Any interest in a quick transcode dll I wrote last night? It does not do any transcoding itself, it uses Transcode.dll loophole and creates playlists on the fly for watching DVDs saved as VIDEO_TS or ISOs.

Download

Note: The new version is currently going into a private ALPHA (2010-03-15). I expect it to stay there for 1-2 weeks depending on the feedback I get. Updates will be made public when possible

Notes\Known Limitations

• The published version is using largest combined file size to determine the main movie. This has it's fault. I initially was using the DirectShowLib to determine the main movie but I don't want to distribute the library w/o going through their license agreement. No time for that right now
• It will delete any playlists\symlinks created older than 1 day.
• The installer grants BUILTIN\Performance Monitor Users the privilege to create symbolic links (SeCreateSymbolicLinkPrivilege). This is necessary for the extenders to be able to create on-the-fly symlinks.
• If you've given the mcxuser accounts administrative rights for any reasons and have UAC enabled the creation of symbolic links will fail. The reason for this is that when UAC is enabled members of the Administrators group receive a limited logon token that strips the SeCreateSymbolicLinkPrivilege privilege.

If anyone is interested I'll provide the source code

 ISO's would play on extenders?  Full menus and extras?

No, just the main movie.

Sure, I would give it a try tonight if you like.  I have a few hun dvd's that I just ripped, and wife wants to play them on 360.  Just let me know where I can get the dll and what else I need to do.

 Sounds good.  I already have all my movies converted to dvr-ms though.  I wouldn't have done it if I could have played ISO's on my extenders.

The dvr-ms\wtv route is still the best if you are a heavy extender user. The reason I wrote the transcoder dll is because I'm in the middle of phasing out my extenders but tired of getting hearing "ugh" from family members as to why certain files don't play using Movie Library or are sluggish. 3rd party video library apps handle it nicely (OML, MyMovies, Media Browser) but they use actual transcoding. I have my extenders connected to a virtualized HTPC and when 3 simultaneous transcoding occur it is spotty at best due to the limited CPU I'm allocating for the virtual. Since I'm creating a playlist of the VOBs it isn't being transcoded so CPU usage isn't a problem.

mikinho, I'd be interested in knowing about your approach. I just redid playback in OML so it does softlinks/playlists over transcoding by default for the very reason you outlined above :). Why transcode if you don't have to... Were you able to tackle timeline or subtitles?

Very cool, good to know my approach wasn't a dumb idea. I only spent 30 minutes on it so I did not tackle either yet (and not sure I will). For timeline do you mean bookmarking? If so I'm already saving a bookmark of the last played position for another tool for DVDs and was thinking of doing the same here. The native play method will check the registry for DVD bookmarks and a file for video bookmarks that I override with my data to get around the PlayMedia in W7 not using the address syntax anymore.

Sorry, I didn't really give much information on what I was actually doing. First checking what type of Media it is. If it is a structured image file (ISO, BIN, ..) I'm mounting it and using the drive. If it is a video file I'm simply return the file path. If it is a DVD I'm using DirectShow to determine the primary chapter and corresponding files. From there I'm creating a playlist in the temporary folder using a temporary filename. If it is a Blu-ray\HD DVD I'm returning the largest file. I don't think extenders will be able to handle the frame rate but I haven't tested yet.

Updated initial post w/ download location. Just got my site up and running again...

 Will this work with Media Browser?  I currently use Vaders transcoder app for watching dvd's on extenders.  (I have an all extender setup, my media center pc doesn't even have a monitor)

 Vaders application works great with the integrated Movie library in Media Center but I would prefer to have the Media Browser interface.  I know Media Browser has a hook for Transcode360, but I don't want to have to rework all of my ripped dvd's.  I would like to just leave them 1:1 copies of the full dvd and not strip out audio, subtitles, extras, etc. 

I honestly do not know if Media Browser checks if the transcoder setting is enabled or not. It would be a good thing to do but I don't use Media Browser and I haven't kept up on it so I'm not sure.

I do know that Media Browser is open source and you can compile your own. Below is the source code to enable the use of any specified transcoder

string GetFileToPlay(string path)
{
            Type[] types = Assembly.Load(Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(GetDvdTranscode())).GetTypes();
            if (1 <= types.Length)
            {
                Type transcoder = types[0];  // Note: You could improve this logic but this ~ what Media Center does so...
                MethodInfo methodInfo = transcoder.GetMethod("GetFileToPlay", BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Instance);
                return methodInfo.Invoke(Activator.CreateInstance(transcoder), new object[] { path }) as string;
            }
}

 

mikinho

I honestly do not know if Media Browser checks if the transcoder setting is enabled or not. It would be a good thing to do but I don't use Media Browser and I haven't kept up on it so I'm not sure.

I do know that Media Browser is open source and you can compile your own. Below is the source code to enable the use of any specified transcoder

 

 Nevermind.. I think I already know.  Integrated.  That is one of the reasons you created Yammm.  :D

Do you use OML or the integrated Media Center managers?

I am running this and it seems to work very well on my DMA 2100 but I have a question.

I am testing it with the Band of Brothers Box set which is 5 cd's with 2 parts per cd.

It seems to only pickup 1 part (34 minutes in lenght) It does this with Video_TS folders and ISO.

is there anything i can do

 

It is because it takes the biggest title and sends just that one. For discs with multiple titles this doesn't work though. I do have a thought on this and interest in getting it to work. My daughter asked to watch Firefly this morning, I only have it in VIDEO_TS format (btw, what is the formal name for storing discs in that format?) so she wasn't able to watch it. I've got guests coming over for a bbq but I can give you an updated version tomorrow morning if you'd like?

Btw, thanks for the post. I though maybe the plugin didn't work for others =)