Official Panasonic DMP-BDT110/210/310 Owners Thread - Page 159

Hi, could some fine fellow answer some questions and save me reading over 4000 threads?

comparism with a PS3 for PQ?

what video/audio formats can it stream over a home network

and most important: when playing say an avi will it switch refresh rate to match the file. ie 23.976/24 for stutter free playback

thanks

Not everyone likes 24p native display especially on midddle tier Panny models with 48Hz display results in a lot of flickering. Panny has three tiers of TVs, low end no 24p display at all (but accepts 24p signal), middle tier displays 24p as 48Hz, high end displays 24p as 96Hz.

For most brands, the on screen status should show input signal format, not what finally displayed on screen. So, there is really no easy way to confirm it. For my Pany GT25 though, it is easy because when I saw screen flickering, I know it is displaying 24p/48Hz mode.

So, it is not really an automation issue. Automation really happens at HDMI handshake time where the TV will tell player what video formats it can accept. Then based on that information, the player will decide whether or not it can ouput 24p signal (if that is enabled in player settings). How the display displays 24p signal is up the TV design and user setting there. You will find majority of today's TV accepts 1080p24 signal although only very small percentage of them can display at multiple of 24Hz on screen.

I got some time today to fool around with MKVMerge that Brandenborg talked about upthread. I've had some success, some failures, and some lessons learned.

My first attempt was with an MP4 file that I had downloaded as a Podcast from the iTunes Store. The Panny loaded the resulting MKV file to play, but it never actually played....there was just a blank screen. Eventually I got it to play by turning on MKVMerge's option "Disable Header Removal Compression". This option seems to accomplish the same thing that Brandenborg warned about above (namely to: 4b) Select Compression -> "none" for the audio stream); however the disable option I used selects "none" for both the audio and video streams. I was not able to play the MKV files constructed by MKVMerge unless I had this compression disabled for both the audio and video streams. The Haali constructed MKV file from this source material played fine.

I had a MPG2 file I had recorded on my SonicBlue PVR. MKVMerge had a program error when it attempted to process this file (indeed, MKVMerge even put up a msg that asked me to send the author the error info since this error was not supposed to happen). The Haali constructed MKV file from this source material played fine.

Finally I had a MPG2 file that had been transcoded from a FLV file I had downloaded from YouTube. The MKVMerge constructed MKV file played fine here too. Another interesting thing on this file is that the MPG2 file had a frame rate of 25 fps, as did the resulting MKV file. I figured that the Panny wouldn't like that, but it played just fine.

That's easy. Panny can't play avi and most other formats at all.

The UPS guy just delivered my 210, and so far I like. After a software update and full op test, I'm liking this a lot. Netflix works seamlessly and my connection seems gold, so no need to hard connect it. I connected this w/ one HDMI connection to my Yammy Rcv. I have a non-ARC tv.

The only issue I haven't worked out is the whole open disc function, w/ a wavy of the hand. I thought I heard it was a fx on this player, but it's not happening for me. I browsed the manual but haven't found anything yet. I guess when I get motivated, I'll download and search the manual.

Other than that, the picture doesn't seem any better than my old Zenith DVD player, which upscales as well. The difference being, I have this player connected via a receiver and I had it directly connected to my tv on the other, b/c the dvd player was not compatible my rcvr.

I have a bunch of movies on a Portable hard drive. I'm curious if this player can read those type of files.

ah so its no good as a media streamer then plus in the UK we dont get netflix yet. as a matter of interest with netflix whats the quality like and what fps do movies play at and does the player switch to match it so as to avaoid stuttering?

netflix aside then why buy this over a ps3?

True and so since it displays only what player is selected for on putting out you can not know until tv pic menu is checked, can see it in the content looks, or by the flicker on 48hz. Fact still remains ya can't watch 24p until the tv display is set for it at least one time over to 48 or 96hz. If adding this player to such sets you've likely been stock at 60hz. You can not change the tv to 48 or 96hz until the players setting is set to 'ON' so but once yer there all is well. For me lately the how much the flicker bothers or goes unnoticed depends more on my eyes being adjusted and how set is adjusted. On well adjusted/calibrated thx mode in darker room situations I ampretty good with it. Looking back and forth from this computer screen and tv will mess a person up...lol.


What are your thoughts on tv being able to tell player to do this on mkv's on usb or how to author an mkv to give us the 24p option in player display menu?

Just look in the settings to find the wavy thing..hehe
Drive needs to be externally powered on it's own or by hub, be formatted in fat32 or exfat for large file support, and files need to be be compatable mkv's (not oddly encoded..which means nothing really as most tend to be different from another in one way or another,lol) that contain either x.264 or stripped/split mpeg2. I still have no answer if there should be a specific file structure for the usbing even though it does not support avchd(only the disk and sd card input does that...somebody speak up if network drive does it). I have issue of only one main root folder and it's subs being seen whereas originally it saw all root folders...

LoL, typo. I meant to say wave not wavy. Thanks for the info. Now I just need one more of these once the price falls again. They don't seem to stay stocked for long.

Update: I spoke too soon. Lots of flashing during Netflix streaming. It wasn't so noticeable on one movie, but it is on another. I thought I was seeing things at first. I'm going to try a wired connection to see if that helps. But gauging the talk about it here, it's probably just a failing of this player.

Hey Foxbat, Am still wondering why you posted this statement about non requirements to change when I was talking there about other input methods like mkv over usb.. I've noted now in red within what I said which excluded it being about disks..The other talk of automation and having to first select 24p on player before being able to even select same in tv menu is just a matter of folks messing around till they get it on but hey I see the doing true 24p on other input methods key to success for me doing my collection up correctly.
What ya say..we gonna get the 24p lit up on 'status', a option tab for 24p in 'display/video' and see such in the 'display/play/information tab's window while doing other input methods as mkv on usb?

Yes is an apparent failing of player in that the consensus is that it should handle the stream quality/resolution switching that netflix does to everyone based on current traffic or bandwidth a bit better without the black flash. Should be seamless as other machines able to utuilize the different quality streams do it fine. I hardly ever notice it but hey I don't watch NF near as much as the kids do. It's friday night, maybe your on a network with heaps of traffic right now.

I've played AVI on the Panny through DLNA (Win7). I forget what was inside that AVI, but as long as WMP can read the file natively and store it in its library, it should play on the Panny through DLNA.

But that doesn't change the general statement that these players are not great for file playback. They do certain formats (and do them well) but they are picky.

Great post, thanks a lot smckean!

I am embarrassed that I didn't notice that "Disable Header Removal Compression" myself. I'd looked all over for a global command line option like this -- and then it's right there in the options menu

And even though I only had the problem with Header Removal on audio tracks, it would seem from your tests that disabling it for both video and audio is best to ensure Panny comaptibility.

I'll update my "recipe" post to reflect that.

Regarding your PVR recording: Did you run it through a "cleaner" first or send it straight to mkvmerge? I've not seen mkvmerge itself stumble on bad streams -- but of course the Panny will stumble, as we know all too well.

Mkvmerge is generally not going to help where the original stream is flawed (or not Panny-compatible). It's in re-creating the MKV container that it helps.

Thanks again. Great work!

Yes if you use analog audio outs. No if you use digital audio outs.

This is going to be a purely academic answer as I am definitely not the expert on DVD VOBs: I've never archived my DVD's -- or even played one in 2-3 years, let alone on this player EVER

That said, the VOBs in your VIDEO_TS folders are basically just MPEG2s (simlar to my TS recordings). I would think you can use ccextractor to extract SRT subtitle files from those VOBs. Then throw the VOBs and SRT into mkvmerge and remux them into an MKV file.

Maybe mkvmerge will even see the subtitles inside the VOBs directly and save you the ccextractor step: If so, they automatically show up under tracks. Worth a try. Either way, "General track options" in mkvmerge control whether the subtitles should be displayed by Default or even Forced.

Since VOBs are linked (as I recall) you may have to test whether to process each VOB and append them in mkvmerge, or whether it automatically picks up the entire chain of the movie based on the first VOB. Same goes for ccextractor.

Oh, and I assume the VOBs have already been decrypted (DeCSS'ed) when you copied them from the DVD.

Instead of changing the audio track compression setting in mkvmerge (as I described previously) you can set "File -> Options -> Disable header removal compression for audio and video tracks by default" and restart mkvmerge (credit to smckean).

Please post your results here if you try this. And sorry I cannot give you a tried and proven answer. Maybe others will fill in with other/better answers.

I take that back, UK model does divx, so it might stream avi. A few others have reported success, but I've never gotten an avi to play on mine. I suppose anything would play if your DLNA server transcoded it to mpg. But the resulting pq would not be pretty.

If you are a gamer, a PS3 is like getting a blu-ray player for free. If you aren't a gamer, it's expensive, slow, noisy, power hungry, awkward to control, and requires an expensive IR adapter to work with a universal remote. I have both a panny and ps3 and never use the ps3 for discs or streaming.

Others will have to answer the netflix fps.

I am responding to this and to your original post. As I replied to Skylark a few mins ago, I am not an expert on VOBs and DVD archives, so I can only give you a theoretical answer:

VOBs are basically MPEG2 files (although in a linked structure). MPEG files play directly on this player through DLNA -- including FF/Rew, but NOT including subtitles. Other file formats depend on the DLNA server used.

I use Win7's built-in DLNA Server. Any file visible in the WMP media library plays on the Panny -- but only MPEG files are sent straight, other files are transcoded on the fly.

MKV is only relevant if you use Network Drive or USB on the player. Compared to DLNA it will give you faster and smoother FF/Rew as well as subtitle support.

You can try the mkvmerge process (as you did) but you have to share a folder on your Win7 and connect the player through Network Drive OR copy the mkv to a USB drive/stick.

If subtitles are not a priority for you, DLNA should be an easier route. Maybe you need to rename the VOBs to MPG in order for the Panny to see them.

DLNA and mkvmerge will BOTH preserve the original quality. Handbrake is going to re-encode and will lose some quality.

Admittedly this file playback discussion has taken up a lot of posts in the thread recently, and I can understand why those who already own other more capable playback devices are scratching their heads.

Questions about file playback in this thread have always been answered with the standard "look elsewhere, the player doesn't support it" response.

Yet I've always found DLNA playback to work just fine with this player despite that opposite consensus -- and I've often posted that opinion here. When it comes to MKV playback, I would have made a lot more use of that feature if I'd known back in May (when I got my player) what I learned this last week.

No doubt that this player is very picky about which file formats it will play, and that other devices (including other Blu-Ray players) are much, much better at it. But once you know what DOES work on this player, it actually performs very well -- even with file playback.

That's been my experience.

Now that's exciting as all get out !! I read it to mean network drive works same as usb with mkv support so I should be able to hookup to my routers gigaport and be seen now that I have externally powered drive instead of trying my other non powered ones. Then I can write to and erase over the network instead of manually with laptop...should be way more reliable in a networking sense of not having to have windows setup to share or do the work..

ps-am about to test my first mkvmerge output for the ghosted text issue. I have a new movie that refused proper title selection/authoring via handbrake or dvdfab, so here goes..

Thanks a lot for the feedback, tsbrewers. I'm glad to hear that it worked for you. Also, thank you for pointing out about using mkvmerge to re-mux existing MKVs that don't play. I think I'll add a note about that in the "recipe" post.

You may want to set "File -> Options -> Disable header removal compression for audio and video tracks by default" in mkvmerge. Saves you from changing the compression option manually each time. I overlooked that one and smckean pointed it out.

I finally got around to try this tonight. I ripped a chapter of Troy Director's Cut Blu-Ray (didn't know where else to get a 24p file source) and turned it into MKV.

Tried a couple of different options, and indeed, I could NOT get the 24p option to show in the Panny's Display menu. I am sure it did pulldown and sent it as 60p to the TV. I think it's an oversight in the player, as you said. I doubt there is anything we can do with the files to make it happen.

For my part it's not a huge loss: I don't archive Blu-Ray disks and I cannot think of other 24p file sources. Movies on DVDs, cable, satellite and OTA networks are already pulldown processed to 480i30, 1080i30 or 720p60 anyway.

Just another thing we have to let go -- I think.

No, I did no "cleaning" of the file. It certainly wouldn't surprise me if there are flaws in this MPG2 file that came from my PVR. OTOH, what I found interesting was not that KMVMerge failed to process that file, but rather that Haali did process it and the Panny played it to boot!

I am under the impression that dvd is not actually on disk as such and that it quite often is on there as 24p (23.976fps progressive) but has flags instructing player to do the pulldown as that is what all players used to do and were expected to do. Look at most any modern movie via Media Info to confirm. Now we have a player that can indeed offer 24p via it's display menu on standard stuff and am assuming it does it by ignoring such instruction. 23.976 is just a technicality of sorts of the ntsc video coding system and is 24fps (24p).

ps - also I am hitting into problems with a new movie done with mkvmerge. Part way through, along way actually, into movie during a title switch the audio starts to get ahead so it seems there is issue with the movie's structure and or mkvmerge to be able to process it correctly. Is same movie that handbrake and dvdfab decided to only do 39 minutes on by way of selecting a different title track even though I picked the main running at 2:00:37 minutes. Is strange as the movie on player lists as only 1:48:** minutes and when it starts doing this it is after what seems like an improper cut to another scene part of movie.

The raw MPEG-2 stream on DVDs has to be 480i30, not 24p. There is a compression flag tells MPEG-2 decode to repeat this frame three times and next frame 2 times. Then, there may or maynot be a flag tells the player that this is actually a 24p source and the player can correctly identify the 24p frame from the 3:2 pull-down mixed stream. Then, some discs have some scenes using 30i, not 24p, footage and some scenes using 24p, all mixed together in one movie stream. It's a mess and not an easy job for old school DVD players. That's why we have dedicated sites do yearly benchmarks and tests of various DVD players to see how well they can handle de-interlace chores.

Yes, good point. There's no doubt that Haali's processing is very solid. Dissecting mkv files the other day it was obvious that mkvmerge adds a lot more headers in the name of mkv compliance, whereas Haali files are very minimalistic. I'm sure less is better with our Pannys.

Of you want to dig into it, you can use mkvmerge's Header Editor (file menu) to compare the two. Or even mkvinfo (mkvtoolnix command line).

Thanks again for your great work on this.

Interesting. I didn't know that was how they did it. So recreating a true 24p stream from a dvd is certainly possible, but not simple.

Thanks!

You've got that backwards .........I should be the one thanking you! I couldn't have done what I'm doing without your many clear explanations.

I've done a bit more testing and have discovered some tidbits:

1. MKVMerge is working fairly well, but I now discover that it can not batch-process a series of files (such as all files in a specific folder). The author's website says he has no plans to ever add such a feature. One can define separate "jobs" and have those jobs sequentially processed, but that takes as much time to set up as processing the files separately. When I get back to my regular computer (tomorrow), I will try to look into DVDFab as another tool for MKV construction.

2. I have run into several glitches with the Panny's Network Drive facility. Frankly, I'm about to give up on it. The problems seem to occur when there is more than one share defined. If you go to one share; then back out all the way to the Panny's Home screen; then go back into Network Drive and select the other share, the Panny appears to hook up to the 2nd share as it should, but as a quickly flashed screen indicates, the Panny actually goes back to the 1st share. If you attempt to connect to the 2nd share a second time, the Panny will then connect to the 2nd share properly.

3. I don't know if this is a Windows XP issue or the Panny, but when you connect to one of 2 shares defined in the Panny, a look at WXP's "Computer Management" administrative tool under "Shares" shows that both shares get connected to. Worse, at some point the files displayed on the Panny are always from the same share regardless of which share you thought you connected to.

It appears the Panny support of playing external files continues to be a mess.

You do realize though that seems in contrast/backwards to many info's strewn around the net regardless of their being hard reads through layman eyes:
http://documentation.apple.com/en/co...5%26tasks=true
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24p
Info's tend to imply that although there is differences in the original rates due to film versus video cameras that it ends up out the editing/telecine/whatever equipments as 24fps and but flagged for players doing ntsc at disk level and as such if we strip it back we would end up raw at 24fps progressive material. I would ask why the confusion is not cleared up or why the pro's don't attempt explaining it better? I have read it the wya you said it too..the other way seems to win out by shear numbers of it being propagated. I do tend to beleive or see what your saying because for instance if we believe the output info from Media Info we can see standard dvd show us 24fps progressive on the vob or containered up streams but then if we do a split/strip of the mpeg to a new mkv container via mkvmerge or makemkv we see it for 29.97fps interlaced. (at least some anyways... some strip down as 60p). Probably different yet for pal vob's surfing across the net too.lol
I guess some could still argue that in the cases of programs stripping mpeg some programs could be ignoring flags when stripping via a setting and spit output out with flag intact leading us on wrongly when we read it in Media Info. (aka- which is showing us a true raw strip? mkvmerge or dvdfab on remux or makemkv?) dvdfab reads 23.976 on it's strip of Bridesmaids, mkvmerge shows 59.940, and makemkv shows as 29.97
It's all screwy with multiple things going on in way of flags or markers..lol
Info's around the net should make use of picture flow charts for us layman..lol

smskean, is it frustrating or what? If so I feelin ya..lol

My temporary conclusion on my issue of mpeg ghosted look over usb is worth a looksey of it on another imput method like the network share. It makes no sense to me why a vob or a h.264 encoding can look great if streamed, or in the case of h.264, look good on usb but when I take it back to raw mpeg it looks like crap. It's as if the player does not handle mpeg correctly. Hard to blaim my display or avr when I have bypassed avr and the display is afterall just displaying what it fed and shows everything else great. I do remember in days of old that mpeg looked soft or whatever but never expected this on newer equipment. If any can offer a solution or tell me why mpeg looks bad when I am perfectly able to transcode it to make it look good in handbrake or others I would appreciate it..Text is ghosted/double imaged, scenes are softer than disk or transcodes to h.264, eyes are diseased at a distance or look to be crying. Having to transcode and waiting for handbrake is no fun..lol WHat I got to do something of deinterlacing to stripped stuff before it look right?

The problem is that early authoring tools used by many big studios often contain bugs which in turn created this mess. Companies like Disney will not wasting money recalling millions of copies of its DVD movie discs to re-author them. And the fact DVD standard only requires 480i output. Anything progressive is just optional bonus. As long as 480i output is correct, they can care less about 24p. Newer DVD discs tend to have less problems because the authoring tools have matured.