mp freezes when stopping or changing movie/ bad colors when playing movie in mp

[montecristo]

hi guys,

i have a few problems wich i need help with.

1: when playing a movie in MP. everything goes well. but when i want to stop the movie or play another movie or music MP freezes and i have to restart MP everytime. i have no idea what the cause is and how to fix it.
also "stretch" appears to be not working properly. when i select stretch in the settings and play a movie stretch is not activated. i have to set everytime while movie is playing.

2: color of video in MP very bad.
i have powerdvd 8 ultra on my brand new htpc and very obvious also MP.
when i play a movie (from dvd or hdd) in powerdvd the colors and quality of the movie are outstanding, marvellous...very very nice.
but when i play a movie (from dvd or hdd) in MP the colors and quality of the movie are really not that good.
the colors are really flat and not so bright as playing in powerdvd.
it reminds me of the old VHS tapes, it's not that bad but comparable. in the configuration settings i set the videocodecs to the ones from powerdvd but nothing changes when i play in MP. the image is still the same (not good). when i select external player and start a movie in MP powerdvd will pop up and start playing (with marvellous view). but i dont want to use that because powerdvd pops up over MP and makes it difficult to control. i just want only MP running.
anybody knows what the problem is?

3: question about ripping dvd's.
i use dvdfab 5 to rip my dvd to my hdd (only the movies, not entire dvd)
when i rip from the dvd i currently rip the original format. the quality is ok but every movie takes about 6 to 7 GB of space wich is a lot.
i tried to do a generic copy in H264 format (with a file size setting of 1 GB) but the quality of the video is really poor and not viewable. it's like playing one of those small sized internet porn videos at 200%.
i do have to say it took a very long time to copy to H264 and i stopped halfway. but i could view the first part and i didn't like the quality. but before i continue with all my other movies does anybody know a format i can copy to without visible quality loss and that takes a lot less space on my HDD?

if anybody knows a sollution let me know.

thank you,

Montecristo

[Paranoid Delusion]

i tried to do a generic copy in H264 format (with a file size setting of 1 GB) but the quality of the video is really poor and not viewable. it's like playing one of those small sized internet porn videos at 200%.

I must admit, did all mine using Nero Recode set to 1.4gb with 5.1 sound and the resulting MP4's are superb quality, the only downside to this is the rest of the shitty software that comes with it and how it reacts to windows.

Hope you get a lot more suggestions on software, but h.264 should give you superb results.

[montecristo]

hi guys,

i'm still trying to fix this but to no avail.
i'm starting to go a little wackabuku here.

now it seems that the stretch mode is ok now (altough i did not change that setting)

as for the subtitle, in the settings i enabled the dutch subtitles but every time when i start a movie there are no subtitles.
i have to select every time when the movie is playing.

now i could manage a few times to change to another movie without problems, but then it was freezing again. for now working sometimes.

i also notice when i play in MP i see vertical stripes in the screen, you can see it very good on black.
i don't have this problem when i play in PDVD8. as said before playing in PDVD8 is really marvellous.


now i also have a problem with powerdvd 8 ultra.

before i had no problems with it. i just installed it a few days ago on my new htpc.
before i could play a movie from hdd (ifo file) without any problem on PDVD8 ultra.
but now its not working anymore.
most of the times pdvd freezes when it starts to play (black screen).
sometimes it starts playing very slowly with a lot of stuttering and no sound.
i use the spdif output. i set the output in pdvd on spdif, but everytime if i start the settings are back to 2 channel.
i already reinstalled (update included) pdvd but have the same problem.

i'm running vista ultimate.

i really need some help here.
i'm going slightly wackabuku


Montecristo

[Paranoid Delusion]

If you require some experiences with Vista Ultimate SP1 look here.

Maybe i was unlucky, but "touch wood" since install 3, have not had any issues.

Not sure whether i mentioned it in post, but one problem was PDVD8 not remembering speaker config.

[montecristo]

i will check that further.

but everything is brand new and all software (vista, nvidia, etc.) is up to date
the strange thing is i had no problem before.
maybe its caused by some vista update (automatically).

the biggest problem now is that i cannot play ifo files from hdd in powerdvd anymore.
and in mp the picture quality is very bad.

i've been busy 3 days already (full time, till the middle of the night) with this problem alone.

i deleted powerdvd, MP (including registry) and reinstalled everything to no avail.
its wearing me out.
maybe i should do format c: and start all over again
that will take another 2 days

montecristo

i give up.

i will do a format c: and start all over again.
i just need to now if it will affect my 2 1TB hdd's. i think not, but need to be sure, because i only have 3 days (too much) experience with Vista.

also, should i install SP1 again? before i install everything else.
or should i just stay away from updates and disable auto update.
i'm only using it as a dedicated htpc. at least thats what i'm trying for the last few days.


montecristo

[Paranoid Delusion]

Mediaportal is set to run with the latest service packs, otherwise it should give you a nagging message stating to update.

Before you go to extreme, try running filmerit (link in sig) and see if any codec errors, and did you follow gooses guide to codecs

If you have other HD drives within your pc, they should remain untouched by a reinstall, just make sure ALL motherboard drivers are installed, do not rely on windows doing this, because it does not, as i recently found

Regards

[SMa]

Originally Posted by montecristo

i just need to now if it will affect my 2 1TB hdd's. i think not, but need to be sure, because i only have 3 days (too much) experience with Vista.

I always disconnect my harddisks when installing a new Windows. A while ago I didn't disconnect them and installed Windows XP SP1, and all my disks were recognized as 7.88GB (XP SP1 and large dynamic disks == no go, XP rewrites the firmware to a BIOS int 13h version) ... It took me 2 days to recover 3.25TB ... One hard lesson learned there


Maybe I looked over it in your posts, but what triggered your problems?

[montecristo]

i already did a format c: and installed vista again. now busy with the upgrade. my other 2 drives are still intact.
i hope this time everything will be ok.

i will first install all the upgrades for vista, nvidia 9500GT, club 3D 7.1. theatron agrippa soundcard, imon (for remote and display only), etc..
then i will try again to install MP and powerdvd 8 ultra.
i will also instal ffdshow this time.

it already gave me some peace of mind by starting all over again.


montecristo

Originally Posted by SMa

Maybe I looked over it in your posts, but what triggered your problems?

see my first and second post.

quick, give me a rope

i'll hang myself

i reinstalled everything except for MP.

powerdvd was working fine.
except i couldnt get audio output at spdif setting wich i could before.

then i restarted the computer and now everytime i start moving the mouse the whole pc freezes and i have to do a hard reset