How to get M4V files to play in Windows

fuzz! · Post by **fuzz!** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 9:37 am

Hi guys,

I love the simplicity of this program, the fact that it does anamorphic encodes and includes chapter markings, the quality to speed ratio.. it's all fantastic. But I am finding myself with a bit of trouble trying to play the files under Windows XP.

I can play them using VLC 0.8.6d (although I do have to manually select the audio track to hear anything) but cannot play them using any kind of DirectShow media player (ie. Media Player Classic).

I have the latest FFDSHOW (actually I've tried a bunch of the later builds) but Media Player Classic (6.4.9.0) refuses to play the generated M4V files at all.

I can play other H264 media (in MKV containers) using the same player and codecs, so I assume it's a container issue.

So I installed the latest QuickTime binaries hoping that might help, but I still get the same result.

If anyone out there is experiencing the same issues I would love to hear from you. I don't really want to use VLC as a media player.

Oh, I also tried muxing into an MKV container using mkvmerge.. and while it 'played' in MPC, the video decode was FUBAR (wierd errors and artifacts everywhere) and it juttered during playback although CPU usage was negligable and the aspect ratio was lost.

Please help! Would love to finally have a usable DVD->AVC/AAC solution.

daman123x · Post by **daman123x** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 3:22 pm

**i could be wrong about this***

the best solution i have tested is the coreavc package (coreavc.com). ffdshow skipped around on my h264 files, coreavc plays them VERY nicely. definitely depends on your computer speed

fuzz! · Post by **fuzz!** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 8:30 pm

daman123x wrote:**i could be wrong about this***

the best solution i have tested is the coreavc package (coreavc.com). ffdshow skipped around on my h264 files, coreavc plays them VERY nicely. definitely depends on your computer speed

nah its not the h264 decoder.. the cpu is a decent core 2, theres no difference whether its coreavc or ffdshow in terms of speed here.

daman123x · Post by **daman123x** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 8:41 pm

no i'm not talking about the speed of the decoder, i've used (and use) ffdshow for about EVERYTHING except h.264, it just doesnt do jack for me. have you tried coreavc? best $10 i ever spent

fuzz! · Post by **fuzz!** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 6:59 am

fuzz! wrote:
daman123x wrote:**i could be wrong about this***

the best solution i have tested is the coreavc package (coreavc.com). ffdshow skipped around on my h264 files, coreavc plays them VERY nicely. definitely depends on your computer speed
nah its not the h264 decoder.. the cpu is a decent core 2, theres no difference whether its coreavc or ffdshow in terms of speed here.

well i installed coreavc but it made no difference. like i said its not decoding h264 thats the problem - its reading the m4v files that handbrake produces.

daman123x · Post by **daman123x** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 7:40 am

Settings?

Can you sent me a small <10 mb clip of a chapter?

fuzz! · Post by **fuzz!** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 8:37 am

thanks! sure! do you just want a truncated file or should i encode something else small?

settings? well as far as presets go i left latest wingui on default bar:

autocrop
700mb target
86kbps audio

daman123x · Post by **daman123x** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 1:20 pm

yeah just encode a chapter of something

fuzz! · Post by **fuzz!** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 9:00 pm

okay, got a small encode here

this tiny encode seems to work better than the others (700mb). windows media player can play it, media player classic gets audio (still no video) and vlc plays fine as usual. but i wouldnt have thought size has got anything to do with it.

fuzz! · Post by **fuzz!** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 9:11 pm

okay i've narrowed down the problem to media player classic.. when windows media player decodes em it's using ffdshow for video and audio - so theres nothing wrong there. its just purely a problem with media player classic being unable to understand the files.

i noticed that windows media player hooks into the 'haali media splitter' which mpc doesn't. i tried adding this to the 'external filters' section of mpc with no luck. do you know of a way to force the use of this splitter?

daman123x · Post by **daman123x** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 11:52 pm

disable mpc's internal decoders. other than that, what wmp does mpc does, they will both use the directshow splitter, then your codecs will fight for priority there

fuzz! · Post by **fuzz!** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 12:18 am

daman123x wrote:disable mpc's internal decoders. other than that, what wmp does mpc does, they will both use the directshow splitter, then your codecs will fight for priority there

damn.. tried that (disabled everything) and still no video. have tried on 2 computers at home and the computer at work too! None of them will play these files properly.

I'm starting to think nobody uses handbrake in conjunction with media player classic. (which is hard to swallow because it's such a popular player)

rhester · Post by **rhester** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 3:02 am

fuzz! wrote:I'm starting to think nobody uses handbrake in conjunction with media player classic. (which is hard to swallow because it's such a popular player)

It's also an ungodly hack from hell. Quite frankly, I'm surprised it works at all. I rank it right up there with the multitude of "c0D3c p4Ks!!!" the l33t crowd uses (and constantly has problems as a result, though most aren't clueful enough to realize why).

No disrespect intended to you personally - just making a generic observation. MPC has been outclassed by VLC for ages (and by mplayer for even longer).

Rodney

fuzz! · Post by **fuzz!** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 4:07 am

rhester wrote:It's also an ungodly hack from hell. Quite frankly, I'm surprised it works at all. I rank it right up there with the multitude of "c0D3c p4Ks!!!" the l33t crowd uses (and constantly has problems as a result, though most aren't clueful enough to realize why).

No disrespect intended to you personally - just making a generic observation. MPC has been outclassed by VLC for ages (and by mplayer for even longer).

Rodney

no offense taken..

i know mpc has it's warts. (it's completely useless for dvd playback for example). but it does have some really nice features that i've incorporated into my htpc remote control.

the numpad keys are great - i wish that every player had them. if you're not familiar with em it goes something like this:

8 (up) stretches vertical
2 (down) shrinks vertical
6 (right) stretches horizontal
4 (left) shrinks horiz
9 (up-left) expands whole pic
1 (down-right) shrinks whole pic
5 (center) resets these adjustments

very intuitive, easy to use, every remote has a numpad on it, lots of vids out there are out of aspect or badly encoded - or you can just use them to zoom a little bit on 4:3 content using widescreen monitor. (or even zoom a little on 2.35:1 to get a bit bigger image)

the +/1 keys inc/dec audio delay.. which is also handy for fubar'd encodes (very rare usage here but still nice to have it)

totally off topic rant there, but that's one of the reasons i want to use MPC.. god i wish it was still being developed.

and.. as far as i'm concerned FFDSHOW is the one and only codec pack..

fuzz! · Post by **fuzz!** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 7:02 am

i finally got it to work.. install haali media splitter and disable just the MP4/MOV internal splitter.. *phew*

thanks heaps daman123x for all your efforts.

NCJECulver · Post by **NCJECulver** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 12:58 am

rhester wrote:
fuzz! wrote:I'm starting to think nobody uses handbrake in conjunction with media player classic.
MPC has been outclassed by VLC for ages

Don't know anything about code quality of MPC vs. VLC or MPlayer, just wanted to drop in my quite limited experience. I just used HandBrake to convert my first movie -- my Wizard of Oz DVD -- using all default settings. Fired up MPC and it had no problem with the M4V whatsoever. Based on the comments in this forum I grabbed a copy of VLC (0.8.6d for Windows), but right out of the box it choked in grand fashion -- got no video, badly broken audio, and then it GPFed.

rhester wrote:(it's completely useless for dvd playback for example)

I've been using MPC to play DVDs for a couple of years. Why's it usless?

CJ

fuzz! · Post by **fuzz!** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 8:17 pm

NCJECulver wrote:I've been using MPC to play DVDs for a couple of years. Why's it usless?

CJ

So have I.. but..

It can't fast forward/rewind DVD properly.. it just stutters and jumps all over the place even if the DVD is stored on a hard drive.

It doesn't support arrow/enter keys for menu navigation.

The mouse menu navigation is completely fubar.. you just have to click randomly around the screen hoping to find where it thinks the 'play' button is.

So, perhaps 'useless' is an overly harsh criticism, but it can be frustrating to use.

NCJECulver · Post by **NCJECulver** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 8:37 am

[quote="fuzz!"]It can't fast forward/rewind DVD properly.. it just stutters and jumps[\quote]

Interesting. I haven't had that experience. However, my usage patterns are somewhat different. I generally use the scroll bar and alt-arrow keys (jump forward/back 10 secs) to navigate, rather than FF/RW. But I did just try throwing a couple of DVDs at MPC -- one disc and one ISO. Both FFed smoothly enough.

Having said that, however, MPC doesn't RW or single-step backward for me at all, and that can be kind of annoying at times.

[quote="fuzz!"]It doesn't support arrow/enter keys for menu navigation.[\quote]

Hey, you're right. Never tried. I've just always used the mouse.

[quote="fuzz!"]The mouse menu navigation is completely fubar.. you just have to click randomly around the screen hoping to find where it thinks the 'play' button is.[\quote]

Hmm, haven 't noticed that myself. Thanks for the feedback.

CJ