[Harro]

Sounds to me like a bad rip. Maybe try using HandBrake for your rip to mkv.

I am running about the same build but without ssd drive and am watching a 1080 with DTS HD Master with no drops in frames.

Have you tried pressing the "o" button for more info on your video?

[azula]

No, but I think I resolved my issue by disabling the "True full screen" option in the settings area. Playback is much more smooth. Huge learning curve but I'm getting there. lol

[GortWillSaveUs]

Awesome job!!! I applaud you for taking pictures of your build in progress and documenting the issues you ran into!
Not many people will mention that they stuck their finger into the heat sink paste (I didn't mention it in my posts,..but I did the same thing), or the wiring problems,...but believe me,..it helps the next person that follows this path to a HTPC.

Those connectors were a pain weren't they. Hahaha
It gets even worse when you need a magnifying glass, or new glasses.

[beetlesnack]

Great build. I would get some arctic silver or other thermal paste and scrape off the stock stuff, which is junk. I recommend this even if you are using the stock heat sink.
People get really worked up about having to get an aftermarket heat sink, but it's really unnecessary if you are using a low wattage processor and not overclocking. Just throttle your fan speed and it will be near perfectly silent while still keeping your A6 very cool. This is what I've done with my A6 htpc.

---

Wow,..I'm happy to have helped you dive into the HTPC world.
Everything you listed is solid,..and once done,...you're going to love it.

For a keyboard/mouse,..I use the IOGEAR Multimedia Keyboard with Laser Trackball and Scroll Wheel, 2.4GHz Wireless GKM561R (Black)

It works great and the battery life is amazing.

This is a great KB/mouse combo, the best I've used....I just wish it had a backlight. If anyone knows of something similar with a backlight, let me know.

[GortWillSaveUs]

You could take a look at this one: FAVI Entertainment Wireless Keyboard (Built-in TouchPad/Laser Pointer) - Black

A lot of people here use it and love it. Plus it's backlit.

[azula]

Thanks so much for the words guys. I've had the HTPC running in my acoustically treated home theater and it is virtually silent. It has been staying relatively cool as well. There were a few software issues that I ran into when I tried to play my first MKV. I resolved the "slow motion judder" issue as previously stated. Now I am having a couple more issues:

1) I had to set the overscan in my AMD graphics suite to "0" so that my desktop would fill the entire 105" area of my projector screen. This setting seemed to fix the issue even when browsing in XBMC. The only problem is that when I play that same MKV I made (kick ass.....great film btw), it seems as if my overscan settings are lost and the black borders on all sides reappear. Another user told me that I had to adjust overscan for each refresh rate but I have no idea how to do that.

2) for starters, I used this great guide found on AVS to setup my XBMC and MCM to autoscrape metadata XBMC media Center: Setup and Support thread. I configured everything according to this guide however MCM is not renaming the file or gathering any data. I ripped the movie via makemkv and placed it in my "movies" folder which is where I thought MCM would do it's thing but it doesn't seem to be working. Is there any thing I have to disable in XBMC?

Hopefully once I get these issues resolved, I can start adding more movies. Thanks again guys!

[azula]

Here is an example of the overscan issue

Overscan working correctly to up the entire screen



While playing a movie, movie shrinks and black bars reappear around the image

[GortWillSaveUs]

One word of caution:
Make sure you remind the household that they should never put something on top of the case which would block the vent.
One day I found a newspaper covering my case.
Needless to say, the dog will never do that again.
At least that's who everyone blamed.

[azula]

Here is an example of the overscan issue

Overscan working correctly to up the entire screen



While playing a movie, movie shrinks and black bars reappear around the image

I got my issue fixed! Found the answer in another thread, here you go:

the latest ccc (I believe) has the default overscan set to 0 for all res/frame rate combos. Try updating the amd driver

if that doesn't work, in windows, manually change the frame rate, and set overscan to 0 in catalyst for all frame rates you might use (30Hz, 24Hz, 25Hz, etc)

[quote='azula' pid='1178079' dateline='1346076401']
thanks for the input steelman. how would I set the overscan for each refresh rate? thanks!

As explained by aptalca. CCC then Desktop Management\Desktop Properties, set refresh rate, save. Then My Digital Flat-Panels\Scaling Options (Digital Flat-Panel).

Would take aptalca's advice though and try to update the drivers first. Let us know how you get on.

---

One word of caution:
Make sure you remind the household that they should never put something on top of the case which would block the vent.
One day I found a newspaper covering my case.
Needless to say, the dog will never do that again.
At least that's who everyone blamed.

hahahaha, the dog is always blamed! you are absolutely right, I think my GF would see this "unidentified flat object" and immediately assume it was a tray of some sorts. lol. thankfully, that spot is not its permanent resting position. It's upstairs tucked away in an AV rack now.

[dtviewer]

2) for starters, I used this great guide found on AVS to setup my XBMC and MCM to autoscrape metadata [u] XBMC media Center: Setup and Support thread. I configured everything according to this guide however MCM is not renaming the file or gathering any data. I ripped the movie via makemkv and placed it in my "movies" folder which is where I thought MCM would do it's thing but it doesn't seem to be working. Is there any thing I have to disable in XBMC?

Hopefully once I get these issues resolved, I can start adding more movies. Thanks again guys!

Never used MCM but I did use Media Companion, a program very similar to MCM.

The purpose of MCM and programs like it are to scrape movie metadata including thumbs, backdrops, synopsis, etc. It then writes those items to a folder you specify, so for each movie you should have...
Kick Ass.mkv
Kick Ass.Tbn
Kick Ass.JPG
Kick Ass.nfo

As you probably know, XBMC also has its own scraper built in that will do the same thing as MCM.
How the built in scraper works is XBMC will check for local metadata such as MCM would scrape (it looks where the movie is stored...in your case "movies" folder.)
If it doesnt find local metadata, it will then look on the internet and scrape it itself.

So a couple of things to check.
One, if you have set-up MCM in the options or preferences to look in the correct movies folder where your movies are. In that folder you should see the files like I posted above for Kick Ass.
If you dont see those then MCM isnt scraping correctly or not writing to the correct folder.
Next, after MCM does its thing you have to go to XBMC in the library, click the 'C' button on your keyboard and click 'update library'.

One thing I forgot to ask. In XBMC, did you add your 'movies' folder as a source and set content to 'Movies'? Also, pick IMDB as the default scraper in XBMC when you set content.
If you havent done that you need to before the movies show up correctly in the library.


All that being said, I have found for myself personally there is really no need to use MCM or programs like it as it is much easier to just let XBMC do the scraping. Using a third party scraping program just complicates things.

[GortWillSaveUs]

I use XBMC's scraper and find that it's pretty good,..but with caveats...
You sometimes have to play with the movie name,..meaning it must be exactly to what the scraper is looking for
Also,..if the movie is a remake,...Spiderman,..Superman,..True Grit,.......you have to append the year of the movie.
Spiderman_2012
Spiderman_2004

It sometimes takes try after try to get it right.
TV Shows with their episodes and seasons can be a nightmare.
This can be one of the most frustrating things to have work correctly.
I tried for days to get the original Twilight Zones episodes scraped.
I have it about 80% right,..but there are pieces that are just flat wrong.

Also,..if your kids want their shows scraped,..that can be a big problem too.
And if you try and get help on the forum,..good luck.
I once saw someone asking for help in scraping their entire Bugs Bunny Loony Tunes DVDs,.....
The response was that the poster's request was dumped into the Trash with a message that the Forum was intended for Movies and not kiddie shows.

If you find something that works,...stay with it!

[azula]

thanks for the informative post DT. I set everything up correctly in XBMC and MCM. What I didn't do was add more titles. Once I added more titles, I realized that MCM was working correctly. MCM just wasn't recognizing kick ass because I didn't label it with a hyphen (kick-ass) in my "movies" folder so it wasn't pulling anything up for that specific title.

You answered another question that I was confused about too which is how these two programs communicate. I wasn't sure if I had to disable the scraper in XBMC first before MCM can operate correctly but now I understand that XBMC defaults to MCM before using its own scraping engine. I really appreciate your time and patience for helping out a new guy!

[azula]

I use XBMC's scraper and find that it's pretty good,..but with caveats...
You sometimes have to play with the movie name,..meaning it must be exactly to what the scraper is looking for
Also,..if the movie is a remake,...Spiderman,..Superman,..True Grit,.......you have to append the year of the movie.
Spiderman_2012
Spiderman_2004

It sometimes takes try after try to get it right.
TV Shows with their episodes and seasons can be a nightmare.
This can be one of the most frustrating things to have work correctly.
I tried for days to get the original Twilight Zones episodes scraped.
I have it about 80% right,..but there are pieces that are just flat wrong.

Also,..if your kids want their shows scraped,..that can be a big problem too.
And if you try and get help on the forum,..good luck.
I once saw someone asking for help in scraping their entire Bugs Bunny Loony Tunes DVDs,.....
The response was that the poster's request was dumped into the Trash with a message that the Forum was intended for Movies and not kiddie shows.

If you find something that works,...stay with it!

Wow that sucks! I guess I will just watch all my cartoons on youtube. LOL.

[dtviewer]

thanks for the informative post DT. I set everything up correctly in XBMC and MCM. What I didn't do was add more titles. Once I added more titles, I realized that MCM was working correctly. MCM just wasn't recognizing kick ass because I didn't label it with a hyphen (kick-ass) in my "movies" folder so it wasn't pulling anything up for that specific title.

You answered another question that I was confused about too which is how these two programs communicate. I wasn't sure if I had to disable the scraper in XBMC first before MCM can operate correctly but now I understand that XBMC defaults to MCM before using its own scraping engine. I really appreciate your time and patience for helping out a new guy!

Glad you have it working. Now comes the fun part trying different skins and add-ons.
I'm partial to the stock confluence skin but there are many other great skins to try.

When you get a chance check out cpthook's post from today with his new unraid build...really nice for under $400...I'll look around for the post with my parts list for the server I built.

Also, have you decided on a remote yet? I'm using a harmony...really makes it dead simple for anyone to use.

[beetlesnack]

You could take a look at this one: FAVI Entertainment Wireless Keyboard (Built-in TouchPad/Laser Pointer) - Black

A lot of people here use it and love it. Plus it's backlit.

Thank you. I actually have that keyboard as well. It's nice especially for the price, but I really want something that is closer to full sized like the IOGEAR. I'm very happy with the IOGEAR overall but I'll be tempted when someday there is something like it with backlight.