan
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post #4 of 45
3/24/09 at 2:51pm
I think MPC-HC video decoder will work with Blu-ray too and will DXVA accelerate if you have a video card that supports it.
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post #5 of 45
5/12/09 at 10:55pm
Hi Dan,

Would you please tell me how to config mpc-hc for playing blu ray disc?

Currently I am able to play .mkv and dvd in mpc-hc, but the mpc-hc just hangs if I try to play the blu-ray disc by "Open DVD". However the same disc could be played by PowerDVD 7...

Thank you!
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post #6 of 45
5/13/09 at 1:21am
Thread Starter 
Hey,

I'm in the office right now, and as my memory sucks, there is little chance of me posting the config right (I gave it a go, and failed). If I get a chance, I'll try and check tonight (we're having friends over, so it might have to be later in the week).

However, I'll caveat my config with the following. The playback isn't working as perfectly as I'd originally said. At that point I hadn't sat down to watch the entire movie ...

When playing back from the disk we found that there was the occasional pause in video (audio continued) when MPC-HC moved from one .m2ts to another (not always, but frequent enough to ruin the movie) and most annoying of all, playback of the movie ended about halfway through. I'd begun to look into a solution, but hadn't found anything that didn't involve transcoding the disk onto a hard drive. That said, try out the config ... looking into a different splitter that is capable of handling blu-ray could help (I'd tried Haali, but that didn't work).

Sorry for not being too helpful at the moment ...
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post #7 of 45
5/13/09 at 3:28am
Quote:
Originally Posted by dafee222 View Post

Hi Dan,

Would you please tell me how to config mpc-hc for playing blu ray disc?

Make sure you are using an up to date "SVN Build" not the last stable version. The stable version is quite old and does not have a lot of the HD enhancements. On the other hand, beware, these SVN builds by their nature often break things that take a while to get fixed.

Playing Blu-ray movies from m2ts in standard players is still evolving fast. MPC-HC (for example) and ffdshow are only part way through their implementation. They are getting there, but I reckon it will be 6-months to a year before it is all working as we would want. But it might be sooner. Remuxing into mkv, transcoding HD audio to FLAC, is still the surest way to get good playback.
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post #8 of 45
5/16/09 at 4:33am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by dan.pool View Post

If I get a chance, I'll try and check tonight ...

So not even close, I've finally managed to grab some time to sit down and look at this. Config is as follows:

In the options menu set the following.

Playback -> Output
DirectShow Video - I found I had to set this to VMR7 renderless rather than VRM9 or EVR. This was because I use XBMC as a media centre. The other outputs didn't produce a picture when launching MPC-HC from within XBMC. If you aren't doing the same thing, then you will likely have more options here.

Internal Filters
I unchecked Matroska and ogg as source filters

I also unchecked the following transform filters:
  • ACC
  • LPCM
  • MPEG-1 Video
  • MPEG-2 Video
  • H264/AVC (DXVA)
  • H264/AVC (ffmpeg)
  • Xvid MPEG-4
  • MS MPEG-4

External filters
I have in the following order:
  • Haali Media Spliter (set prefer but currently deactivated, Haali doesn't seem to work with blu-ray when I was trying to configure this, if I remember rightly it wouldn't split out the TrueHD sound track ... you'd be OK if you wanted to listen to a different AC3 track)
  • ffdshow audio decoder (set prefer)
  • CyberLink H.264/AVC Decoder (PDVD7.x) (set prefer)
  • ffdshow Video Decoder (set prefer)
  • Microsoft MPEG-2 Video Decoder (set merit 00500000)
  • CyberLink Video/SP Decoder (set block)

ffdshow video codec config
Double click either video filter to set, I've disabled all formats where I don't want ffdshow upscaling, such as:
  • H.264/AVC
  • Other MPEG-4
  • VC-1
Also, make sure that you haven't got raw enabled, otherwise this will just push everything through ffdshow.

That should be everything for playback, however as I mentioned there are still issues. Right now, I've put blu-ray to the back of my todo list so I'm not really actively looking into this anymore. You could try experimenting with different splitters or even the latest SVN versions of MPC-HC or Haali. Let me know if you have any luck.

Quote:
Originally Posted by jong1 View Post

Remuxing into mkv, transcoding HD audio to FLAC, is still the surest way to get good playback.

As Jong says, this is probably the most reliable way to playback blu-ray at the moment, but requires HDD space and time to transcode.

Hope that helps more,
~Dan
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post #9 of 45
5/27/09 at 12:55pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by jong1 View Post
Remuxing into mkv, transcoding HD audio to FLAC, is still the surest way to get good playback.

As Jong says, this is probably the most reliable way to playback blu-ray at the moment, but requires HDD space and time to transcode.

Hope that helps more,
~Dan

==============================

dan or anyone else,

i read somewhere else that indeed transcoding is time & power consuming. does anybody out there have tips to do this transcoding in such easier way ? final result that i want to have is to preserve audio & picture quality as good as it's original condition, while we can trim down unnecessary subtitles & extras that usually found in commercial BD. so we can have a good quality copy with less GB. i believe many of us want to back up our BD collection in this way.

if anyone knows tutorial(s) about this in AVS, please point me out. thank you.
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post #10 of 45
5/27/09 at 1:29pm
Here you go...
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...t=mkv+encoding
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post #11 of 45
5/29/09 at 10:18pm
zzyckz, thanks for your info. a very worthed reading....


regarding MPC HC, i am also still unable to play smoothly so far. i have core AVC Pro & ffdshow. i don't know how to configure them perfectly. thus, when i try to play .m2ts, is just last for about first 10 seconds and MPC HC shuts down. core AVC has haali splitter inside, can it be one of the culprit ?

TMT 3 platinum can play .m2ts with breeze, but i like MPC HC much better. If we can figure it out from TMT :what codec(s) & how it works, i am sure MPC HC can handle that too. anyone got MPC HC works with .m2ts so far ?
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post #12 of 45
5/29/09 at 10:48pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by mailistman View Post

regarding MPC HC, i am also still unable to play smoothly so far. i have core AVC Pro & ffdshow. i don't know how to configure them perfectly. thus, when i try to play .m2ts, is just last for about first 10 seconds and MPC HC shuts down. core AVC has haali splitter inside, can it be one of the culprit ?

TMT 3 platinum can play .m2ts with breeze, but i like MPC HC much better. If we can figure it out from TMT :what codec(s) & how it works, i am sure MPC HC can handle that too. anyone got MPC HC works with .m2ts so far ?

Haali Media Splitter + the internal MPC Video Decoder (for H.264 and VC-1) + EVR or EVR custome should give a good result.
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post #13 of 45
6/1/09 at 12:17am
Quote:
Originally Posted by renethx View Post

Haali Media Splitter + the internal MPC Video Decoder (for H.264 and VC-1) + EVR or EVR custome should give a good result.


hi renethx,

thanks for your reply. unfortunately i can't run you recommendation. EVR or EVR custom send my computer to restart right away . i run windows XP home SP 2, it may not suit EVR mode as far as i know. closest configuration i can get is as per dan.pool post on 05.16.2009, but only last for few seconds.
somehow i agree with dan.pool, at this time MPC HC is not final and stable to run .m2ts. given so many options of codecs combinations on different O/S can easily confuse many regular users.
temporarily i will stick with TMT, until i can find match config to run .m2ts on MPC HC, may be on upcoming release...
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post #14 of 45
6/1/09 at 1:35am
XP SP3 should give you working EVR. But whatever you do .m2ts playback in MPC-HC is experimental right now.
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post #15 of 45
6/1/09 at 6:06am
if i'm not wrong, EVR setting is only applicable to vista.
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post #16 of 45
6/1/09 at 1:04pm
No EVR works on XP. I thought it came with SP3, but maybe you need .net 3.5 too, not sure.

For sure, with both EVR works fine. With ATI cards at least you even get DXVA2 acceleration for MPEG2 and VC-1. Unfortunately you do not get any DXVA acceleration for h.264/AVC, which is, sadly, the most important.
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post #17 of 45
6/18/09 at 12:51am
hi guys,

after few weeks finally can figure it out to have .m2ts plays on MPC HC . i was so dumb, that i didn't notice there is a config if you gon on MPC HC > view > options > player > format. scroll down & tick on MPEG media file (.mpg .mpeg .mpe .m1v .m2v .mpv2 .mp2v .ts .tp .tpr .pva .pss .m2ts .m2t .mts .evo).

hope this will help.
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post #18 of 45
7/4/09 at 12:59pm
Does anyone know if dxva with vc-1 is only supported on ATI cards? I just got a cheap 9400gt, followed a simple mpc-hc tutorial, and it's working great for 1080p h264/avc. My proc is sitting cool & quiet at 4%. The problem is when trying to play vc-1. I press ctrl-J during playback (to display stats) and I see "Not using dxva". I made sure that both boxes are checked for vc-1 in "internal filters", still no luck. So what concerned me was seeing the following on the mpc-hc website.

* nVidia series 8(9)xxx for H.264 only
* ATI Radeon HD series for H.264 and VC-1 decoding

This mean I'm hosed for accelerated vc-1 playback unless I go ATI?
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post #19 of 45
7/6/09 at 1:43pm
posted this on the 4th weekend, not the best idea..- bumped one more time to see if anyone has thoughts. really would like the 9400gt to decode vc-1.
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post #20 of 45
7/6/09 at 2:18pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hagfish View Post

Does anyone know if dxva with vc-1 is only supported on ATI cards? I just got a cheap 9400gt, followed a simple mpc-hc tutorial, and it's working great for 1080p h264/avc. My proc is sitting cool & quiet at 4%. The problem is when trying to play vc-1. I press ctrl-J during playback (to display stats) and I see "Not using dxva". I made sure that both boxes are checked for vc-1 in "internal filters", still no luck. So what concerned me was seeing the following on the mpc-hc website.

* nVidia series 8(9)xxx for H.264 only
* ATI Radeon HD series for H.264 and VC-1 decoding

This mean I'm hosed for accelerated vc-1 playback unless I go ATI?

If I remember correctly, not all HD encodes support hardware acceleration. The video file needs to be encoded specifically with DXVA support for acceleration to work. I don't remember the specifics, and I may be wrong...
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post #21 of 45
7/6/09 at 2:55pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hagfish View Post

posted this on the 4th weekend, not the best idea..- bumped one more time to see if anyone has thoughts. really would like the 9400gt to decode vc-1.

No. The NV9xxx series cannot be used for VC-1 decoding with MPC-HC. The web page explains it quite clearly I think. The card can only do partial decoding of VC-1 and MPC-HC only supports full, bitstream decoding.
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post #22 of 45
7/6/09 at 3:58pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by benjamin.r View Post

If I remember correctly, not all HD encodes support hardware acceleration. The video file needs to be encoded specifically with DXVA support for acceleration to work. I don't remember the specifics, and I may be wrong...

I think it is more that DXVA acceleration only works on video encoded strictly to certain H264 Profiles - which are also the profiles used for Blu-ray and HDTV broadcasts. If you encode outside these profiles DXVA doesn't work.

It's the same limitation you find on H264 playback on hardware players like the Popcorn Hour etc. I believe.

It isn't that they are encoded with DXVA support - but that DXVA support is only implemented for certain profiles.
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post #23 of 45
7/6/09 at 6:12pm
Ok what about this scenario. BR backup -> strip out unneeded chapters/titles. Repackage w/ makemkv? My understanding is that makemkv doesn't encode anything, just pops it into a mkv. This perhaps doesn't fall into the accepted dxva supported profiles? Should just be straight source vc-1 which I figure wouldn't be a problem.
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post #24 of 45
7/6/09 at 6:27pm
PureVideo HD Gen 1 (VP1)

  VLC iDCT MCo DB
MPEG-2 N Y Y -
VC-1 N N Y Y
H.264 N N Y Y

PureVideo HD Gen 2 (VP2+BSP+AES128 DE)

  VLC iDCT MCo DB
MPEG-2 N Y Y -
VC-1 N Y Y Y
H.264 Y Y Y Y

PureVideo HD Gen 3 (VP3+BSP+AES128 DE)

  VLC iDCT MCo DB
MPEG-2 Y Y Y -
VC-1 Y Y Y Y
H.264 Y Y Y Y

- Gen 1: GeForce 7 Series, GeForce 8800 GTX/Ultra, GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB/640MB.
- Gen 2: Everything else.
- Gen 3: GeForce 8400 GS (G98), GeForce 8200/8300 (IGP), GeForce 9300/9400 (IGP).
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post #25 of 45
7/6/09 at 6:34pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hagfish View Post

Ok what about this scenario. BR backup -> strip out unneeded chapters/titles. Repackage w/ makemkv? My understanding is that makemkv doesn't encode anything, just pops it into a mkv. This perhaps doesn't fall into the accepted dxva supported profiles? Should just be straight source vc-1 which I figure wouldn't be a problem.

Note that MakeMKV supports only AC3/DTS core extracted from TrueHD/DTS-HD MA (read this). If you want MKV files without video/audo quality degradation, eac3to (with a DTS-HD MA decoder) is the only way to go.
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post #26 of 45
7/6/09 at 6:44pm
Yes, I did realize that unfortunate note about makemkv's audio limitations. However, when I want to to utilize the vc-1 acceleration, I'm in front of a diff (non htpc) using run of the mill headphones (so not too concerned about lossless audio). So, the chart you posted leads me to believe that my card (9400) should be able to decode vc-1. I did notice though that you categorized into purevideo generations. I have only installed the latest drivers, not the purevideo "addon". Would I need to install purevideo and config mpc-hc to use it as an external filter to have success? Thanks
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post #27 of 45
7/6/09 at 7:06pm
No, 9400 GT (a discrete GPU) does not support VC-1 hardware acceleration, while 9400 (an integrated GPU) supports it. PureVideo HD consists of hardware (GPU) and software (driver and player supporting it). 9400 GT lacks hardware VC-1 decoder.
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post #28 of 45
7/6/09 at 7:09pm
There's no Purevideo add-on, the Purevideo MPEG2 decoder has been discontinued and not updated years ago and also isn't compatible on Vista/Win7.

Purevideo now solely refers to the VP2/VP3.

9400GT(G96) is a VP2 hardware and doesn't support bitstream decoding for VC-1. It does support partial acceleration through IDCT and you should uncheck MPC-HC's internal VC-1 decoders, both DXVA and FFMPEG and WMV1/2/3 and use MS' decoder for IDCT partial hardware decoding for those formats.

Geforce 9300/9400/Ion(MCP79) chipset's integrated GPU is VP3 hardware and fully supports bitstream decoding VC-1 & MPEG2 in addition to H.264. G98 GPU also is VP3.

The upcoming 40nm Geforce GT220 card based on GT216 GPU(48SP) may or may not have VP3. It will replace the 9500GT(G96 32SP).

You'll need to wait for next-gen Nvidia GPUs graphics card with VP3 or later revisions if you want VC-1 and MPEG2 bitstream decoding just like the G98 GPU.
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post #29 of 45
7/6/09 at 7:22pm
Thanks guys for the education. Would prefer to have my cpu a little more idle but not a deal breaker. Most stuff ends up getting transcoded to h264 anyways, so vc-1 would have just been a plus. I'll try unchecking the vc-1 options in mpc and see what that does for me. Thanks again

edit: Disabled both internal filters for vc-1 and cpu usage actually increased about 10-15%
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post #30 of 45
7/7/09 at 5:10am
Or buy an ATI card.... Pretty much everything from the HD2600 up will fully decode VC-1 and H.264 in hardware.

Driver issues aside (ATI and Nvidia both have problems), the ATI hardware is way better for HD playback than NV at the moment. I play all my HD 1080P MKV's (with FLAC audio) using MPC-HC in Vista32 with full EVR acceleration with no problems whatsoever.
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