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  1. Member
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    Apr 2009
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    I finally added a Blu-ray drive to my PC about 2 weeks ago. Went with an LG DVDRW combo drive with 8x BD read speed, the CH08 model. I couldn't be more thrilled about it, but I have many questions and issues however.

    Ok, where to start? I wasn't watching any 1080p content on my PC until just a couple months back when Shark007's codec packs enabled ffdshow DXVA decoding. I had even been running my Core 2 Duo E7200 at 3.8Ghz stable (24hrs Prime95) to attempt at getting 1080p playback smooth. That didn't work. The only remedy to choppy 1080p playback was the holy grail that is DXVA decoding. An example of the difference is in the series Planet Earth. On the first episode, at right around 1:30-1:45 or so, the screen gets filled with what appears to be 100's of thousands of birds in a zoom out panning shot. This scene absolutely slows to a crawl when vanilla ffdshow is doing the decoding and offloading all that processing onto the CPU. It doesn't matter whether the CPU is at stock 2.53Ghz or OC'd to 3.8Ghz. However, once ffdshow was released with DXVA capability this scene plays back flawlessly. It really is a sight to see. Using Shark007's codec packs allow me to always playback x264 MKV's via ffdshow DXVA thru Windows Media Center 7 x64. I have not been able to achieve that functionality by installing various versions of ffdshow and Haali manually, and alot of trial and error with both MCDU and Win7DSFilterTweaker.

    OK, so I'm sure alot of people reading this by now are gonna say something like "flux, if DXVA is your goal have u looked alternatives to ffdshow?" The answer to that is no, and the reason why is very simple: Media Control. I have lots of MKVs that without Media Control are while not completely useless would be quite a hassle. For those who don't know, Media Control allows fast-forwarding and re-winding of video files from within Windows Media Center. It also allows the user to add bookmarks to files so you can pick up where you left off. Yes, I'm aware Windows Media Center 7 has a resume feature. Setting aside the RW/FF ability for the sake of argument here, the reason why I need the bookmarks feature is because I'm using My Movies 3 to organize and initiate playback of my MKVs which does not allow use of Media Center's built-in resume feature. However, having 2+ hour movies without the ability to FF or RW would be frustrating as well.

    So, so far what I'd like to have established is that I need ffdshow DXVA, Media Control, and My Movies 3 all working beautifully together in Windows Media Center 7 x64. They all do. I don't have any issues achieving this functionality.

    What then is the point of this thread? Well as I mentioned, I just added a Blu-ray drive. The reason why I list all of the above is because I want to be able to encode Blu-rays into high quality 1080p MKV's with AC3 or DTS 5.1 sound. These rips have to be encoded in AVC x264 for ffdshow DXVA to do the decoding though. Some movies, like Dark Knight and Planet Earth are in WVC1 format upon demuxing with tsMuxer and have to be re-encoded to AVC. The best solution I've been able to find is Ripbot264.The problem is that it doesn't like codec packs, and I haven't been able to achieve the playback functionality I need for accessibility and smooth 1080p playback without using Shark007's Win7 Packs. I do have Ripbot working, but with the latest Shark packs (2.4.3 x86 + 2.4.9 x64 as of 3/25), it requires me to install an older version of Haali, 1.9.42.1 (MatroskaSplitter110109.exe), than the Shark pack currently installs. This is cluttered and sloppy and the anal retentive geek in me would prefer to not have to do that, install an older version of Haali on top. I also have little weird oddities because of this, like Windows Explorer listing MKV's as MKA files. Not a big deal, but an annoying issue nonetheless I'd like to remedy.

    I also have an Acronis image of my Win7 C drive with everything installed and setup how I like, but with no video codecs or packs of any kind installed so if I break something video wise I can start over without a reformat/reconfig that takes 164 years to setup properly.

    So in a nutshell what I'm asking is how can I setup my system for the following:
    • Smooth & flawless 1080p x264 MKV playback over ffdshow DXVA decoding
    • ffdshow DXVA so that Media Control works for FF/RW + Bookmarking ability
    • Video playback must work via Windows Media Center 7 x64 so I can use My Movies 3
    • Clean manual install of Ripbot264 required programs for MKV encoding ability
    With all that said...I'm more than open to hear everyone's suggestions and alternatives and would really appreciate anyone's feedback. Thanks.
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  2. Get ffdshowmt and you can play 1080p h.264 with just about any dual core CPU. The regular ffdshow only has a single threaded h.264 decoder.
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  3. Member
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    ill check it out but the Shark packs I've been using for ages have had multi core optimizations for quite some time. Thanks for the reply.
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  4. Member
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    Dec 2009
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    The simple answer to your question is to stop using ripbot. Just use tsmuxer to mux what streams you want straight from the disc onto your desktop. Once it's there, use handbrake to enocde the file to h264 mkv. It's a much easier process than worrying about mulitple programs that ripbot uses. Trust me, 50+ blu-rays later and I'm still happy.
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