[XTrojan]

There's 3 players that can playback 3D MVC actually

Stereoscopic Player (Premium 39EUR, Playbacks 3D MKVs/ISOs, can add external subs)
PDVD (3D ISOs only, can't add external subs)
TMT (Same as PDVD)

[untscrub]

Ok Brazen1, I'm up and running with W10 and PDVD 15. Everything works flawlessly. I do have another question though. If I wanted all my movies to default to playing in KODI but maintain the option to play via PDVD. Right now I can highlight the 3D movie and push 'c' and then select 'play using' and choose 3D, 2D, or kodi player. What do I need to change to achieve this, if possible.

[brazen1]

Ok Brazen1, I'm up and running with W10 and PDVD 15. Everything works flawlessly. I do have another question though. If I wanted all my movies to default to playing in KODI but maintain the option to play via PDVD. Right now I can highlight the 3D movie and push 'c' and then select 'play using' and choose 3D, 2D, or kodi player. What do I need to change to achieve this, if possible.

Good to hear you confirm it's working and very glad you reported back. So, nothing to change. Thank you.
You can try this xml but save a copy of your original.
By doing this, you will break all the automation.
The code knows which player needs to be called based on the name of your folder/file and pressing enter once, while focused on a title, is all you need to do.
No user input is required to make a player selection provided your folder/file is named correctly as shown in the guide.
In the event you desire a different player and want to bypass the automation, context menu/play using opens the options.
But here you go, understanding KODI is not going to play your 3D iso's in 3D and many 2D titles will not have menus, etc.

Code:

<playercorefactory>
  <players>
     <player name="3D" type="ExternalPlayer" audio="false" video="true">
       <filename>C:\Users\YOUR USER NAME GOES HERE\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\userdata\PlayISO3D.bat</filename>
       <args>"{1}"</args>
       <hidekodi>true</hidekodi>
       <hideconsole>true</hideconsole>
       <forceontop>false</forceontop>
    </player>
     <player name="2D" type="ExternalPlayer" audio="false" video="true">
       <filename>C:\Users\YOUR USER NAME GOES HERE\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\userdata\PlayISO2D.bat</filename>
       <args>"{1}"</args>
       <hidekodi>true</hidekodi>
       <hideconsole>true</hideconsole>
       <forceontop>false</forceontop>
    </player>
  </players>
     <rules action="prepend">
       <rule filetypes="mkv|avi|strm|mov|flv" player="dvdplayer"/>
       <rule filename=".*.3D.*|.*.3D.iso|3D.*" player="dvdplayer"/>
       <rule filetypes="iso|bdmv|mpls|m2ts" player="dvdplayer"/>
     </rules>
</playercorefactory>

[Cinephile]

I wish I was able to watch stereoscopic 3D on my Openelec build...

[shaktoo]

Brazen, the FLV/ STRM behaviour keeps rearing its ugly head. have you had any luck in eliminating that behaviour successfully ?

[Silentioso]

@brazen1: Thanks a lot for your great How To! It's why I found my way to this forum.

I was not really interested in 3D so far. But I watched the latest "Star Wars" in 3D cinema. And now: I must have this at home!

What I did first: Just started the ISO "Edge of Tomorrow" 3D from Kodi 15.2 - and no 3D - of course as I know today.

Before having found your guide I ripped the ISO with makeMKV and added appropriate 3D tags to the filename.
The file was detected and displayed as 3D but while playing the screen was like this:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/g966fjxig8vvtd...D.jpg?dl=0

So the player-OSD is "3D" while the movie continues with 2D.

Having found your thread I first installed PDVD 14: It worked fine with the ISO without changing anything in my environment ==> Hardware and Software (Win 10) seemed to be OK.
Than I implemented all of your tutorial: Everything worked fine.

There are some questions left:

- Quality of "Edge of Tomorrow" seems to be a bit blurry / misty. Is that just the difference of my equipment to a MIO-€ cinema projector?

- When / for what purpose do I need AnyDVD?

- Why isn't the MKV working correctly? Do yo have an idea? Did I fail with MakeMKV?

Thanks so far Tom

[brazen1]

Hi Tom.

Your link appears to be broken.

It's nice to see there are new enthusiasts who embrace 3D and veteran users who continue to enjoy it after reading snippets from others claiming 3D is a dead novelty. I think many of these snippets are from those that cannot produce 3D playback due to inferior equipment they sell and prefer to advertise that end users are not missing anything and should prefer 2D. Personally, I enjoy the immersion I feel when watching a title in 3D and the studios seem to agree by continuing to release titles in 3D with an option for naysayers to view in 2D.

Quality of a title and how it's rendered would depend on a number of factors:

Hardware and settings. For example, have you actually turned your 'Sharpness' adjustment to 100% or taken advantage of 240Hz tweaks, etc? Tune your equipment either with a setup disc or manually as I've done. Out of the box defaults are never tweaked to perfection, some not even close. Just make sure your equipment is set up to the best of it's abilities and the actual hardware is the quality you desire.

Software. I suggest you turn off all enhancements in your software players audio and video including deinterlacing. Do use hardware acceleration, non decoded audio with passthrough, etc.

Source. Are you using an untouched rip or dependent on software to strip your rip and hopefully convert the main movie to 100% it's original quality claiming the end result has such minor drawbacks that your eyes and ears will never notice? Also, is the source you started with untouched or already altered? Any time a title is re-encoded, changing it's bitrate, you have lowered the quality.... period. This is why I prefer ripping a complete disc 1:1 and don't care how much 'extra' HDD space it requires for the 'unnecessary' bits and pieces. I don't use MakeMKV and can't explain to you why your mkv rip does not work nor why it looks blurry. I do know that SBS and TAB rips do indeed work perfectly and look good in this setup. Have you played the original iso and compared to your mkv to see if the blur is reduced?

Many claim the only way to playback a complete Blu-ray rip is to strip it and place in an mkv container to circumvent copy protection within the complete disc. This can be done for 1:1 rips also using software such as AnyDVD allowing digital file backups of your disc to be possible and it works on the fly too. Lastly, consider how the director intended the film be edited and released. Many titles in 3D have you feeling like you're part of the set, immersed in the action. Others like War of the Worlds were intended to be grainy and force the look of an old movie on vhs sacrificing clarity imo. Edge of Tomorrow looks pretty good to me and made the A list here http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=221407. There are other dedicated forums as well http://www.avsforum.com/forum/196-3d-content/.

Anyway, welcome to the KODI forums and fellow 3D enthusiasts.
I'm glad everything worked fine using the guide and ask that you star rate the thread at the top of the page as you see fit.

[Silentioso]

Hi brazen1,
thanks for your detailed response.

Some questions / misunderstandings / clearings:

Your link appears to be broken.

... you were right last evening. Now it's back again I have to check.

Hardware and settings. For example, have you actually turned your 'Sharpness' adjustment to 100% or taken advantage of 240Hz tweaks, etc?

... You mean 'Sharpness' in PDVD? The tweaking possibilities of my onboard Intel GPU is quite poor. May be there is some additional software by Intel - I have to check.

Source(s):
- I always do a 1:1 rip with AnyDVD as a backup copy of my original BDs.
- I never do any recoding, maximum is repacking to another container.
- Missunderstanding: The 1:1 ISO is blurry with PDVD 14. But as I have no experience yet and no comparison I don't know, if this is the "style" on the movie, as you mentioned below.
- The MKV is just 2D. The strange effect (for me) is that if I e.g, move the mouse while playing the movie the player OSD is compressed and doubled horizontally (@TAB) or vertically (@SBS).

I could be contented now as 3D is working with PDVD, but frankly spoken I'm not a fan of additional external software as PDVD due to all those loading / starting / closing procedures.
My preference is to remain inside Kodi and to play a suitable MKV.

Looking on the upper of your posted links probably I will change to Pi2. For my todays environment please refer to my next post.

Offtopic: How can I generate a signature? Did not find it in the control panel.

[brazen1]

Sharpness in your panel. I turn sharpness to 100% on my Samsung. Imo, you don't want to tweak anything in your GPU or player that you can tweak in your panel. This includes KODI. I use no tweaks in KODI or my GPU and do all the adjusting in my panel.

I too used to think some titles looked kind of washed out or blurry etc. Then I discovered a couple things. Each source input (HDMI inputs on panels) have independent settings on them. They have to be adjusted depending on the source feeding them. HDMI 2 is from my cable box. If I turn up the sharpness to 100% on that port, it is too sharp and looks terrible. I have to turn it down to 50%. One day I had a look at HDMI 1 settings from my PC. Tweaked it up to 100% to see if my movies would come in clearer and low and behold my jaw dropped to my knees. Thinking how this would affect the cable box I checked the settings for it's HDMI port and learned it's settings had held and were independent and was very pleased. Just passing the info on to you for your blurry playback comment.

Your link is still broken but I'm going to take a couple guesses at what you are trying to convey. I assume the OSD problem is KODI and not PDVD. It sounds as if you are trying to play a 2D mkv and KODI is switching into SBS and/or TAB. You have something set incorrectly. Refer to the guide and double check settings especially,

Video/Playback:
Playback Mode of Stereoscopic 3D Videos 'Preferred Mode'.
Disable Stereoscopic 3D Mode When Playback Ended 'Enabled'.

System/Settings:
Video/Output:
Stereoscopic 3D Mode (Current) 'Disabled'.
Preferred Mode 'Same as Movie'.

The cleanest naming convention that works for me looks like this and is necessary for 3D automation to work properly:
Avatar (2009) .3D for full rips
Avatar (2009) .3D.SBS for side by side
Avatar (2009) .3D.TAB for top and bottom

"I'm not a fan of additional external software as PDVD due to all those loading / starting / closing procedures."
None of us are. Unfortunately, until if/ever FFMPEG gives the KODI devs something to implement, this is the only correct way.
Also, once it's setup, everything is automated. It's set and forget so loading, starting, closing, etc is irrelevant imo. There really are no cumbersome technical hands on requirements other than focusing on a title within KODI and pressing enter.

"My preference is to remain inside Kodi and to play a suitable MKV"
Once you setup correctly, this is exactly the behavior. Focus on your mkv title and press enter. Done. The KODI internal dvdplayer starts your title just as it should.

"Looking on the upper of your posted links probably I will change to Pi2."
Those links are discussions relating to the quality of 3D movies and have nothing to do with the Pi2?

The Pi market has gotten a lot of attention the past couple years. Like anything else it's a device for sale vying to replace the device you already have, your PC that does more than a Pi ever will and stronger than anything it attempts to mimic. It has it upsides. It has it's downsides too. I understand the excitement as it tries to evolve into the 3D world and I think it's great folks are fiddling with it trying to make it work in the home theatre market. Maybe you'll find it acceptable for your standards. Personally, I had high hopes but ended up giving mine away frustrated.

[p750mmx]

There's 3 players that can playback 3D MVC actually

Stereoscopic Player (Premium 39EUR, Playbacks 3D MKVs/ISOs, can add external subs)
PDVD (3D ISOs only, can't add external subs)
TMT (Same as PDVD)

TMT can also play (3D) media out of folder (extracted from BR disc) if I'm not wrong, PDVD can't.

[brazen1]

TMT is no longer supported or offered by Arcsoft but for those still able to use it, there should be no problem playing file structure rips other than possible audio lag.

Indeed PDVD plays file structure and definitely introduces audio sync issues with no adjustment since file structure only plays using the cinema player and not the classic player. Cinema player has no adjustment, classic does, all explained in the guide. This is why I suggest you rip to iso and not folder structure. There may also be other audio problems with everything but the main movie when using cinema mode and file structure rips.

While Stereoscopic Player may be able to add external subs, why would you when subs are already on the disc? I've also read it cannot decode hard coded subs like Avatar. Maybe this is why? I've also read this player cannot directly play an iso and has to be mounted and navigated to the correct ssif file. Not exactly the integration with KODI most of us are reading this guide for. Not certain about any of this having never used it though? These defects could have been addressed or never existed. Someone using it would have to enlighten us.

[Silentioso]

Hi alltogether,

I had no time to play arround with my system deeply, but some questions today:

There's 3 players that can playback 3D MVC actually

... I read somewhere in the forum that Kodi is able to play 3D MKV without external player. Is this right?

With an 3D-MKV extracted from the original "Edge of Tomorrow":
- Still not playing inside Kodi.
- File opened with PDVD directly outside Kodi:
--- Plays 3D but I'm not sure if it's real or calculated to 3D by PDVD.
--- Video is heavily stuttering, while ISO playing with PDVD inside Kodi is OK.

Setup by brazen1's guide:
- 3D ISO is playing fine.
- But 2D ISOs are played through PDVD too.
--- Probably I confused something in brazen1's files, but I can't find the error.
--- @brazen: can you please give me a hint, where in your files the decision is done to play through PDVD or not.

Thanks and a nice weekend to everybody

[brazen1]

I read somewhere in the forum that Kodi is able to play 3D MKV without external player. Is this right?
Yes, KODI will play 3D mkv using it's internal dvdplayer.

With an 3D-MKV extracted from the original "Edge of Tomorrow":
- Still not playing inside Kodi.
- File opened with PDVD directly outside Kodi:
All 3D mkv files play default using KODI internal dvdplayer. Copy codes and instructions exactly. KODI settings as well.

Setup by brazen1's guide:
- 3D ISO is playing fine.
- But 2D ISOs are played through PDVD too.
Code is designed to play 2D iso's with PDVD by default for reasons described in guide. If you would like to play 2D iso's using KODI internal dvdplayer, simply bring up context menu when focused on the title by pressing 'C' or whatever means you access context menu and select 'dvdplayer'.

--- Video is heavily stuttering, while ISO playing with PDVD inside Kodi is OK.
Then you have wrong PDVD settings. Using code exactly as provided, there is no stuttering with either player nor with file extensions.

If you would like all 2D iso's to always default play using KODI internal dvdplayer, change this line of code in playercorefactory.xml:

From this
<rule filetypes="iso|bdmv|mpls|m2ts" player="2D"/>

to this
<rule filetypes="iso|bdmv|mpls|m2ts" player="dvdplayer"/>

Not recommended.

[markpeo]

Hello,
Thanks for the guide, works a treat.
I have one small niggle and I was just wondering if anybody else has the same issue.
When a movie opens in PDVD classic mode, 3D mode (within PDVD) is activated, its in fullscreen, my TV switches to 3D mode, my glasses come on. Everything that needs to happen, happens. Except, the 3D doesn't actually start until I press pause, or FWD, or REW, etc. Once I start playing again, perfect 3D picture.
Not a huge issue, but would like to get it resolved if at all possible.

[Silentioso]

as I did not succeed in displaying the photo of my first quote, now I added a link:
to Photo

Everything is working well now but a 3D-MKV is still beeing confused - see photo.