TotalMedia Theatre 5 - Page 101

I've got my bedroom machine running an X2 4200+ with 6 gigs of memory and an nVidia 450. Even that machine rocks for me but it's a WHOLE DIFFERENT ball game in terms of configuration and getting it to work right. The nVidia driver is a bit more finicky in some areas, for example. But once you learn the ins and outs of how it all works together, it's usually not hard to keep it going smooth and stable. People like vladd and myself tend to over complicate things by messing with stable systems, but, that's not a bad thing cause we can then share that experience with others. As long as we know how to get back to stable in the end, that's what matters.

I didn't read through all these posts but has anyone experienced or seen anyone else talk about a problem where when a movie starts playing the screen goes blank? This has happened to me with TMT3 and TMT5. I can hear sound but no picture. It happens every time. I've used 3 different video cards, 2600xt, 430GT, and 6570. All connected directly with HDMI to a Mitsubishi 65". Both PowerDVD and WinDVD play fine but I'd really like to use TMT because of other issues with PDVD.

Hmm, I thought he went away a day or so ago already.

Oh, that might explain why I thought he went away.

Often this is an HDMI issue. Do you happen to have ANYDVD HD running, if not, try the trial version.

I have no idea what you are talking about...

Actually, I've learned my lesson (somewhat). I did a clean install of Windows 7 to a 60GB VHD (absolutely love that feature) and as soon as I had it installed I made 3 more copies of the VHD:

Pristine
Development
Testing
HTPC

Now, I just boot the appropriate VHD for what I want to do. If I screw up the Testing VHD, I just wipe it and make another copy from the Pristine VHD.

This sounds really familiar but unfortunately I can't wipe the cobwebs from that particular memory at this time. Sorry.

Have you used the forum search feature (or google) to look for 'blank screen' or some other related terms? That might yield some helpful info.

I'd start checking the playback settings and disable/enable one item at a time to see if you can fix the issue.

That's a rather nifty idea. I might have to take a page out of that book. One of the things I badly need to do this summer is rebuild my bedroom machine and use the parts from that to build a nas. That would help with library management and would probably make tmt even happier.

With regards to upgrading to .119, how long has it been taking others to get the activation code? I had some stuttering issues that cleared up once I downloaded the trial upgrade; however, I requested the activation code almost a week ago and have yet to hear anything or receive a code. Is this a typical wait time, or should I be contacting customer service?

Mine arrived within seconds (well under a minute) of filling out the form. Make sure you use the email address you originally used when you made your purchase and check your spam filters to make sure the message didn't get blocked. The email address the code come from is no-reply@arcsoftsupport.com and the subject is "ArcSoft: New activation code from ArcSoft".

I got mine more or less immediately, IIRC. I think you should definitely be getting on to customer service.

Last week I picked up one of the new AMD Radeon 7950 video cards and have been noticing some problems in TotalMedia with DVD playback in Windows 7 x64. Admittedly this isn't helped by the fact that AMD have yet to issue WHQL certified drivers for these cards, but anyway... With the first driver I tried (no longer available on AMD's web site), TotalMedia would crash as soon as I tried to play a DVD. With the more recent 12.2 pre-cert driver (http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles...ieddriver.aspx), DVDs will play but any anamorphic content suffers from severe problems with scaling - loads of ghosting, stippling etc. They play fine in VLC, Windows Media Player etc. (See attached picture, taken from the DVD included in the recent LADY AND THE TRAMP BD release.)

I'm going to wait for certified drivers to be released before pursuing the matter any further - I know from past experience that drivers for new AMD cards can be a bit flaky until various bugs have been ironed out, and the fact that with a driver revision DVDs have gone from not playing at all to playing with problems seems promising - but I was wondering if anyone else was having similar issues?

The sad part is, yes, I have AnyDVD running. It doesn't help. I've tried all kinds of settings and drivers but nothing works. When playback starts you can see a quick flicker of the screen go green and then blank.

I did a search for blank screen and tmt but didn't come up with anything.

Huh, that's odd. Wasn't in my spam folder, but had been filling out the form from the browser in the HTPC. Just used my PC, and it arrived in seconds. Apparently, the HTPC has trouble submitting forms. Weird. Oh well, thank you very much for input.

I had that problem once while trying to get my Intel D510MO working with a CrystalHD decoder card. Turns out the card wasn't supported by TMT, which was why I had audio but no video.

Have you tried changing the hardware acceleration in TMT? Perhaps the resolution is also a problem?

I'm trying out the latest trial of TMT5. I'm kind of frustrated with PDVD for BD playback so I'm thinking of switching.

However, BD aside, I'm having some very bad tearing playing back DVD .iso's. From the research I've done it seems like Aero needs to be enabled to fix it but I cannot find any setting to force TMT5 to keep aero on. Is TMT5 just a no go because of it? I can't believe a pretty good BD player can't play a DVD properly.

Settings, Playback, uncheck "Always disable Windows Aero during playback".

It's not. It's a TMT problem that I've asked about several times. PDVD does not have this problem. It's gotten BETTER, but, it's still not good.


Yes, that's the disc authoring. AnyDVD can help in that regard.

It is unchecked in the stand alone player. In the WMC player there is no such option available. It still disables aero.

Oh I didn't realize you were trying to use the 10' interface. I don't use it myself. Maybe someone who does can speak to the issue you're having.

User "husmoaschta" banned from this thread.

Damn! Here I was waiting for him to tell us what was wrong with all of our systems because there was no way we could possibly have 24p working. Guess I'll have to live with it..

The option is not currently available in the 10ft UI. (It was in a past version, not sure which, but it wouldn't work properly and so was removed until the compatability issue could be worked out. No idea where it falls in engineering's priority list--I re-report it with each build because I consider it important. Users who want it should request the feature via customer service.)

Thanks for the reply. Would it motivate them that they have basically lost a sale because of it. DVDs just won't play back without tearing and from what I've researched turning Aero off is the cause.

Did you actually confirm your research in practice by trying the 2-foot player with Aero ON/OFF and no other changes and see the problem? (In my experience, that is not generally the case but I assume it could be possible in individual systems.)

It seems odd that leaving Aero on would help with video playback. Generally it's best to disable it, or use a full screen exclusive (FSE) application/renderer (FSE bypasses the DWM so it's not necessary to explicitly disable it).

That entirely depends on the renderer being used. W7 is quite strange when it comes to Aero and certain protection used by commercial players. We'll leave it at that.

I tried that speedmenu thing...hated it. It is a nice try, and I am sure many people will love it. I am looking at it from my wife's point of view. Which movie choice should she pick? The first four (I used Battle: LA) all were cryptic enough that she would have no idea.

If it was just me, I would probably use it.

It will likely improve over time. As new features generally do. Give it time.

I have yet to find a case where disabling Aero or using FSE doesn't produce a better result. On higher end GPUs (GTS 450+) the effect is less noticeable though.

I don't have the posts handy, but, there has been some discussion on this in the past. There are cases where it helps to keep it on. I don't remember the specifics but it had something to do with a protected version of EVR if I remember right. In those cases, turning Aero off would introduce tearing and sync issues. It was WEIRD cause I would have thought turning Aero off would FIX that kind of thing not cause it. If I can dig up the posts on it I'll post back. But it was quite a while ago when it was discussed.