October 29, 2009

Media Woes

BD, DVD, MKV -- pick any two. That may well be the choice facing me. I used to have DVD and MKV and not BD, but now I have BD and DVD but not MKV (and not MP4).

I tried reinstalling the CCCP, and it didn't help any. Zoom Player still won't play MKV's. It displays the first frame and then freezes.

I decided to see if Windows Media Player could do it. It can, but sheesh what an inferior experience. For example, if I watch an MKV that way, I must watch the entire thing in order. There isn't any ability to jump around, or to fast forward, or to rewind partially to repeat a section, or anything like that. And I'm sure there's no mechanism for doing frame grabs, let alone single stepping.

It took me a couple of minutes to even figure out how to make it play a video file. Microsoft seems to be trying to turn Windows Media Player into a clone of iTunes.

Dear Microsoft: if I was interested in Apple Products, I would buy them from Apple. Sincerely, Steven

Of course, there's always the Media Center, but that thing's even more inconvenient.

I'm about to seriously consider emergency measures. There are two remaining to me. First, I can go online and buy the "Ultra" version of PowerDVD 9, the latest they offer. $90.

Second, I can try installing the release candidate of the next version of Zoom Player. (Which has been up for several months. I think development may have stalled.)

But both of those are kind of irreversible. If they don't work, I'm kind of up a stream without a paddle.

I may even end up in Hell: please, please, don't make me install VLC! Anything but that!

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Computers at 11:40 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
Post contains 298 words, total size 2 kb.

1 Don't forget about restore points; installing even that sort of software should not actually be irreversible. Or so the theory goes, anyhow. (Still, it's been around since XP... surely the wrinkles have mostly been ironed out.)

Posted by: Jeremy Bowers at October 29, 2009 12:36 PM (MTLEy)

2

You may be able to download and install the Windows XP mode (actually a virtual machine) and play your videos inside that.  You can "publish" apps so that they appear on the desktop like Citrix seamless apps.

I've used it to install a driver for a printer that won't work under Win7

Posted by: RickC at October 29, 2009 12:46 PM (zFTOh)

3 VLC won't help you much. I use it exclusively, and I can tell you that although the version 1.0 made enormous strides in its support of MKV, they will lose base frames indiscrimintely if they run out of CPU. As a result, I can now want old anime that only came in MKVs like ef, but not anything 800x1440. I cling to VLC because it makes taking screenshots easy, and I must have that feature for blogging. So, my solution was to find a provider of AVIs.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at October 29, 2009 12:58 PM (/ppBw)

4 In other words, unless we watch our BD anime on a BD player, it's not time to invest in BD media....

Posted by: ubu at October 29, 2009 03:19 PM (FxDET)

5 I don't know that I can really say that. That's my situation, but YMMV.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 29, 2009 03:43 PM (+rSRq)

6 I'm curious, do you have the same problems with Media Player Classic (Homecinema), which also comes with CCCP?  While I use ZoomPlayer as my main program (I prefer the controls), MPC has managed everything I've thrown at it... and it takes screenshots.

Note: this is not a recommendation.  I don't have BD, so I have no idea how (or even if) it functions with them. 

Posted by: Wonderduck at October 29, 2009 03:55 PM (4Mcos)

7 I haven't tried it, but I may have to. Installing the Zoom Player beta didn't help things any, so I'm running out of options.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 29, 2009 04:10 PM (+rSRq)

8

I just installed MPC 6.4.9.1 and it plays MKV's just fine. I wonder what it was that wedged ZoomPlayer so badly?

It's a bit strange using three different programs for three different formats, but it isn't prohibitive. I can live with this, I guess.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 29, 2009 04:23 PM (+rSRq)

9

MPC can also play DVDs, but I think I still prefer ZoomPlayer for that.

So that got me curious about how it did with BDs. It doesn't recognize a BD as being a video format, which means it doesn't do menus and things. But it can play an M2TS file, except that it doesn't handle all the audio codecs. The sound on the DBZ Bardock BD played fine (which was also the case for Zoom Player) but the sound for Aika Zero ain't there (likewise for ZP). Still it may well be my preferred choice for taking frame grabs from a BD, given that it has single-step and takes its frame grabs full size, no matter how big the window.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 29, 2009 04:43 PM (+rSRq)

10

All is not perfection, however. I was just trying out a downloaded MKV that has two audio tracks. (MediaInfo agrees that they're there.) Unfortunately, MPC only sees, and plays, the first one, which is to say English. Grumble.

It was "UltraManiac", so it's a small loss. Most of the fansubs I download don't have English tracks. But a few do, and that will be a disappointment.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 29, 2009 08:31 PM (+rSRq)

11 I often have problems with players not giving me the options to chose the audio and subtitle tracks from an MKV.  There is a work-around in that you can configure the media splitter to pre-select a different default set.  The CCCP codec includes a shortcut to "Haali Media Splitter Settings" under the filters folder if you let it install shortcuts in your start menu.  Go to "Options" and you can then set the Audio language priority "jpn;", Subtitle language priority "eng;", and Audio and Subtitle languages "jpn,eng;" values and those should come up by default, assuming the streams are labeled correctly.  A few times I've had to look at the streams with a tool or a player that can recognize the various tracks to see what they've been labeled on something encoded oddly, but usually the settings above work.

Posted by: David at October 29, 2009 09:55 PM (4NX60)

12 That works just fine.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 29, 2009 10:04 PM (+rSRq)

13

(amazing how much useful advice I've been getting the last couple of days.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 29, 2009 10:04 PM (+rSRq)

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