Mediaportal won't play DVD rips

[biff]

I've posted this on the MP forum and I'm getting lots of looks, just no answers, so I'm wondering if someone here might have an idea. When I go to play a DVD (all my media is ripped to the HDD's) MP just freezes up and I need to end the task in task manager to get out. I just noticed it today since all my stuff is BD rips and its only the kids stuff that is DVD. All the BD stuff works perfectly BTW. I'm using the moving pictures plug in and TMT as an external player.

I know the rips are good because when I launch TMT from the desktop I can watch those movies with no problem.

Anyone have any ideas?

[JD]

So I'm guessing their XVID? Running Windows 7 SP1? There was a MP update for it.

However I use the internal player so I've never ran into such an issue. Any reason why you use TMT over internal with ffdshow and the likes?

[ipaine]

I was going to say I have also had no issue as I am using the internal player. Since I'm not at home I can't tell you what codec pack I used, but I can play anything I through at it now. From TV rips with 2 channel mp3 audio to BD rips with DTS-MA audio and everything in between.

One thing comes to mind, what version of Mediaportal? I know before I just recently redid mine with a full rebuild I was getting semi regular crashes to the desktop, but that didn't seem to matter what I played. Now with the newest version of everything I don't think I have had any crashes.

[biff]

I looked into what Xvid was and looks like a codec... to make a file similar to a .mkv or .avi?? If I understand your question properly I'm not making any files out of it, just a straight rip. I didn't see any reason not to use TMT to play DVDs. I wanted as much consistency as posible since this HTPC will be going in the family room and it will be my wife that uses it all the time. From what I can tell MP is trying to start the VIDEO_TS.IFO file which is correct. FWIW when I double click on this file in windows explorer, TMT starts up and the movie plays so everything seems OK there.

I'm running Vista Home Premium SP2 and MP 1.1.3.

[edit]
so you have to install codecs to play DVDs using the internal player? I haven't installed any codecs (not sure what MP puts in on it's own at install though). I'm just thinking... maybe MP is trying to play the DVD with the internal player and is locking because it has no/improper codecs, rather than launching it with TMT. I'll try taking .ifo out of the recognized video extensions to see what differences that makes.
[/edit]

[JD]

Vista has built-in DVD codecs, so that's not the issue.

And how did you rip the DVD? Just copy and paste the files off the disc? If so, they could still be copy-protected which is causing the problems. Though strange why it works outside of MP fine.

When you said you ripped DVDs, I just figured you would of encoded with XVID or H.264 to reduce the file size since 4-8GB is pretty hefty to keep around for DVDs (especially with the lack of quality). "DVD Quality" rips should only be 700-1400MB typically.

It could be that MP isn't "seeing" all the other files. Maybe try opening a .VOB directly through MP? That might work.

[biff]

I rip the disks (both DVD and Bluray) with AnyDVD HD, it keeps original file structure and AFAIK removes copy protection in the process. Yeah it is kind of a waste of space but I really like the fact that when it plays it acts as if the original disk is in the drive, all menuing, extras, and other crap is all functional. When I started doing this I did the the decoding/encoding stuff to shed all the extra junk but I quickly realized I'd rather buy the extra drive space it requires rather than spend all that time doing the work myself especially now that 2TB are ~$75. And TBH I kind like how it plays as the original disc would... even if I almost never use it.

I'm pretty sure I never told MP what file type it should be using. I just know it was accessing the .ifo file from looking at a log. I'll try some stuff tonight. BTW I attached the log file that MP spits out from debugging mode if it means anything to you.

Thanks

[JD]

Out of curiosity, does it work if you insert the actual DVD into the drive? And play it through MP of course.

And I'm not too big on reading log files

[biff]

Thanks for your help but I solved the problem... or well averted it anyway. I went back to MP 1.1.2 and everything works perfectly.

[JD]

Originally Posted by biff

Thanks for your help but I solved the problem... or well averted it anyway. I went back to MP 1.1.2 and everything works perfectly.

Strange. Did you report it to the MP team? Seems like a fairly significant bug. Though I guess 1.1.3 was only intended for Windows 7 SP1...

[biff]

Originally Posted by JD

Strange. Did you report it to the MP team? Seems like a fairly significant bug. Though I guess 1.1.3 was only intended for Windows 7 SP1...

That might be the issue, also could be that I'm using TMT2 which is fairly old. Whatever it is I seem to have been the only one with the problem.