Hi,
Been following this thread and now I have something that works pretty good for launching PowerDVD to run DVD's and ISO files... and they play stutter free!
I use mainstream SVN builds, not moby-uk's unique ones' yet, so hopefully his added features will make it work even better. First, This is my playercorefactory.xml
<playercorefactory>
<players>
<player name="PowerDVD1" type="ExternalPlayer" audio="false" video="true">
<filename>C:\Documents and Settings\Don\Application Data\XBMC\userdata\PDVD_ISO.exe</filename>
<hidexbmc>true</hidexbmc>
<hideconsole>true</hideconsole>
<hidecursor>false</hidecursor>
</player>
<player name="PowerDVD2" type="ExternalPlayer" audio="false" video="true">
<filename>C:\Documents and Settings\Don\Application Data\XBMC\userdata\PDVD_DVD.exe</filename>
<hidexbmc>true</hidexbmc>
<hideconsole>true</hideconsole>
<hidecursor>false</hidecursor>
</player>
</players>
<rules action="prepend">
<rule dvd="true" player="PowerDVD2" />
<rule dvdimage="true" player="PowerDVD1" />
</rules>
</playercorefactory>
This calls a different batch file based on whether chosing the DVD drive or a DVDImage. The batches for each case are compiled using the freeware utility "Bat_to_Exe_Converter" available here
www.f2ko.de
Here's PDVD_DVD.bat...
@
echo OFF
taskkill /F /IM XBMC.EXE
START /MAX /WAIT C:\PROGRA~1\CYBERL~1\POWERDVD\PowerDVD.exe L:
"C:\Program Files\XBMC\XBMC.exe" -fs
EXIT
...and PDVD_ISO.bat which uses Daemon Tools Lite to mount the image
@
echo OFF
START /MIN /WAIT C:\PROGRA~1\DAEMON~1\daemon.exe -mount 0,%1
taskkill /F /IM XBMC.EXE
START /MAX /WAIT C:\PROGRA~1\CYBERL~1\POWERDVD\PowerDVD.exe M:
START /MIN /WAIT C:\PROGRA~1\DAEMON~1\daemon.exe -unmount 0
"C:\Program Files\XBMC\XBMC.exe" -fs
EXIT
I found that killing XBMC was how to get stutter free playback. The only thing I would like to improve is the transitions. This has about 5 secs of the windows desktop showing before the movie starts to play, and a few secs again after closing PowerDVD and loading XBMC. Hope this helps.
ThickHead