UHD Playback

[klpaint]

I have a question on playing UHD. Everything I have stored in MyMovies to date has been in Blue Ray. I am finally trying to dip into the UHD world.

I used xReveal and MakeMVK to "burn" the UHD DVD on the MyMovies Server (had to work through lots of challenges there to start). I finally have that working and CCC picked it up and I can see it on the Client using CMC. When I go to play it it starts PowerDVD and then stops.

I am trying to figure out what I need on the client to play the movie. I started to think I needed to upgrade PowerDVD but then I read that the latest versions don't support UHD. Then I wondered since I have already stored it in My Movies after using xReveal if that is an issue. I then read where only certain Intel chips will play it back. The net is I am lost (smile).

If I have decoded it using xReveal on the MyMovies server and I can see it on the CMC Client, what do I need to actually play it on that client? Do I upgrade PowerDVD? Do I use another player?

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. I think I have it sorted on the server end, it's the client where I am stuck now.

Thanks in advance!

Kevin

[Pauven]

MPC or VLC should be able to play it back just fine.

I would think PowerDVD should as well. When they talk about UHD compatibility, this is strictly with protected 4K UHD discs. The technology to play 4K files should still work, so long as you've overcome the playback restrictions - which you have.

Also, try playing the file directly with the desired program, i.e. PowerDVD, to make sure CMC is not interfering in the process.

[Jamie]

Powerdvd no longer supports 4k uhd. They removed it in recent versions. The last version of powerdvd that supported 4k uhd was powerdvd 22. Also cyberlink broke powerdvd 22 after september of that year so if you patched it with a patch that was downloaded from cyberlink after september of that year 4k uhd was killed. Also if you purchase a full version after september of that year it too was broken. If you install patched or full versions created after that September of that year, through my experience, I think you have to reinstall your os and reinstall any patch or full versions created before that September. I do not remember what version cyberlink started supporting 4k uhd, but those versions should be okay.

If you rip and decrypt to disk on a network drive you have to rip to a folder and I think you have to have something running like anydvd to use powerdvd 22 or before. This is true for 4k uhd rips created by anydvd before anydvd was killed, I do not know if this is still true but I am running xreveal and I get a black screen with powerdvd. I have a new pc and I haven't tried an older version of anydvd yet. I do not know if that is true for passkey or other rippers. I know that jriver works with 4k uhd but I haven't tried to use other players yet

[klpaint]

Paul and Jamie... Thank you both as you saved me a ton of time figuring this out. Between the two of you and CHATGPT, I learned a lot tonight (smile).

I tried multiple tests with PowerDVD and wasn't getting anywhere. I then read the part about JRivers (I had never heard of it) and I went and downloaded it, changed CMC to use JRivers for UDB and it worked.

The next issue I ran into was my PC was not putting out 4K. I figured out how to make that change and the movie now plays and the input is 3840 x 2160 instead of 2560x1440.

I just got the UHD movie working so I have not had a chance to play with JRivers but based on that experience, I will probably flip everything there and get away from PowerDVD.

I really do appreciate the pointers. They saved me a lot of time.

Thanks again,

Kevin

[Jamie]

The Jriver install automatically imports all your movie, tv, and music files at the end of the install, I only want to use the Jriver player with CMC and mymovies so I quickly stop the import. I also go to the tools menu selection options + general + setup + importing and tag items to my preferences including turning off automatic importing.

Paul and I, have several posts on this forum for HDR testing and Powerdvd under General + "media players discussion". I don't remember writing all the posts for powerdvd and sgx. It's been a while .

[Pauven]

Awesome, glad you got it worked out. Big thanks to Jamie for contributing his knowledge. He was a JRiver user long before CMC was a thing, and I think he only begrudgingly used PowerDVD since that what CMC initially supported. I know he was pretty happy when I added JRiver support, and eventually he got fed up with PowerDVD's nonsense.

Like Jamie said, JRiver is a complete media ecosystem, and the JRiver Player is just a small part of it. His advice is solid, to control the install and limit how far JRiver's tentacles reach.

Crazily enough, I've tried JRiver free trial versions twice now, and had no luck with them. I'm super happy it works for others, and my older PowerDVD install still works fine for me (for now), so my motivation to try a 3rd time just isn't there. I think there's something wrong in the trial versions, but as always I balk at spending money on unproven solutions.

I do love ChatGPT, it's amazing technology, but I've quickly found its limits. I tried to do a complete revamp of the CMC code with ChatGPT plugged into the entire process (I created a "project" and uploaded my code into the project for it to analyze). I gave it clear instructions that this was a code cleanup, applying best practices, refactoring to shrink the codebase and improve performance, but that the existing program behavior was working and not to break anything.

So of course it initially broke a ton of stuff, and by the time I worked through fixing it all, the end result was a light code shuffling that didn't improve anything and resulted in a harder to understand codebase.

The problem is that ChatGPT has a limited context window and short attention span - it will hyperfocus on a single area and forget what occurred just a few prompts earlier. Looks like my dream of an expertly re-coded CMC isn't going to happen just yet. Though I will admit I'm using it incorrectly - I'm supposed to use the API and plug it directly into my development environment, but that consumes tokens which cost $ at a rate I don't understand. I'm comfortable spending $20/mo on ChatGPT, but I'm scared of unleashing a $1k+ bill for a software rewrite. There also are a few competing solutions, like Claude, that supposedly do an even better job of coding, more things for me to explore...

[Pauven]

I decided to have ChatGPT estimate the benefits and cost of using Claude's API to do a mega-overview rewrite. It seems like there are benefits to using the API that overcome the limitations I had with ChatGPT's GUI, and the costs are much less than I feared. I'm paying $20/mo for ChatGPT, and it seems like the cost for Claude might actually be less than this.

Apparently for this to work, I have to take on the role of orchestrator, guiding the AI to produce the desired result, but at a level far beyond what I've ever done. Many skills for me to learn to go down this path, but at least the costs are quite reasonable.

[Jamie]

Paul,

Have you experimented with Gemini, or Grok? do they have a developer API.? I admit I know nothing about AI

[klpaint]

Your comments on ChatGPT are interesting. It has been years since I coded anything (I was an Assembler then Cobol programmer when I got out of college but that was a LONG time ago!) but I have been using ChatGPT for lots of other things. There are things I like about it but what I don't like about it is that lots of times it is wrong and it is confidently wrong (smile).

As an example, I am new to JRivers and one of the things I don't like is that when I end the DVD, JRivers takes over my entire screen. I asked ChatGPT about this and it said "this is a common problem, here is how to fix it". I followed the steps but none of its suggestions are in the settings. I am guessing older version but I couldn't find anything even close.

JRivers does play my UHD movies so that's a win. It does take longer than PowerDVD to start so trying to decide if I use both.

Thanks again to both of you for all the help. I am in the process of adding an another client to my setup so my guess I will be bugging you again (smile).

Have a great weekend,

Kevin

[Pauven]

Have you experimented with Gemini, or Grok?

Gemini only by accident, since I have a Google phone, it's hard to avoid.

Grok I've avoided intentionally. I honestly don't trust the musk.