VC-1 on SandyBridge iGPU, Win7, SageTV7: What are my options?

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by Kirby

If someone can tell me how to play my Avatar BD rip (BDMV structure) inside sage, that would be great, with correct subtitles (color and font) and HD audio. However I have never been able to make that title work. almost all my others play fine. not avatar. Thus I use the awesome external player plugin!

If I'm not mistaken that is one of the few bd's that doesn't have the subtitles embedded in the video stream. I have a few others like that and have to use tmt.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by dcardellini

OK..... so there is a way to get M2TS going, just not smooth VC-1 encoded ones. So I must have something setup wrong, because I get an error if within Sagetv I browse local files, go to my bluray drive, pick an M2TS and try to play. Would I be better off ripping it to a folder? Any other thoughts on how I must be mangling this?

I have all of my blu-rays inside an m2ts container (except for the vc-1 blu-rays) and have no issues at all. You are trying to play directly from the disc so they are copy protected unless you are using anydvd-hd, and even then playing the .m2ts directly from the disc doesn't work very well.

[Kirby]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

If I'm not mistaken that is one of the few bd's that doesn't have the subtitles embedded in the video stream. I have a few others like that and have to use tmt.

I think you are right. That's why I just gave up, and decided to use Fuzzy's excellent plugin. Working great in Phoenix too.

Had some initial issues with it not auto-playing a movie, but once I learned that I needed to have all the server drives mapped on my client, it worked perfectly.

someday, I will try and figure out the whole event ghost or girder thing, but for the meantime, I just have to close the tmt app with my BT keyboard, as my remote control for my client is an MCE remote, so it works inside the TMT5 app when it gets launched.

[sflamm]

Never used the TMT plugin (pointer to it?)...

But using the TMT codecs alone work great inside SageTV. Unless you want menus etc why use the TMT player?

[Kirby]

Originally Posted by sflamm

Never used the TMT plugin (pointer to it?)...

But using the TMT codecs alone work great inside SageTV. Unless you want menus etc why use the TMT player?

Because the codecs alone wont let me play Avatar for one. And I like menus, and the ability to playback other content on the disc besides the feature film.

Maybe its a bad rip on my Avatar disc (I actually have 2 BD versions, so I might rip the other disc to test). But if its a bad rip, its odd that it plays fine in TMT5.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by sflamm

Never used the TMT plugin (pointer to it?)...

But using the TMT codecs alone work great inside SageTV. Unless you want menus etc why use the TMT player?

They don't if you want subtitles that aren't embedded in the video stream. Sage can't handle them (AFAIK). If sage can I'd love to know how.

[Fuzzy]

I use TMT5 for menus, subtitles, BDLive, 3DBluRay,, and for playing direct from disc. I rarely notice the switch between apps anyways, so there's no trade-off in using it.

[sflamm]

Fuzzy: can you give me a pointer to the plugin? (never tried it - but would like to give it a shot)

I usually rip without subtitles and dont care for menus myself... in that form the TMT codec standalone works great.

I have used and worked fine on Avatar... I assume there is something else going on with that on your end...

[Fuzzy]

Plugin is in the UI Mod repository, called BluRay/DVD External Playback or something like that. Takes some configuring to point it to your external program, but it's discussed to some level of detail in the thread: [PLUGIN] UIMOD:BluRay/DVD External Playback

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by dcardellini

OK..... so there is a way to get M2TS going, just not smooth VC-1 encoded ones. So I must have something setup wrong, because I get an error if within Sagetv I browse local files, go to my bluray drive, pick an M2TS and try to play. Would I be better off ripping it to a folder? Any other thoughts on how I must be mangling this?



I did load TMT5 and now use Fuzzy's great plugin! I could live with TMT5 for all bluray content. Using this plugin seems great for popping a BR disc in drive, launching TMT from Sagetv and enjoying.

But what do you do (Fuzzy) for ripped BR stuff? Do you launch TMT, then navigate thru TMT5' "Open file" to browse your content?

I really would like to navigate thru Sagetv's database with rich metadata, and launch on my choice of movie. Am I missing something here?

thx again in advance!

Ripping to a folder is the recommended practice. Since I'm not using TMT5 (yet anyway) I don't use Fuzzy's plugin. I rip each movie and/or episode to individual SINGLE files on my HD's with DVDFab/AnyDVDHD/Eac3to. I've thought about setting up TMT5 since I purchased it - just haven't gotten around to setting up Girder/Event Ghost to control it yet. I was having problems when I first tried BluRay playback myself. Once I removed the codec pack I had installed (Shark007) and just installed what I needed (FFDShow and Haali) I was fine. I even had to restore from an image as an uninstall of the codec pack didn't get rid of all of the remnants.

[dcardellini]

1. On the topic of not being able to play BR folder rips from within SageTV, I did rip to a folder, and Sagetv completely crashes on both a 785g iGPU and a Sandybridge iGPU system. Although I believe Fuzzy's approach is where I will end up on all of this, I don't like to leave mysteries like this unsolved.

The Sandybridge is a stock Win7, Sagetv7 with no added codecs or tweaks. The 785g system has the Haali/MPC-HC Codec addition I detailed above (no CODEC packs installed).

I suspect something is happening on the audio codec side.....any ideas here? What do I need to add to bitstream HD Audio (via HDMI to pre/pro) from the Sagetv playback of this BR rip folder? Maybe if I start down that path, I will "take care of" the possible audio-induced crash.

2. I need to read thru Fuzzy's posts on his plugin, because when I navigate in Sagetv to a BR Rip folder, and hit play, it does launch TMT5, but nothing plays. Must be a server-mapping issue. This really looks like the best long-term/future-proof/100% solution....so I will get this going. Fuzzy......any old posts on how to setup and integrate your Girder system?

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by dcardellini

Fuzzy......any old posts on how to setup and integrate your Girder system?

Not really... MY girder setup is far from optimal, and not a good basis for learning it. It is a setup that has been tweaked and changed for the last 5 years or so, and is very inconsistently done. I really do need to redo it one of these days, but it still 'works'... just not decipherable by anyone else.

[sflamm]

Use of Girder is complicated... a better approach for novices would be to use LMRemote.

Personally since I do not care about the menus and advanced features I just playback everything directly within SageTV using the TMT codec configured correctly with the SageTV demuxer enabled.

Unless you really need/want these extended features the lack of automatic remote integration is a *real* pain.

[panteragstk]

EventGhost is also very simple to use. I've got it doing all sorts of stuff to automate switching between programs. If my wife can use it, it's simple.

[jmv]

SageTV can handle subtitles embedded in .mkv but they have to be encoded to NTSC 480 resolution...the HD one's won't work. I use eac3to to rip all the english sups, then look for forced subs in those files (eac3to says if any captions are forced in the summary of the stream). If it has them, I convert the forced sups into 480 sub files using BDsuptosub program. That program has an option to convert resolution to NTSC 480...you then just use mkvmerge and include that sub file...it will play back on the HD300/SageTV

I wouldn't advise this for the feint of heart but it is possible...

mv

[panteragstk]

Sounds good to me. It will help eliminate the added complication of having to launch TMT5 just to play bd's with subs. Thanks

[dcardellini]

OK....did get both Intel and ATI systems to play BR Rip Folder directly from Sagetv with some tweaking of Sagetv Video/Audio Setup settings.

Also, did get Fuzzy's plugin to work after creating a batch file per his Plugin thread (REM'ed out girder calls and changed path to the "Program Files (x86)" folder).

The Intel system is hooked to an hd-bitstream-capable pre/pro via hdmi. When I play a BR Rip Folder through TMT5, I get DTS-HD bitstream. When I play BR Rip Folder through Sagetv, it gets downconverted to DTS. No matter what I play with, cannot seem to get this to work. any idea?

Also, anybody successful getting Music FLAC files to play in Sagetv7 Client?

thx!

Originally Posted by dcardellini

1. On the topic of not being able to play BR folder rips from within SageTV, I did rip to a folder, and Sagetv completely crashes on both a 785g iGPU and a Sandybridge iGPU system. Although I believe Fuzzy's approach is where I will end up on all of this, I don't like to leave mysteries like this unsolved.

The Sandybridge is a stock Win7, Sagetv7 with no added codecs or tweaks. The 785g system has the Haali/MPC-HC Codec addition I detailed above (no CODEC packs installed).

I suspect something is happening on the audio codec side.....any ideas here? What do I need to add to bitstream HD Audio (via HDMI to pre/pro) from the Sagetv playback of this BR rip folder? Maybe if I start down that path, I will "take care of" the possible audio-induced crash.

2. I need to read thru Fuzzy's posts on his plugin, because when I navigate in Sagetv to a BR Rip folder, and hit play, it does launch TMT5, but nothing plays. Must be a server-mapping issue. This really looks like the best long-term/future-proof/100% solution....so I will get this going. Fuzzy......any old posts on how to setup and integrate your Girder system?

[MattHelm]

Originally Posted by dcardellini

Also, anybody successful getting Music FLAC files to play in Sagetv7 Client?

thx!

I've been doing that for years. Not sure what I did though, but I am setting up a new client, so will let you know when I get it working. (want to say I use ffdshow's audio settings?)

[MattHelm]

Originally Posted by sflamm

The codec ax and dlls can be taken from a TMT5 trial installation.

The checkactivate.dll is NOT the old one used for TMT3. It is the latest doom9:

So, install the trial, copy the files you listed, add this one from doom9, and set SageTV to use them? You can then remove the trial TMT5?

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by MattHelm

So, install the trial, copy the files you listed, add this one from doom9, and set SageTV to use them? You can then remove the trial TMT5?

As long as you copy the codecs folder to another location you should be able to uninstall them without issue.

Also, for VC-1 decoding with sandybridge there is a quicksync decoder built into the LAV filters. I don't have the hardware so I haven't been able to try it, but I would think it would work well.