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Configuring Bluray and HDDVD playback

From Moving Pictures

To begin with, Mediaportal currently does *not* support Bluray/HD-DVD playback with their internal player.

The Moving Pictures plugin, being part of mediaportal, can't really change that but we can try to make setting up a playable solution somewhat easier. By default moving pictures will only playback the main feature of the BR/HDDVD. This can all be done in the internal player but you'll sacrifice the navigation-menu and the other content that might be on the disc/image/hddrip.

As you might or might not know you can already setup an external player in mediaportal. The downside of this is will be used for all content and currently most of the other content plays just fine internally. What we've done here is add the ability to setup an external player that is only used when the content is a blu-ray or hd-dvd disc/image/hddrip.

Contents

How it works

When you setup an external player and Play a BR/HD-DVD movie Moving Pictures will do the following:

  • Hide (and lower resources used by ) Mediaportal
  • Launch the external player and play the movie.
  • Unhide Mediaportal when you are done watching.

The player stays active untill *YOU* exit it (or perhaps if it is supported by commandline arguments, when the movie ends playback), when moving pictures detects that you exited the player it will restore mediaportal.

Be warned... This solution is not perfect and probably never will be untill the internal player supports these formats. You'll probably have to tweak some stuff yourself (like keeping remote control functionality).

Using the default player

The default setting in moving pictures for playing back bluray/hd-dvd is to use the default mediaportal player. To confirm this check the following:

  1. Open the mediaportal configuration
  2. Go to Plugins -> Moving Pictures
  3. Click CONFIG to open the plugin configuration
  4. Now go to About -> Advanced Settings
  5. Mediaportal GUI -> Bluray/HD-DVD Playback
  6. Make sure "Use External Player" is set to "false"

Not using an external player means we just play the main feature direct from one of the stream files located in the video disc structure. However, mediaportal needs to know about the video extensions of these files before it even tries to play them internally (it will open them in Windows Media Player otherwise). To fix that we need to add two extensions to the mediaportal configuration:

  1. Open the mediaportal configuration
  2. Go to Videos-> Video Extensions
  3. Type: .m2ts and click Add. (Blu-ray)
  4. Type: .evo and click Add. (HD-DVD)

If you want to to enable playing back images as well you should add all the image extensions you have also (like .iso etc..) and setup Daemon Tools. But this is kinda out of scope for this tutorial for now.

Now you are ready to playback BR/HD-DVD content! (no menu, main feature only)

Using an external player

In order to have the full Bluray/HD-DVD experience you have to use an external player. Currently there are two commercial players around that can do this for you. To make use of an external player in Moving Pictures you need to check the following:

  1. Open the mediaportal configuration
  2. Go to Plugins -> Moving Pictures
  3. Click CONFIG to open the plugin configuration
  4. Now go to About -> Advanced Settings
  5. Mediaportal GUI -> Bluray/HD-DVD Playback
  6. Set "Use External Player" to "true"
  7. For "Executable" Fill in the complete path to the executable of the player
  8. Set "Command-line arguments" to whatever the player accepts and is needed (see variables below)
 %filename% 
complete path and/or filename for the video
 %fps% 
framerate for this video


NOTE: be certain that the executable you setup is the actual player and not some autorun/gateway program (for example uDTStart.exe in ArcSoft is NOT the actual player). Also be aware that you have to put quotes around the %filename% variable in the command-line arguments for the player.

It's also possible to use .bat/.cmd file as executable to trigger a range of actions (like switching monitor framerate) as long as this file stays an active process untill you end the playback


Example Configurations (for external players)

PowerDVD

Executable
C:\Program Files\CyberLink\PowerDVD\PowerDVD.exe
Command-line Arguments
/fullscreen "%filename%"

ArcSoft TotalMedia Extreme/Theatre

Executable
C:\Program Files\ArcSoft\TotalMedia Extreme\Digital Theatre\uDigital Theatre.exe
Command-line Arguments
"%filename%"

Because ArcSoft TotalMedia Extreme/Theatre is shipped with a nice MCE Plugin I recommend using this config:

Executable
C:\Program Files\ArcSoft\TotalMedia Extreme\Digital Theatre\uMCEDVDPlayer.exe

TotalMedia Extreme/Theatre can play BD/HDDVD structures, so there is no need to point directly to one file (and can't play HDDVD pointing to "%filename%"). Using this config:

Command-line Arguments
"%filename%"

it opens the whole disc and everything plays fine.


Alternative example

This examples uses a .bat file and passes the foldername to arcsoft

Executable
<your location>playbr.bat
Command-line Arguments
"%filename%"

contents of playbr.bat: 

 
set dd=%1
"C:\Program Files\ArcSoft\TotalMedia Theatre 3\uDigital Theatre" "%dd:~1,-17%"

This works for Blu-ray by stripping the last 16 characters from the default file that Moving Pictures looks for (Title\BDMV\Index.bdmv) thus only passing the title folder.

This does not work for HD-DVD as it looks for (Title\ADV_OBJ\DISCID.DAT) and requires the last 19 characters be removed to pass only the title folder.

The following example checks for the file extension .DAT condition and strips the correct number of characters. 

set dd=%1
if %~x1==.DAT goto HD_DVD

:BLU_RAY
"C:\Program Files\ArcSoft\TotalMedia Theatre 3\uMCEDVDPlayer" "%dd:~1,-17%"
goto:eof

:HD_DVD
"C:\Program Files\ArcSoft\TotalMedia Theatre 3\uMCEDVDPlayer" "%dd:~1,-20%"
goto:eof

This gets rid of the nasty "Unsupported File Format" error when attempting to play an HD-DVD with this method.

Tips & Tricks

Change refreshrate

If you want also to change the refreshrate automatically to 24Hz you can call the external player using Display Changer.

Executable
C:\Path to\dc.exe
Command-line Arguments
-refresh=24 "C:\Program Files\CyberLink\PowerDVD8\PowerDVD8.exe" "%filename%"

Enable BD/HD-DVD Support on XP

Windows XP doesn't support the filesystem used on most BD/HD-DVD media. You can check this by inserting/mounting a disc and try to navigate it with windows explorer. If you can't navigate it then you should follow this tutorial:

  1. Download UDF2.5 Reader File System Driver for Windows XP
  2. Unpack it and start the setup 
It will tell you, that you cannot install it on your non-Toshiba PC.
DO NOT CLOSE THIS MESSAGE BOX.
  1. Navigate to your temp directory with explorer. You'll find a directory named like this: {1347D5A6-4FE0-476A-B85F-D0FC91F55EB0}
  2. Enter it. You'll find two files: thdudf.inf and thdudf.sys
  3. Right click thdudf.inf, select "Install".
  4. Wait a while. Close the Message Box.
  5. Reboot.

XP should be able to read the BD/HD-DVD's now and playback using Moving Pictures will be enabled.

Retrieved from "http://moving-pictures.tv/wiki/Configuring_Bluray_and_HDDVD_playback"