DVD Server using XBOX Media Center (XBMC), DVD Profiler, and IMDB (Pictures galore) - Page 17

Hi all,

This is my first post on a great bulletin board. I had modded two xboxes a couple of years ago and running XBMC on both of them. I had not updated the XBMC in a long time but after seeing the gorgeous pictures of the new interface posted by japhule, I was inspired to update, and updated one of the xboxes. I also followed japhules method of using DVDProfiler2XBMC to create the thumbnails of the movies. My question to japhule is this: How do you get the movie to play just by clicking on its thumbnail icon? I have my DVD isos on a network drive in separate folders (each iso in its own folder along with the jpg thumbnail image). The way it is set up now, when I click on the thumbnail, it takes me into the corresponding folder and I have to click on the iso icon to start the movie. I would like to eliminate this extra click and have the movie play just by clicking on its thumbnail. Is this possible? I am guessing that if I dump all the isos and their thumbnail images into *ONE* folder, that it may work, but I would like to avoid moving all the isos into one folder if possible.

BTW, is any one else having problems playing some video files on the new XBMC build? (I have the April 27th T3CH CVS build). Some of the video files fail to play on the updated XBMC (either a black screen or I get kicked back to the menu); these play fine on the old XBMC (October 2005).

This occasionally happens to me also.
I fix it by going to the advanced settings in the security tab of the shared folder properties, and checking "Replace permission entries on all child objects with entries shown here that apply to child objects"

Where is the security tab of the shared folder properties? When I right-click on the shared folder and click on "Properties" and then the "Advanced" button, I see no security tab with the options you have mentioned. I am running WinXP Pro. Am I right in assuming that you were referring to the shared folder properties on the network drive?

I think you are using simple file sharing. To get the Security tab you need to uncheck the "Use Simple File Sharing (recommended)" box in the Advanced settings in the View tab of Tools -> Folder Options

Might want to wait until v2.0... this is from the T3CH release notes:

"* There's some -MAJOR- changes this time, Team XBMC has started to move towards a new setting system.
I can't explain it all here, but I can say this much - you will have to move some of your old folders, if you don't want to start fresh.
I suspect there will be even more changes soon, so you might want to wait with upgrading till things stabilizes a bit."

Sorry for the delay in replying; I was without Internet access for a few days.

The two I tried were both .avi files.

The first video is apparently encoded with a DiVX 5 codec. VLC can play it fine locally but only the audio streams across to XBMC using http as transport and all other settings in VLC at default.

The second video is encoded using H.264; same experience.

The files are large and I need to figure out how to extract small snippets that I can post.

Interesting, I am experiencing similar issues w/ dvds stopping and kicking me back to the main screen or not playing at all. It seems to happen more w/ ISOs versus the dvd structure backups. One of the wedding videos just starts to hesitate and freeze at the same point and kick out. It's all connected via local network (I had it streaming wirelessly before and thought that was the problem but it's not).

When is 2.0 planned to be out anyway?

What screen resolution are you running XBMC? If it's 1080i, then the Xbox may be running out of memory. Review the XBMC log file to find out. Reducing the video cache size, disabling the web browser interface , and disabling the RSS interface will help conserve memory.

I was running 1080i but switched to 720p; haven't fully tested if the problem persists. What is a good video cache size?

On the chance that this suggestion is for the streaming with VLC to the Xbox problem, I am running 1080i screen resolution and will try a lower resolution. For what its worth, DVD-grade MPEG2 files stream fine.

As an aside, I don't understand why DVDs look better played with XBMC set to 1080 rather than 480 even though I'm connecting to an ED-plasma i.e. 480 native. This Panasonic set will not accept 720p inputs.

I'm running at 720p. Where are the log files by default? Do I need to change from the default setting to increase the amount of logging? It does seem like a streaming problem....

The log file is in the XBMC directory on the XBOX. You need to FTP into the XBOX and choose the directory where you installed XBMC

I switched to 480 line resolution and the streaming works fine. In fact, I can open up the DivX video file as a SMB share!

The problem is that the picture does not look as good as at 1080 resolution even though the video itself is encoded at 640x480 resolution.

I will play with this some more.

I did a softmod that allows me to boot UnleashX which in turn allows me to run XBMC as an application. If I use the original composite video cable, I'm pretty sure its 480i since that's all the plasma will accept; when I use a Monster component cable, its 1080i.

I don't really know how to switch XBMC screen resolutions on the fly not how to disable 480p to try 480i over component

On the other hand, I got all my video files to play at 1080i after I copied them over to the Xbox hard disk, so the streaming from a SMB share or with VLC must cause some Xbox resource to be overstressed.

All,

On My Sammy 61" DLP (Native 720P). Video look much better overall at 480i (which is called NTSC 16:9 on XBMC) than any other setting (Thanks Ja Phule for the tip). No real difference on xvids like top gear. maybe a tad better at 480i than 720p. DVD's look hugely better at 480i with the Samsungs Faroudja DCDI doing the de-interlacing and the scaling than at 720P (using any of the many settings in XBMC). I guess I'm lucky because my TV has a great scalar and de-interlacer. I really am excited that you can now choose the Video resolution independent of the GUI resolution. Now that I have this looking decent I will compare it to the OPPO via DVI. Last time I performed this comparo against the regular Xbox DVD player (NOT XBMC) which outputs 480i to a Sammy 850 or 950 via DVI (forget which one). The sammy looked a little better but not $350 worth so it went back to CC. Wonder how the oppo will do.....

and yes be forewarned on the new builds... 5/5 video thumbnails were broken. fixed in pimped 5/6. Had to rebuild all databases. Not sure it cleaned real well so I started with a clean dir and rebuilt some stuff. works much better now. This is my test version. I have an older stable version that will be around till after 2.0 comes out. I also did notice all the Python scrips which were broken with the new Python Lib in 4/29 seem to work slightly better than nothing but still having issues...

BTW: Has anyone else notices in the last week or two that when browsing thumb nails in the file view (I have folder.jpg for each artist and like 30 screens of thumbs) that the left and right triggers now do this smooth scrolling thing instead of page up or page down very quickly as was in old releases. It kinda sucks. I could NAV the 30 screens easier with the old way. The trigger seems to repeat the last dpad click so if you click right and then right trigger the selected icon scrolls right. I liked the page up and page down features much better. Does seem to be the keymap.xml. Some change to PM3 it seems....

Sean

Sean

It probably has something to do with the new animations that came out in the last couple weeks.
Try disabling them in the GUI settings.

Good guess... didn't think of that... Just tried and that didn't do it. They scrolling is still slow and the keybindings have changed... Thanks for the tip though....

Sean

I think the default is 4MB. I set mine to 2MB and it works fine across my wireless network.

Here's the error log from when trying to play a dvd from network and quitting:

00:19:11 M: 13234176 ERROR: XFILE::CFileSMB::Read - smbc_read returned error 10060
00:19:11 M: 13209600 ERROR: Error reading data from demuxer
00:19:11 M: 13209600 ERROR: got 50 read errors in a row, quiting

Any ideas on how to fix?

Hi all,

I have got the XBMC application up and running on a X3 Xecuter modded XBOX using the Evolution dashboard and it looks very good. However I have a slight problem:

I can view all of my unRaid ripped DVD movie file folders with XBMC, but have not been able to get any of the VIDEO_TS folder files to play.

I navigate to the movie's video_ts.ifo file and click on it and nothing happens. I have even used the clear button on the controller to get the drop down menu which allows one to select the DVD player and still nothing happens.

I can't even get the DVD ROM drive to play a movie with XBMC by navigating to the video_ts.ifo file, selecting it, then waiting for several minutes and still nothing happens.

From all of the reading I have done, I thought that there was a built-in DVD player (codec) in XBMC that it automatically defaulted to when one wants to play a video file.

Is there a parameter(s) in the XboxMediaCenter XML file that I need to edit to get the DVD player to work?

I have searched on the xbmcmediacenter.com website in their FAQ and the on-line manual and have not found a satisfactory answer to my problem.

I have also searched the forums on xbox-scene.com and still have not come up with a solution that will work.

The XBOX dashboard will play a DVD movie just fine so I know that the DVD ROM drive is okay.

Suggestions?

Regards,
TCIII

Hi Ja Phule,

I am running build XBMC-CVS_2006-04-21-T3CH and presently I am just using the composite video output at 480i, but I plan to switch to 720p over a component connection when I get things going.

Here is a sample of my log file where I tried to open a movie video_ts folder and then tried to play a DVD in the DVD ROM drive:

Unable to open dll Q:\\system\\players\\dvdplayer\\libdvdnav.dll
16:34:27 M: 39411712 ERROR: InputStream: Error opening, smb://192.168.1.230/disk1/My Movies 1/40 Days and 40 Nights/VIDEO_TS/VIDEO_TS.IFO
16:34:27 M: 39411712 NOTICE: CDVDPlayer::OnExit()
16:34:27 M: 39411712 NOTICE: DVDPlayer: eof, waiting for queues to empty
16:34:27 M: 39411712 NOTICE: CDVDPlayer::OnExit() deleting input stream
16:34:27 M: 39411712 NOTICE: CDVDPlayer::OnExit() deiniting subtitle handler
16:34:27 M: 39936000 ERROR: Playlist Player: skipping unplayable item: 0, path [smb://192.168.1.230/disk1/My Movies 1/40 Days and 40 Nights/VIDEO_TS/VIDEO_TS.IFO]
16:34:28 M: 39936000 NOTICE: CDVDPlayer::CloseFile()
16:34:28 M: 39936000 NOTICE: DVDPlayer: waiting for threads to exit
16:34:28 M: 39936000 NOTICE: DVDPlayer: finished waiting
16:35:12 M: 40136704 NOTICE: DVDPlayer: Opening: D:\\VIDEO_TS\\VIDEO_TS.IFO
16:35:12 M: 40153088 NOTICE: CDVDPlayer::CloseFile()
16:35:12 M: 40153088 NOTICE: DVDPlayer: waiting for threads to exit
16:35:12 M: 40153088 NOTICE: DVDPlayer: finished waiting
16:35:12 M: 39628800 NOTICE: Creating InputStream
16:35:12 M: 39628800 ERROR: Unable to open dll Q:\\system\\players\\dvdplayer\\libdvdnav.dll

Regards,
TCIII

Hey Thomas,

How is that unRaid setup working for you? I seen the unRaid thread has died down. Would you still recommend that as a Media Server of choice?

Curtis

is the missing DLL present?

Q:\\system\\players\\dvdplayer\\libdvdnav.dll

This should clearly work. It works fine on my system doing exactly what you describe...

Q: should point to the XBMC home.

I would guess either Q is pointting to the wrong place or this DLL is missing or corrupt...

One other thing might be the bios. run the executer bios not the cromwell BIOS. for legal reasons the BIOS comes with cromwell and you have re-flash to put the good bios on there. Its a stretch but I thought I might throw it out there....

BTW: I am also assuming you can access content on the NAS like pics or music just fine and there is no reason to suspect that the SMB settings are not correct. If this is not the case make sure you can access some other file types to eliminate the SMB aspect as a possible issue...

best of luck.


Sean

I was having similar problems, and it turned out to be a samba share permission problem. XBMC does have a very good native DVD player (with full menu support) that is active by default.
Try creating a user account for the XBOX, and edit your samba path in the xboxmediacenter.xml file (eg. smb://userassword@192.168.1.230/disk1/My Movies 1/)