CMC Forums

Dear Support:
I am new to CMC. I have a home theater media center PC running Windows 7 with MyMovies and Total Media Theatre. I will soon be rebuilding it with Windows 10, Cyberlink's PowerDVD 15 and CMC.

But right now I'm trying to get to know how it will work by testing everything with another PC that I own. This one is on Windows 10. I have worked through your Pre-installation Requirements documentation and have loaded Virtual Clone, installed PowerDVD 15 and downloaded the most recent version of CMC from the CMC website. I copied a few of my movie folders from my Home Theater PC's external drive into my Windows 10 PC's drive for testing. I have also set options within CMC's settings menu.

I have a couple of questions:
1) The movies I have loaded play OK in cinema and full-screen mode. Right now, I do not have this test PC set up to allow me to operate it a remote control. So I am doing everything with my keyboard. When I select a movie to watch and hit <enter>, the screen fills with the movie's fan art and shows below the "details synopsis cast & crew" etc banner. I then use my arrow keys to highlight Play. This launches PowerDVD Ok. But then if I wish to stop the movie and return to the CMC menu, I don't know how to do this. I can hit "S" to get PowerDVD to stop but then I have to use my mouse to close the program. This then leaves me with the CMC movies fan art screeen with the "details synopsis ..." banner. But I have found no key or combination of keys that will close this and return me to the CMC main menu. Ideally I would like to be able to select something in PowerDVD which would end the app and return me directly to the CMC menu.

2) This is more of a question/request.
I have around 500 movies of which 100 titles are .ts files that exist because I have recorded some movies off of TV using the Hauppauge Colossus 2 app. Although I could have elected MP4 when recording, I did not. I am not seeing my .ts movies in the CMC menu after a full sync. So it must mean you are not supporting them. PowerDVD 15 can play them fine. But the process of now converting all my .ts movies to MP4 would take a very long time. (Using HandBrake, the one movie I converted took 6 hours.) Is there a chance you might be able to support this format in the future.

Thanks in advance for your comments.

Pete

pks wrote: Wed Nov 21, 2018 2:19 pm Dear Support:
I am new to CMC.

Welcome Pete, we're glad to have you here. Oh, and please feel free to call me Paul.

pks wrote: Wed Nov 21, 2018 2:19 pm But then if I wish to stop the movie and return to the CMC menu, I don't know how to do this.

This is a fundamental problem with PowerDVD. I guess Cyberlink doesn't realize people might actually want to close their program from time to time.

The solution is to press ALT + F4. This is a universal Windows keystroke, that closes whatever program is currently focused. This will close PowerDVD, or any other players like DVDFab Player, MPC, VLC, and can be used to close CMC too. It also comes in handy if Windows 10 decides to show you some random pop-up, covering your screen, as it can close most of those too.

Once you get a remote going, this gets even easier. I have in the CMC Settings a utility to configure a button on your MCE remote to perform the ATL+F4 keystroke for you. Typically we program the red button for this, but I provide a few different buttons for you to choose from. Setting up a remote is super easy with CMC, so give it a go if you have an MCE remote handy. You will have to run CMC as administrator to program the remote.

Just an extra tip: For some players, I've been able to program an auto-close on playback end (MPC and DVDFab Player), but PowerDVD doesn't have such niceties.

pks wrote: Wed Nov 21, 2018 2:19 pm I have around 500 movies of which 100 titles are .ts files that ... I am not seeing my .ts movies in the CMC menu after a full sync.

You are correct, I haven't added support for .TS files. To be honest, I don't know what these are, so I'll have to look them up. But as long as PowerDVD can play them, I can add them to the Sync for CMC to pick up. I'll add this to the next version, due out early December. Thanks for letting me know.

Paul

Thank you, Paul. Your help and friendliness is remarkable and so greatly appreciated.
Pete