CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

perisoft · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 2920 Location: Ithaca, NY

I'm on the verge of doing some computer swappery to upgrade my HTPC to a Core2Quad @ 2.6. Is there a way I can do straight-up software-rendered bluray playback on a system with those chops, so I can do post-processing? (mainly gamma, though if you know me from the forum, you know I'll try to do something else to it for fun)

The thing will probably be about 20x as fast as the Athlon X2 '5400' I've got now, but I'm still not sure that's enough! Smile

My dream setup would be to basically do the equivalent of what I do with DVDs - rip straight to the HD (if I want to timeshift; if not, play straight off the drive), pick the folder/drive with Zoom Player (or whatever), off to the races. Realistic, or pipe dream?

greg_mitch · Joined: 03 May 2006 Posts: 5320

Supposedly media player classic can do this. I have had limited success in reality.

You can also supposedly rip to ISO and mount it to play in PowerDVD. I don't have the new powerdvd so I haven't tried this yet either.

My laptop only has a Core2Duo 7350 so maybe I am limited by that.

perisoft · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 2920 Location: Ithaca, NY

PowerDVD won't have ffdshow as an option, though, if I understand correctly. I'd also very much like to use AC3Filter for audio decode, since I like to send the LFE output to my two front speakers (Vegas that go down to 17hz or something idiotic, and are basically subwoofers that also do midrange and highs Razz

).

WanMan · Joined: 19 Mar 2006 Posts: 10270

I do not know about Blu-ray, but I can say I have played back 720P p0rn using MPC with really good results. Razz

This is on a machine with modest components (2-core middle of the road).

perisoft · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 2920 Location: Ithaca, NY

I played back 1080p HD WMV on a Pentium D at 2ghz, and even on a Pentium M at 2.0, but that's a different animal than bluray. Bandwidth is far different and the decoding is more difficult, I believe (?). My office machine is fairly similar, maybe I'll have to rip-n-transfer something to it and try. Or just wait until I get the HTPC going again. Smile

jask · Joined: 17 Mar 2006 Posts: 10187 Location: kamloops BC

http://www.9down.com/KMPlayer-2-9-3-1284-Beta-10543/

FFDshow codecs,AC3,MKV files, and a whole lot more.

nuttall_chris · Posted: Sun Feb 01, 2009 6:05 pm Post subject:

I have a Core2Quad at 2.4G and it has no problem software decoding Bluray in either Powerdvd or MPC or Zoomplayer. THis is only for playback, if you will be trying to manipulate the video in any way that requires re-encoding you basically need a supercomputer to do this in real time. I don't think there are any computers on the market right now that will do this in real time, even if you overclock it like crazy.

Chris.

perisoft · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 2920 Location: Ithaca, NY

nuttall_chris · Posted: Sun Feb 01, 2009 6:31 pm Post subject:

I play ISO images mounted with Slysoft Virtual CloneDrive. I use PowerDVD for playback. Playback can also be directly off disk.

Chris.

perisoft · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 2920 Location: Ithaca, NY

Mark_A_W · Posted: Mon Feb 02, 2009 1:47 am Post subject:

perisoft · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 2920 Location: Ithaca, NY

Gotcha, Mark. Yeah, I should have said, "minus the powerDVD part" or some such - that was part of the question; whether I could, and how to, do software rendering of bd to give me good gamma control.

perisoft · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 2920 Location: Ithaca, NY

Well, I've got the box back together again. Naturally, XP is complaining that I need to reactivate it, and preventing me from doing so... of course, if I had a hacked copy, I wouldn't HAVE this problem. But as a legitimate customer... :rolleyes:

Anyway, now the job is to try to get BD playback with gamma going.

I could potentially swap the HD4850 for a 9800GTX, if there's an issue with gamma, but I need to make sure that the box with the 9800GTX won't suffer too badly in 3D performance if I swap. The reason I originally put the ATI in there was so I could keep using powerstrip, so NOW... heh.

perisoft · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 2920 Location: Ithaca, NY

So, I'm playing around with WALL-E now, both the bd itself and ripped. Playback of the bd disc is fine in powerDVD, but no gamma and it refuses to use software mode (without saying so or saying why).

I can drop the .m2ts into zplayer and mpclassic, and it plays - but not terribly smoothly, and then with a big stutter every once in a while, often accompanied by what look like compression errors - kind of like it didn't get any data for a while.

FFDShow is only reporting 22% CPU load whilst doing this, so I don't -think- it's CPU - but I'm new in town, so to speak.

Any advice? It'd be appreciated!

emdawgz1 · Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 7949

perisoft · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 2920 Location: Ithaca, NY

Elaine Benes · Joined: 25 Apr 2006 Posts: 1416

perisoft · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 2920 Location: Ithaca, NY

I may have spoken somewhat too soon... it's 99% there: The only problem is that there's a tiny stutter every few seconds. You can only see it in smooth pans, but instead of bzzzzzzzzzzz, you get bzzz--zzzz--zzzz--zzzz... It's probably only a 10ms pause, but it's obviously No Good for watching anything.

I still haven't spent a huge amount of time with it, though.

One problem is that it only uses one core, so one core is sitting there at 80-90% while the other three are twiddling their thumbs... Sad

Elaine Benes · Joined: 25 Apr 2006 Posts: 1416

perisoft · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 2920 Location: Ithaca, NY

This is kmplayer opening the .m2ts file directly - it doesn't seem to load the whole bd structure with menus, etc. But it'll load the .m2ts right off the disc or out of the folder if I rip the disc to the HD (so presumably also would play off an .iso). This is with anydvdhd, of course.

It seems like the stutter thing goes away if I set KMplayer to "speed (1ghz)" - which is kind of funny to do with a quadcore at 2.4 Razz

but from doing some comparisons with powerDVD, it doesn't seem to be as smooth. Unfortunately I can't get any dropped frame / rendering stats out of kmplayer, so it's hard to tell exactly what's happening.

Oddly, gamma in the kmplayer menus works fine, but gamma in the ATI panel has no effect. So KMplayer is doing SOMETHING that makes its internal gamma work with an ATI card. Odd.