2012-09-19, 11:50
(2012-09-19, 00:35)ibleedspeed Wrote:(2012-09-18, 20:12)davematt0709 Wrote:(2012-09-18, 03:41)ibleedspeed Wrote: I too was confused at first but once you understand where to put the files and which lines need to be altered to match your drive paths it as easy as it gets. however I am not too sure why you want to use an external player for mkv files..... the built in xbmc player works great for those. the only reason to use an external player is to either have access to all the original bluray menus and content or to have bitstreaming hd audio. imho if your enough of a cinefile to just have to have bitstreaming audio then bluray menus should also be desired....
there are only 2 things the xbmc dvd player can not do.... BD menus and hd audio....For me I store full blurays and dvds because i like menus and special features but i can live with dts audio just fine since my system is not even hd audio ready....
If hd audio is a must then this is the solution until xbmc can manage licensing for hd audio and bluray... which from what i understand is very expensive... that is why there are only a few standalone media players which have the bluray licensing... last i checked it was only popcornhour and dune hd.
and after buying a high end dune hd player the damn thing sat there doing nothing for a year until i sold it because the user interface is crap when compared to xbmc... my old dell laptop can do everything the dune did and.....run xbmc
but again if mkv were my target media i certainly would not bother driving myself nuts trying to use an external player just to have 2 more audio channles
I will take your word on that lol! I guess once I get my head around it all, I will become an expert like all you guys!
But I think you misunderstood my post re mkv files. I want to play my bluray and DVD rips in XBMC,using the default player, but bitstream HD audio to my receiver for decoding (when you say that xbmc cannot do HD audio I assume you mean it cannot decode HD audio?). I know what you mean re menus etc but for me am just happy to go straight into film from within xbmc. This way I can reduce file sizes somewhat to save storage space. My bluray ISOs are coming out at around 30-35GB each, which is going to fill up my 2 x 2TB drives pretty quick! This is why I am probably going to rip my whole collection using makemkv into mkv files, as I can just rip the main film, HD audio and subtitles that I want. If I want anymore than that (eg special features) I can go back to the disc, hence me also wanting to be able to play discs through XBMC on my external player. In other words I do not want to use the external player for the mkv files, I just want to use it for original discs. I hope this makes sense!
ahh ok! now i get it but honestly is 5 to 10 gb extra space per movie worth losing bd functions? if you really want to save space for your mkv rips there is a very simple easy to use transcoder called ripbot that can compress those 20 gb video files down to 2 or 3 gb files... you can also choose to only compress video preserving the audio. quality difference is not even detectable in most cases.. now instead of having 70 or 80 mkv files on your 2 tb hdd you can have hundreds..
a 2 tb hdd will hold between 40 and 60 full bluray rips. or if you dont care about bd features 200 to 300 compressed 1080p mkv rips... however keep in mind if you have never transcoded it is a lengthy process i recommend having a second computer just for transcoding with a nice quad core processor. good luck bro.
Thanks for info on ripbot, I have come across it on a few posts, but haven't looked into it yet. It looks like I need to try a few options and see what I like best. Maybe what I use will depend on discs. For Lord of the Rings for example I want the best quality I can get and probably special features as well, so will probably go for ISOs, but if XBMC doesn't do menus, then am I not better watching bluray ISO rips through TMT5? Thanks for your help.
