MPC-BE DVD Playback Broken
Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2020 11:13 am
I've been troubleshooting an issue with DVD playback using MPC-BE. This used to work fine, but I noticed while testing CMC v3.2 betas that it was no longer working. Initially I assumed it was my code that was at fault, but finally I traced the issue to MPC-BE itself.
Apparently in a recent version of MPC-BE, the author's somehow broke the DVD autoplay functionality, and this is preventing CMC from being able to play DVD's using MPC-BE. You will get an error message briefly displayed in MPC-BE indicating "Cannot find DVD/Blu-ray directory", sometimes followed by a "File not found" message.
While you can revert to an older version of MPC-BE to fix DVD playback, this may break the ability to play movie trailers in CMC for some YouTube trailers. You have to keep your MPC-BE version up to date to ensure YouTube compatibility, otherwise many movies trailers will refuse to play.
According to this closed support ticket, the DVD autoplay issue was fixed on January 13 of 2020, about 2 months ago: https://sourceforge.net/p/mpcbe/tickets/546/
Unfortunately, the latest release of MPC is from 12-27-2019, two weeks before the fix. I'm not sure how to get the fix at this time.
Alternatively, you can use MPC-HC which does not have this issue. If you want both movie trailers and DVD playback to work, one options is installing both MPC-HC and configuring it for DVD's, and the most recent version of MPC-BE for movie trailer playback. I have not made movie trailer playback configurable - it is hard coded to use only MPC-BE.
Another solution is to use any other player for DVD's if you are running the current MPC-BE version. In addition to MPC-HC, you can use PowerDVD, DVDFab Player, JRiver, PotPlayer, or VLC. Since MPC is the ONLY player that supports DVD Episodes indexed by Title + Chapter, MPC-HC may be the only alternative that works adequately for this rare use case.
Sorry for any inconvenience this is causing CMC users, though this is mostly out of my hands. I have commented on the support ticket I linked to above, and hopefully we will get some official help soon.
Paul
Apparently in a recent version of MPC-BE, the author's somehow broke the DVD autoplay functionality, and this is preventing CMC from being able to play DVD's using MPC-BE. You will get an error message briefly displayed in MPC-BE indicating "Cannot find DVD/Blu-ray directory", sometimes followed by a "File not found" message.
While you can revert to an older version of MPC-BE to fix DVD playback, this may break the ability to play movie trailers in CMC for some YouTube trailers. You have to keep your MPC-BE version up to date to ensure YouTube compatibility, otherwise many movies trailers will refuse to play.
According to this closed support ticket, the DVD autoplay issue was fixed on January 13 of 2020, about 2 months ago: https://sourceforge.net/p/mpcbe/tickets/546/
Unfortunately, the latest release of MPC is from 12-27-2019, two weeks before the fix. I'm not sure how to get the fix at this time.
Alternatively, you can use MPC-HC which does not have this issue. If you want both movie trailers and DVD playback to work, one options is installing both MPC-HC and configuring it for DVD's, and the most recent version of MPC-BE for movie trailer playback. I have not made movie trailer playback configurable - it is hard coded to use only MPC-BE.
Another solution is to use any other player for DVD's if you are running the current MPC-BE version. In addition to MPC-HC, you can use PowerDVD, DVDFab Player, JRiver, PotPlayer, or VLC. Since MPC is the ONLY player that supports DVD Episodes indexed by Title + Chapter, MPC-HC may be the only alternative that works adequately for this rare use case.
Sorry for any inconvenience this is causing CMC users, though this is mostly out of my hands. I have commented on the support ticket I linked to above, and hopefully we will get some official help soon.
Paul