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Vista Media Center and Quicktime HD movie trailers

2069 Views 5 Replies 3 Participants Last post by Uegis, May 26, 2007

deiphobus

Discussion Starter · May 25, 2007

First of all, I would like to say thank you to the entire community. I found a lot of very useful information here, especially when it comes to getting WMP to play nice with .mov files.

Okay, here's my situation.

I'm going to do an extensive upgrade of my current PC. Getting Vista is on top of my list. I want to enjoy all my Quicktime HD movie trailers using Vista's Media Center, using my XBOX 360 as the extender. I have a few questions:

1. Since I already know how to make WMP play nice with .mov files (Currently, I'm using WMP 11 for XP), I was wondering how come I cannot add my .mov files to my WMP library? I'm worried that I will not see them in the Media Center interface. (But I have my Movie trailers folder monitored by WMP)

2. When I use my XBOX 360 as an extender, will it be able to play my trailers in 5.1 channel surround? Or will they be in stereo?

3. When streaming media to an extender, which one does all the decoding? The Extender or the Media Center?

I really hope you guys can help me, like the way you helped the others. Looking forward for a reply.

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umdivx

· #2 · May 25, 2007

Quote:
Originally Posted by deiphobus /forum/post/0

First of all, I would like to say thank you to the entire community. I found a lot of very useful information here, especially when it comes to getting WMP to play nice with .mov files.

Okay, here's my situation.

I'm going to do an extensive upgrade of my current PC. Getting Vista is on top of my list. I want to enjoy all my Quicktime HD movie trailers using Vista's Media Center, using my XBOX 360 as the extender. I have a few questions:

1. Since I already know how to make WMP play nice with .mov files (Currently, I'm using WMP 11 for XP), I was wondering how come I cannot add my .mov files to my WMP library? I'm worried that I will not see them in the Media Center interface. (But I have my Movie trailers folder monitored by WMP)

MCE is only programmed to look for certain file types, and I am pretty sure that .MOV is one of them, however if you re-name the files to .m4v or something along those lines you might be able to get them to show up in MCE. ALL .mov hd files are in mpeg4 format, and you can simply re-name them and still render them usable.

Quote:
2. When I use my XBOX 360 as an extender, will it be able to play my trailers in 5.1 channel surround? Or will they be in stereo?

Not sure about 360 playing them at all. You "might" be able to get them to play by first getting the spring update which adds mpeg2 and h.264 support to the 360. But that will ONLY add that support to the main part of the 360 and not the MCE part of teh 360.

I think your just pretty much SOL from getting anything but mpeg2 and WMVHD files to play on the 360.

Quote:
3. When streaming media to an extender, which one does all the decoding? The Extender or the Media Center?

the 360 does. Back when it was the first gen xbox the pc did, to a point. and as of right now only mpeg2 and WMV(HD) are supported in the MCE part of the 360.

- Josh

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deiphobus

Discussion Starter · #3 · May 25, 2007

Hi! Thanks for the fast reply.

It's a pity that MCE can only play stereo h.264 files. I was thinking that if the PC does all the decoding, then all my worries would be solved. I managed to add the QT HD trailers in my WMP11 library now. I just had them renamed to .hdmov

By the way, how do you properly rename a file extension?

If anyone else has suggestions/tips, please do let me know. Thank you.

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umdivx

· #4 · May 25, 2007

Quote:
Originally Posted by deiphobus /forum/post/0

Hi! Thanks for the fast reply.

It's a pity that MCE can only play stereo h.264 files. I was thinking that if the PC does all the decoding, then all my worries would be solved.

if your using SPDIF out to a AV receiver, then your PC is NOT doing the decoding, the reciver is. Your PC just passes through the audio to the receiver and doesn't touch it.

but because h.264, mpeg4, and other media based files don't have DD or DTS encoded audio, it'll just get passed through as 2 channel audio.

Now if you were to get a sound card that did DD Live or DTS Live, like the X-Meridian, and X-Mystique sound cards then no mater what audio format you played the sound card would in real time, re-encode all 5.1 audio back into DD so that your receiver and then decode that DD stream and send it to the correct speakers.

So thats why you can get 5.1 out of DVDs and such is because they are already encoded in DD 5.1 audio.

Quote:
I managed to add the QT HD trailers in my WMP11 library now. I just had them renamed to .hdmov

By the way, how do you properly rename a file extension?

just like you renamed them .hdmov, just try re-naming them to .m4v and see if that works.

- Josh

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deiphobus

Discussion Starter · #5 · May 26, 2007

I had them renamed automatically by using Media Player Classic. What I'm saying is, how do I rename the file extension of the trailers I already have (manual renaming)?

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Uegis

· #6 · May 26, 2007

Quote:
Originally Posted by deiphobus /forum/post/0

I had them renamed automatically by using Media Player Classic. What I'm saying is, how do I rename the file extension of the trailers I already have (manual renaming)?

Open any random folder. Go to "Tools" on the top and then go to "Folder Options". Hit the "View" tab. And then uncheck "Hide extensions for known files types" Now all your files should show the extensions and you can manually change them by right clicking the file and selecting rename. Just say yes when they say this will change file association, which is what you want.

An easier way to do this instead of renaming is doing a registry change so that MCE will recognize it. Saves a lot of time.

http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/80326.aspx

These instructions work for all files, so just replace .RM with the extension of your choice.

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