Login at Kodi Home

piecutter · 2011-01-30, 09:26

Hi, I guess I'm abit of a n00b here. I was attracted to XBMC by the Aeon skin someone duplicated for the WDTV hacked FW that I've been playing around with since the device first came out in Nov. of 07. Lots of fun stuff there, but I decided it was time for something with a little more capabilities, so I started building a HTPC about a month ago. XBMC just seemed like the logical choice for a GUI that could tie it all together.
Anyway, I've got this Zotac Ion GPU (GT218) that plays everything great using MPCHC, TheKmplayer, PowerDVD 10, which all seem to utilize the hardware acceleration just fine. But I've been getting disappointing results with XBMC. It's as if it doesn't recognize this card as a VPDAU capable device. I've yet to see it once using HW acceleration. I can't even find a setting for it! Am I just missing something, here? Or did I just pick a card that it doesn't know how to play with?
Throw me a bone, here. I'm not averse to going in and getting dirty, just bear in mind that the WDTV hacks are my only experience with "penguinware".

steppedup · 2011-01-30, 09:34

DXVA2 enabled in Video settings?

If so, here's a mini-rundown I made:

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=92363

If none of those, then grab a debug log while running a problem file and post it to pastebin.com, with link back here.

Cheers!

piecutter · 2011-01-30, 17:25

I don't even find choice for DXVA2 under video settings. I actually read that post before I posted. This is XBMC 10.0 r35647 on WinXP SP3 32b, if that helps. I don't see anything in Device Manager under "HDMI sound", but I do seem to have 4 listings for "Nvidia High Definition Audio". Is that what the post is refering to? Could that actually stop XBMC from showing a DXVA2 selection?

piecutter · 2011-01-30, 17:33

There's also an onboard Intel Graphics that's disabled. GPU-Z always lists it first even though it's disabled. Could this be the culprit? XBMC system info shows only the Ion.

piecutter · 2011-01-30, 17:57

Here's the debug log: http://pastebin.com/ivgSx6Mf

**CrystalP** · 2011-01-30, 20:43

You need Vista/7 for hardware acceleration. Or try the live cd.

piecutter · 2011-01-30, 21:14

Ooooops! That would explain it! Guess I missed that fine point. XP just not compatible, or nobody cared to go there? I did burn a live CD to try things out, so I guess I'll go that route, if there's no other option.

piecutter · 2011-01-31, 00:33

Now, wait a minute, isn't there some way of having XBMC call up a player other than DVDplayer? Say, PowerDVD 10 for Blu-rays or MPCHC for stored media?

steppedup · 2011-01-31, 01:15

Yep:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=43511

ckong3309 · (This post was last modified: 2011-01-31, 04:57 by ckong3309.)

piecutter:

Yup. In fact, I'm doing this on Vista 64-bit as XBMC won't play my .m2ts files. Here's the link to the Wiki:

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOW...a_playback

In Vista 64-bit, I'm using this as my file C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\XBMC\userdata\playercorefactory.xml:

Code:
<playercorefactory>

<players>

   <player name="MPC-HC" type="ExternalPlayer" audio="false" video="true">

     <filename>C:\Program Files (x86)\Media Player Classic - Home Cinema\mpc-hc.exe</filename>

     <args>"{1}" /fullscreen /close</args>

     <hidexbmc>false</hidexbmc>

     <hideconsole>false</hideconsole>

     <hidecursor>false</hidecursor>

     <forceontop>false</forceontop>

   </player>

</players>

<rules action="prepend">

   <rule filetypes="mkv|MOV|hdmov|wmv|m2ts|ts|RTMP|flv|swf| vf|x-flv" player="MPC-HC"/>

</rules>

</playercorefactory>

Unfortunately, the Windows desktop showed briefly as MPC-HC was launching, so I did two additional things:

1) In XBMC, set "System -> System -> Video Output -> Use a fullscreen window rather than true fullscreen".

2) On my Vista 64-bit PC, created the following file C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\XBMC\userdata\advancedsettings.xml:

Code:
<advancedsettings>

    <fullscreen>true</fullscreen>

    <videoextensions>

        <add>.m2ts</add>

    </videoextensions>

    <alwaysontop>yes</alwaysontop>

</advancedsettings>

MPC-HC works fine in Vista and Win7 since they have DXVA (so not WinXP). But...that doesn't matter. The key is, you have to find a player that will play high-def videos from a command line, and exits nicely. (I own PowerDVD9 so if you figure that out, I'd appreciate a post here.)

I'd rather use the XBMC's built-in video player as it's cleaner and has a nicely integrated interface, but that's not an option right now as of this writing (version 10.0). I'm hoping they will release a version or build soon that fixes the issue once in for all. Then...I can get rid of these work-arounds.

Although I like XBMC better, I'd recommend you try Boxee. The player that comes with Boxee works fine with my high-def .m2ts videos on my PC, so it might work for you as well.

http://www.boxee.tv/

Boxee is apparently forked from XBMC, so it'll feel similar.

P.S. I'm a noob too, so if you see a better way to code these statements in the .xml files, please feel free to comment.

piecutter · 2011-01-31, 06:47

And I was just looking at that post! So, there is hope. I was not liking the Live boot route as it seemed a bit to complicated to get it INSIDE the case instead of on some external USB device.
Boxee? A little too Bauhausee, Applee or something I can't quite put my finger on for my tastes.
I'm going to give this a try. Doesn't look too hard. Only problem is, I now have to figure out why PowerDVD 10, in the interim, has suddenly decided to start choking on Blu-rays!