Ogre's Blog

The Holy Trinity of Matroska (.mkv) Filter Packages for Windows 7

Ogre — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 02:36:14 GMT

This is a follow-up post to my earlier post about how-to get Matroska files to play on Windows 7.

Now that 7 has been released, goofy codec packs are no longer needed, except for special circumstances. The “Holy Trinity” of MKV filter packages is:

Not technically a software package but:

Registry entry to enable .mkv and .mka (This may not be required with the latest Haali release, however I’m unable to test at this time so grab the registry entries in case.)

Note that the blog for the registry entry directs you to DivX’s MKV splitter. At this point, I don’t advise using DivX’s solution as they have no support for DTS or subtitles.

Some Matroska files do use additional codecs, usually for commentary audio tracks, so you might also want to pick up FFDShow-tryouts. When installing FFDShow, deselect everything except for the additional codecs you need, generally this will be “Vorbis” and “Theora”.

Update: x64 users will need a 64-bit version of VSFilter. I haven’t tested this build but Shark007 seems to know what he’s doing so hopefully it will work for you. (Confirmed to be working by Jere_Jones.)

Comprehensive Report of Relevant Container and Codec Support in Windows 7 and Media Center

Ogre — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 00:15:10 GMT

Containers

	FF/RW	Subtitles	Selectable audio tracks	Useful metadata	Chapters
AVI	No	No	No ***	No	No
MP4	Yes	No *	No ****	No *****	No
TS	No	No *	No ****	No ******	No
M2TS	No	No *	No ****	No ******	No
WTV	Yes	Maybe **	Yes	Yes	No *******

* Despite the spec requiring this, Microsoft decided not to implement MPEG-4 Part 17 “Timed Text”.

** According to this Microsoft Whitepaper, WTV supports most standard types of “captioning” however captioning isn’t what we normally think of as “subtitles”.

*** Note that AVI does support multiple audio tracks, however there is no way to change tracks and all tracks play at the same time, mixed together.

**** Only first audio track plays. There is no method for selecting alternate tracks.

***** MP4 does support metadata but Media Player and Media Center don’t recognize it. Tagging an MP4 based TV episode in the Zune software generates Windows Media style “WM/TagName” tags as a sub-tag of a custom MP4 “Xtra” tag, however, despite the use of Windows Media tags, TV episodes and movies do not show up in the Media Center Recorded TV area or Movie Library.

****** Zune software won’t recognize TS or M2TS files so I’m not able to test Windows Media tags on these files since no other known software can generate such tags.

******* It may be possible to simulate “chapter” support by using Microsoft’s “iTV” system but this looks like a lot of engineering work and the work versus payoff probably isn’t worth it.

MPEG-4 Video Codecs

	Part 10/AVC/H264	Part 2/ASP/DivX/XviD
AVI	Yes	Yes *
MP4	Yes	Yes *
TS	Yes	No **
M2TS	Yes	No **
WTV	Yes	***

Note that I didn’t cover MPEG-4 Part 2/SP (Simple Profile) because it is a low quality codec designed for low-end devices such as mobile phones and portable media players.

* Most, but not all, MPEG-4 Part 2 Profiles are supported. Nothing using "DivX 3” is supported.

** These containers do not support MPEG-4 Part 2 by design.

*** As of this moment, I’m unable to convert anything other than AVC/H264 to WTV. I assume MPEG-2 files will work but I didn’t test due to lack of material to test with and increasing irrelevance of the codec for our purposes. Plus we already know MPEG-2 works because all TV broadcast in the US uses MPEG-2.

Audio Codecs

	MP3	AAC	AC3	DTS
AVI	Yes	*	Yes	No
MP4	Yes	Yes	No ***	No
TS	No	Yes	Yes	No ****
M2TS	No	Yes	Yes	No ****
WTV	No	No **	Yes	No *****

* Although I’ve read that AVI supports AAC, I wasn’t able to test due to lack of content.

** I was able to create a WTV file with an AAC audio track but the file won't play in Media Center at all. It does, however, play in Media Player with some issues. The sound works and, according to GraphStudio, is being decoded by “Microsoft DTV-DVD Video Decoder”. The only real problem is that moving the slider around causes the video playback to become corrupted and sketchy. According to the PBDA whitepaper linked to above, WTV should support AAC so I’m quite confused as to why AAC has issues in WTV.

*** The AC3 decoder included with Windows 7 is DirectShow based but the MP4 container source is handled with Media Foundation, which has no AC3 decoder, so AC3 doesn’t work despite being part of the MPEG-4 ISO specification.

**** Despite DTS being part of the specification requirements for TS and M2TS files, Microsoft hasn’t implemented a DTS codec in either DirectShow or Media Foundation. The mildly good news is that if you have a TS/M2TS file with multiple audio tracks, the first track that is supported is the one that plays.

For example, my ripped copy of Big Trouble in Little China has five tracks:

H264 video
DTS main audio
AC3 main audio
AC3 director commentary
SRT / Timed Text / Presentation Graphic Stream

However, the only streams that actually play are (1) the main H264 video and (3) the main AC3 audio. Note that there is no method to change to (4) director commentary from within Media Player or Media Center.

***** I was able to create a WTV file with a DTS audio track but the file won't play in Media Center at all. The strange thing is that the file did play in Media Player and the System Tray icon appeared for “ac3filter” but only when I have “ac3filter” set to handle SPDIF audio. I suspect it may be possible to get DTS working in WTV with some major hacking and/or DTS may work via SPDIF passthru, however I have no SPDIF hardware to test this theory.

Comments

MPEG-2 was not covered because it isn’t efficient enough, the files take up way too much space and everyone already has their collection in either H264 or DivX/XviD already anyway

Interestingly, WTV doesn’t seem to be Media Foundation based since WTV files can be loaded in GraphStudio but TopoEdit won’t touch them. H264 in WTV is handled by “Microsoft DTV-DVD Video Decoder” which is, according to the PBDA whitepaper, both a DirectShow filter and Media Foundation Transform, so apparently there simply isn’t a Media Foundation Source to handle WTV files.

At the very least, Microsoft should be supporting MPEG-4 Part 17, or Timed Text, as the ISO specification does require it. Microsoft is a very “accessibility” centric company and not supporting subtitles in MPEG-4 media files seems very not-accessible to those with hearing problems. Plus a lot of us have ripped media with community based subtitle solutions (SRT, ASS, etc.) that could easily be converted to MP4 and take advantage of Timed Text.

Conclusion

This is a good start but I don’t think we can really call MPEG-4 “supported” out-of-the-box. The lack of subtitles or “Timed Text”, no DTS codec and no support for standard metadata really make Windows 7’s MPEG-4 support feel unfinished. I’m also confused as to why some Part 2 (ASP) files didn’t work. It seems like DivX 3 should work since the code was apparently based on code that leaked from Microsoft that was eventually used as one of the WMV codecs. Even more confusing is why some XviD files wouldn’t play despite DivX and XviD being based on the Part 2 ASP specifications.

Media Foundation is supposed to be the successor to DirectShow, and from what I can tell, Media Foundation is a much cleaner system and supports some nice features, like transcoding, but without support for WTV files, AC3, DTS and hit-or-miss MPEG-4 support, it feels very unfinished as well.

On the Path to the Ultimate Media Center Media Library (Part 1)

Ogre — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 03:48:11 GMT

Introduction

For the past few months, I’ve been working on and off with the Media Browser team to help create the ultimate media library solution for Media Center. I’ve come to realize that Media Browser’s folder based system has some major drawbacks and I’ve been unable to convince the team to switch to a better storage system. So I’ve decided to completely rethink the idea of a “Media Library” and build my own solution.

The Problem

The real problem is that there isn’t a standard movie file format or television file format. Most, if not all, of the Media Center plugins, and the Windows 7 Movie Library, require each movie to be in its own folder. Additional files such as backgrounds or cover art are also generally placed in these folders. Metadata for movies is provided by the de facto standard “My Movies” XML file, a “dvdinfo.xml” file or an entry in a database. Metadata for television episodes isn’t standardized and varies from application to application.

Forcing each movie or television show season to be in a folder adds an extra level of complexity to library management. No other type of digital entity (photos, documents, etc) requires a unique folder. Even an entire music collection could exist in a single folder, the embedded metadata dictates how the player application will organize for presentation to the user.

All modern video containers support metadata, however the level of metadata support varies:

AVI supports almost no useful metadata.
WMV supports more metadata but not quite enough.
DVR-MS/WTV support fairly extensive metadata but is missing a few critical items like “Season Number”. (It may be possible to add additional custom metadata to this container. Must investigate further.)
MP4 supports a weird collection of metadata, seems to have an emphasis on music, does support “Season Number” and “Episode Number” but is missing stuff like “Directors”, “Actors”, “Crew”, etc.
MKV supports almost no default metadata but has an extensible tag based system that can be customized on a per-file basis. Also supports Chapters.

The Matroska Hydra

Of all the relevant container formats, Matroska seems to be the most popular and already supports embedded metadata via “tags”. Matroska also has the advantage of supporting “attachments”. Currently these attachments are mostly used for subtitle fonts but there’s nothing stopping us from using them for cover art or background images.

However, Matroska isn’t perfect as there still isn’t full support in Windows. The filters/splitters that are available only implement the minimal features to make the files playable.

Currently missing from Haali’s implementation:

Fast forward and rewind
Subtitles require VSFilter
Subtitles disable DXVA
Subtitles, audio tracks and chapters aren’t switchable from Media Center
x64 version not officially supported / hard to find
Property Handler for Windows Explorer / Desktop Search

Currently missing from DivX Lab’s implementation:

Chapter switching
Subtitles
Audio track switching
Property Handler doesn’t fetch metadata, only runtime

I have not tested Gabest’s splitter but I’m going to assume it has fewer features than either Haali or DivX Labs as it is much older and I believe it to be no longer being developed.

The Long Road Ahead

Before we can even begin to embrace Matroska as the ultimate container format for movies and television, we need to implement some lower level services.

IFilter so Windows Desktop Search can index metadata
Property Handlers so Windows Explorer can display properties (and maybe edit)
Libraries to obtain and add metadata to existing Matrosta files
Libraries to remux other containers into Matroska files

After creating these base items, we can do some really cool stuff like create a “Movie Library” using Windows 7’s Libraries feature. This would allow searching for more than just filenames from Windows Desktop Search. For example, I could search for “Bruce Campbell” and get a list of all movies I have starring Bruce. Property Handlers should also allow us to extract attachments from a Matroska file allowing us to use cover art as icons instead of thumbnails generated from a frame of the movie. The Media Center plugin would no longer need a database since Windows Desktop Search effectively becomes the database.

Conclusion

The remaining blog posts in this series will chronicle the research and development I’m doing while creating this “Ultimate Media Library”. The pace of the work I’ve done up to this point has been very slow so I would expect the frequency of posts in this series to be anything but frequent. I plan for the entire project to be open source however there’s nothing worth posting yet. If anyone has any ideas or would like to get involved, feel free to get in touch with me on Twitter or via this site or whatever.

Fun With ToDVRMS v1.0.1.0

Ogre — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 06:52:18 GMT

I managed to get a hold of the “Early Access” version of Andy’s ToDVRMS tool specifically to test out the WTV file creation features. So far, every h264 encoded Matroska file I’ve tried converted to WTV and played back properly in Media Center.

There are a few issues however:

ToDVRMS doesn’t support much metadata embedding and the few commands I tried didn’t work (-title, –year) with the exception of –m which flags the file as a “IsMovie” (this means the file will show up in the Media Center Movie Library).
There’s no direct path for converting scene subtitles (SRT, SSA, ASS, etc.) to “line 21”. Line 21 is apparently the only subtitle system supported by WTV and even though I was able to find tools to convert SRT files to SCC and then from SCC to “raw” (supposedly the format “line 21” uses), ToDVRMS doesn’t have an option to use subtitle files from any source other than a stream in the original MKV file. MKV only supports a handful of subtitle formats and “raw” wasn’t one of them so I was unable to get any subtitles working.
“Forced subtitles” are going to be an issue. Unless there’s something to “force” a subtitle track to play by default (like Matroska has), the only solution for forced subtitles will be to transcode the file with the subtitles “burned” into the stream.
DTS doesn’t work at all. ToDVRMS crashes when trying to convert a file with DTS audio. This was expected as I don’t believe WTV supports DTS anyway.
I’m assuming MKV “chapters” won’t work but I didn’t test this as there are no command line options to enable chaptering and WTV probably doesn’t support chapters anyway.

Things that did work:

Multiple audio tracks. I have a copy of Akira with the original Japanese track and a dubbed English track. I was able to switch tracks using the “i” button on the remote and sliding over to the “language” area.
No transcoding was required. The WTV container supports h264 streams.
Fast forward and rewind on the remote work as expected when playing from Media Center. The fast forward and rewinds buttons didn’t work in Media Player, but we don’t really care about Media Player, do we?

I have no idea if these will play on Extenders as I don’t have one to test with (no 360 either) but, based on what I’ve read, they should play fine on any Extenders that support h264.

The Not-Microsoft AVP (Almost Valuable Professional) Award Program

Ogre — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 04:48:40 GMT

Warning: This blog post, the “AVP Award Program”, the graphics associated with the program, and linked from this post, and anything derived from anything on this post, or linked to from this post, are parody and are protected as free speech in the United States by the decision of Supreme Court case #86-1278. All correspondence, legal threats, posts regarding the program or media representing the program will also be considered parody and may be posted to this blog as part of the “program” and for the amusement of myself and others.

Pre-Ramble

This all started as a mildly interesting thread on Twitter. There are evidently a large number of highly qualified people who should be in the Microsoft MPV Award Program but year after year, for reasons unknown, are never selected to receive the award. Paul Thurrott, Sara J. Chipps and Steven Bink are few excellent examples, and yes, I realize Bink got the award for one year for giving the domain “windows.nu” to Microsoft. This is a horrible reason to get the MVP award, he should have gotten the award for his contributions to the community, not for giving up a domain that Microsoft isn’t even using now.

Middle-Ramble

Trying to figure out why these people aren’t MVP’s led me to realize that the award program itself is completely out of sync with the real world. First, there are these seemingly absurd categories for recipients:

Macintosh - Shouldn’t this fall under Office?
Discontinued products like Money and FoxPro
Four different categories for Dynamics
Windows “Help”
Groove - Come on, no one actually uses Groove, Groove is the reason why there’s a “custom install” option in Office.

There’s also a complete lack of any category for:

Open Source – Will this change as The CodePlex Foundation gains traction?
Photography – How is “HD Photo” ever going to take off if no one is out there evangelizing it?
Social Media – Everything is social these days, someone needs to be out there connecting this stuff to Windows.
OpenID – Oh wait, Microsoft’s OpenID implementation still isn’t available.
Forklifts – It’s all about forklifts lately.
General Microsoft Platform Evangelism
Windows Home Server \ Media Center home integration – This is a distinct category for the Cedia folks.

Some categories, such as “Client App Dev”, should be split into more categories: .NET, WPF, WCF, etc. Clumping this vast array of expertise into one single category is clearly leaving out a lot of qualified individuals. Splitting the category would allow more award “slots”.

End-Ramble

Realizing the shortcomings of the program has led me to develop a completely new program to award to individuals who Microsoft has decided aren’t valuable enough to receive the Microsoft MVP Award:

The Not-Microsoft Almost Valuable Professional Award Program *

“Because some of us just aren’t quite valuable enough.”

The beauty of this award is that anyone can give it to themselves! No more frustrating “contributing to the community” nonsense just to get not-awarded at the end of the nomination period! Download the “AVP Award Logo” and use it on your site, in your email signature or as your forum avatar. Heck, we even have a Twibbon campaign. Support your Not-Microsoft AVP today!

Download the files used to create the logo. The files fall under the “do whatever you want with these as long as the end result is very funny” license.

* Not to be confused with the up and coming “Not-Microsoft Most Valuable Unprofessional” which is a completely different award for unprofessionals.

How-To Disable DXVA for ATI Cards to Fix Pixilation and Corruption in High Bitrate h264 Files

Ogre — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 05:22:00 GMT

I originally posted this as a reply on The Green Button:

http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/p/77948/387265.aspx

And now I’m posting it here for mostly personal reference.

I have problems with at least four 1080p and three 720p h264 files. The problem is basically what netscan02 said: ATI cards have issues with some higher bitrate files. I'm using the default video driver that comes on the Windows 7 DVD (which is apparently the same as the driver in the "Catalyst 9.5" package). I have not tried any of the newer Catalyst releases as I would rather let Windows Update handle driver updates instead of chasing new Catalyst releases.

My "solution" ended up being to disable DXVA for h264 using "DXVA Checker": http://bluesky23.hp.infoseek.co.jp/en/

All you have to do is download DXVA Checker, extract it somewhere, run it, hit the little button in the upper right corner under the close button (X), hit Video Acceleration Settings (or CTRL-V) and toggle "HWUVD_DisableH264". There should be a check mark in the checkbox to the left and a "1" in the Value column if you clicked in the right place.

Keep in mind that this disables DXVA for h264 streams so you're going to see quite a bit of CPU usage when playing ANY h264 files from now on. This may not be an issue as DXVA gets disabled if your files have subtitle streams anyway.

There may be other solutions but this one gets your stuff working without mucking about with 3rd party nonsense. (Well other than our favorite trilogy of Haali (for MKV's), AC3Filter (for DTS) and VSFilter (for subtitles).)

How-To Set Up a Build Machine to Compile Media Center Projects

Ogre — Tue, 19 May 2009 21:10:03 GMT

Depending on the requirements of the project, install the appropriate version of .NET Framework.
Install Media Center SDK. Either the Vista or 7 version should work.
If your build machine is Windows Server 2008, find an already running Windows Vista installation and copy Microsoft.MediaCenter.dll, Microsoft.MediaCenter.UI.dll and ehres.dll from “C:\Windows\eHome” to a folder on the server. (Note that additional assemblies may be required depending on what is referenced in the project.) If the build machine is Windows Server 7, copy the same assemblies from a running Windows 7 installation instead.
Use GacUtil.exe to register Microsoft.MediaCenter.dll and Microsoft.MediaCenter.UI.dll into the Global Assembly Cache. GacUtil.exe ships with several Microsoft products and each one installs it into a different location. The .NET Framework SDK registry entry claims the SDK installs to “C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A” but that isn’t always true. If the SDK is installed as part of Visual Studio, the SDK will be at that path, but if it is installed as part of Windows SDK for Windows Server 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5, the SDK will be at “C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0”. (Note the lack of an “A” at the end of the path.) If the SDK is installed as part of Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1, the SDK will be installed to “C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0”. GacUtil.exe will be in the “bin” folder in the root of the SDK folder.
Copy Microsoft.MediaCenter.UI.dll to “C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Media Center\v6.0\Tools” so McmlVerifier.exe can find the assembly. If the project uses resources from ehres.dll, copy it to the same location.

Note that depending on how the project handles the McmlVerifier task, you may need to write a custom BuildTask to handle multiple build environments.

At this point you should be able to compile Media Center projects from the command line on the server using MSBuild.. If your command line build works properly it should also work properly from a Continuous Integration server.

How-To Get Matroska (.mkv) Files to Play in Windows 7 RC (Build 7100) using FFDShow-tryouts or MPCVideoDec

Ogre — Sat, 02 May 2009 05:38:52 GMT

It seems like all the buzz in the Media Center community lately is about DivX Labs latest project: A “Technology Preview” of Matroska support in Windows 7. I’ve tried out their solution and it seems to work, however, I need to have subtitle support and alternative audio stream support (for reasons that aren’t worth going into here). Keep in mind that this is definitely a work in progress but I do firmly believe that when finished this will end up being the ultimate solution we’ve been waiting for to get decent Matroska support into Windows 7. I’m looking forward to working with them to get subtitle changing and audio track changing into Media Browser as well.

If you don’t care about subtitles or alternative audio tracks, stick with the DivX Labs solution, but, if you’re like me and you need to stick with the Haali Media Splitter and either FFDShow-tryouts or the MPC-HomeCinema codec (MPCVideoDec), another solution already exists and is available as a post on The Green Button.

At first glance, this solution seems fairly scary since you’re going to end up setting permissions on registry entries and then editing weird looking hex values. And it is true that if you screw something up, the simplest solution might end up being to reload your copy of Windows 7, so fair warning.

To make this process a bit easier, I’ve packaged up a few files and made them available for download here: http://chaocracy.com/media/p/404.aspx (The 404 is just a coincidence! :)

After you’ve download the file, unzip the contents into a folder, preferably with no spaces in the path. Something like:

c:\Tools\Windows7CodecChanger

Next you need to run an Administrative Command Prompt or Administrative PowerShell (PowerShell comes with Windows 7). From the “Search programs and files” area in the Start menu just type “cmd” or “powershell” and the appropriate command shell will appear under the Programs heading. Right click on “cmd.exe” or “Windows PowerShell” and select “Run as administrator”. You’ll get a UAC prompt that you need to confirm.

Once the shell you’ve chosen has loaded, change directory to the location you extracted the Zip archive to above by typing:

cd c:\Tools\Windows7CodecChanger

The Zip package contains a simple script that I wrote that automates the process of taking ownership of the registry entries and giving them full access to the “Administrators” group as illustrated in the post on The Green Button. Virtually all of the work is done by an open source tool I found called SetACL which is included in the Zip package. (Gotta love Open Source!) To run the script, just type the following into the command shell:

FixRegistryPermissions.cmd

Assuming everything worked, the SetACL command should give you a nice positive message. If it didn’t work, there’s not really much I can do to help so read the instructions again or if you’re the technical sort of person, just make the changes manually using the post mentioned above from The Green Button.

Included in the Zip package are a few files to help further automate the process of telling DirectShow which codecs to use for Matroska:

SetToFFDShow.reg – set DirectShow to use FFDShow
SetToMPCVideoDec.reg – set DirectShow to use MPCVideoDec
SetToMicrosoftDTV-DVDVideoDecoder.reg – set DirectShow back to Microsoft DTV-DVD Video Decoder
v7-WMP11-MKV-MKA.reg – tell the Windows to recognize .mkv and .mka files as video and audio files

Double click on one of the first two files to make changes to the registry to use FFDShow or MPCVideoDec.

Double click on the third one to switch back to Microsoft’s codec.

Double click on the last file to make Media Center recognize Matroska files as video and audio files. This file has been floating around in the Media Center community for a while, I did not write this file. Note that you’ll still have to double click on a Matroska and tell Windows to open the file with Windows Media Player at least once but after that it will open in WMP with no hassle.

Obviously you still need to install either FFDShow or register the MPCVideoDec codec and the Haali Media Splitter by following these directions: http://chaocracy.com/blogs/ogre/archive/2009/01/30/how-to-configure-windows-7-to-play-matroska-mkv-files.aspx

Also keep in mind that you don’t actually need FFDShow or MPCVideoDec just to play Matroska files in Windows 7 as the Microsoft DTV-DVD Video Decoder will work with the Haali Media Splitter but you do need FFDShow to get subtitles (MPCVideoDec still doesn’t support subtitles).

Thanks to mr_greedy from The Green Button for figuring out the registry entries to change.

How-To Configure Windows 7 To Play Matroska (.mkv) Files

Ogre — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 20:38:23 GMT

UPDATE: Now that the Release Candidate (build 7100) of Windows 7 is out, only the Haali Media Splitter or the DivX Labs MKV Splitter are needed to get Matroska files playing in Media Center and Windows Media Player. However, neither splitter supports subtitles yet, so if you need subtitles, check out my new post about how to get FFDShow working in Windows 7 RC.

Additional Update: Things are now much easier.

As most if you already know, Windows 7 supports most modern video and audio codecs and container formats out of the box, as illustrated by Long Zheng’s chart in his blog post about the new codecs. However, one of the most popular containers, Matroska (.mkv, .mka), isn’t supported. We can get around this limitation with a few open source projects freely available on the web.

In an ideal world, we would just install a Matroksa stream splitter and the files would play using the new built-in codecs, however none of the splitters talk to Media Foundation and all of Microsoft’s new codecs are Media Foundation instead of DirectShow. So we also need to install some DirectShow codecs as well.

On x86, the solution is fairly simple, install Haali Media Splitter and FFDShow-tryouts. This solution won’t allow hardware accelerated video playback but at least you’ll be able to watch your Matroska video library. x86 also has the advantage of supporting subtitles, something that is lacking from the x64 solution. The current FFDShow-tryouts release is “Beta 6”, however I haven’t personally tried this build so your mileage may vary.

Once you get those two packages installed, double-click on a Matroska file and tell the dialog box you want to always open the file with Windows Media Player. WMP12 will say it might not be able to play the file, say “yes I want to play the this type of file” and check the box to tell it to stop asking you this question. At this point, the file should start playing in WMP12 and you should see the FFDShow and Haali icons show up in the System Tray. Thumbnails should also start being generated from Windows Explorer and the files should start showing up in Media Center’s “video library”, assuming your Matroska files are in the list of folders the video library is watching.

I realize that there is a registry file that activates thumbnails and associates WMP12 with .mkv files, but this solution seems to work just as well with the advantage of no mucking about with .reg files. If you want to try the registry file solution, visit this blog entry and download the MKV/MKA x86 registry patch.

On x64, things are a bit more complicated since there’s no 64-bit version of Haali Media Splitter.

The current author of Media Player Classic – Home Cinema has released the codec parts of the MPC-HC project as stand-alone filters. Download the x64 MatroskaSplitter package and extract the MatroskaSplitter.ax file to something like “C:\Codecs\x64” or wherever you store your favorite codecs. Get a Command Prompt up with Administrator privileges (Click the Start Orb, click on “Search programs and files” and then type cmd, “cmd.exe” will show up in the Program list, right click on it and pick “Run as administrator”). In the Command Prompt window, change directory to “C:\Codecs\x64”:

cd c:\Codecs\x64

or to wherever you extracted the MatroskaSplitter.ax file. Next, type:

C:\Windows\System32\regsvr32 MatroskaSplitter.ax

into the Command Prompt and that should register the MPC-HC Matroska Splitter into 64-bit codec space.

Finally, download an x64 build of FFDShow-tryouts and install it. The x64 builds are still considered “experimental” so you’ll have to click on “64-bit builds (experimental)” to expand the x64 downloads area. Alternatively, you could download the x64 MPCVideoDec package and register the codec using the regsvr32 method that we used to get the Matroska Splitter installed, but FFDShow has more features and supports AC3/DTS and quite a few other codecs without having to manually register a bunch of .ax files. If you have the expertise and are willing to take the risk, the MPC-HC codec does apparently support hardware accelerated video decoding. However, as far as I know, the x64 Matroska Splitter doesn’t support subtitles so neither package will have working subtitles.

At this point, we should pause and do a bit of “Fair Warning”. I don’t actually have the x64 version of Windows 7 installed. There a few reasons why I haven’t taken the x64 plunge yet but mostly it’s because of the lack of an x64 version of the Haali Media Splitter and I need the subtitle support that Haali offers.

Now, having said that, we’re at the point where we need to get Windows x64 to handle the .mkv file extension. Like Vista x64, WMP will run in 32-bit mode unless you specifically tell it to run in 64-bit mode, so you can’t just double click on a .mkv file like we did in the x86 solution above. We do have a few options though:

Convert Windows to run WMP in 64-bit mode as illustrated here by typing:

%windir%\system32\unregmp2.exe /SwapTo:64

into a Command Prompt running as Administrator. Once you have WMP running in 64-bit mode, double clicking on a .mkv file and following the directions from the x86 directions above should get .mkv files showing up in Media Center.
Visit this blog entry and download the MKV/MKA x64 registry patch.

Again, I don’t have 64-bit Windows 7 installed so I haven’t tested any of this stuff. I did get it working on Vista x64 when I had it running a few years ago so I believe this stuff should work in Windows 7 x64. However, don’t hold me responsible if this completely hoses up your system! :)

Now that you have Matroska file working in your installation of x64 or x86 Windows 7, why not check out Media Browser? Media Browser was formally known as Video Browser, but we’ve added so much new stuff it seemed like a name change was appropriate. Plus we’re planning on adding support for media types other than video (such as music and podcasts). However, right now, Media Browser will help you browse all of your archives Television shows and Movies with automatically updating metadata!

Space Travel

Ogre — Tue, 20 May 2008 21:11:00 GMT

"When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere." - Robert A. Heinlein

Shit sub!

Ogre — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 20:55:00 GMT

"The shit sub gone crazy!" - Maassen

Team Hanselman and Diabetes Walk 2007

Ogre — Sat, 19 May 2007 19:56:00 GMT

When they tell you a disease could be cured in your lifetime what they're really saying is that it could be cured if we just threw enough money at it.

The ironic thing about this type of disease is that it's exactly the kind of disease that big pharma doesn't want cured. Since diabetes can be "managed", and is generally only fatal if not managed, medical supply companies are basically guaranteed income from these people until they die or the disease is cured. Curing it will save everyone money at the expense of the companies selling needles and drugs. My father takes a new drug made from lizard spit. That can't be cheap to make.

The even more ironic thing is that a disease like diabetes probably won't be cured intentionally. A side effect of some other research, like the ability to grow replacement organs, or some type of gene restructuring, will more likely cure diabetes as a side effect.

However that doesn't mean we shouldn't keep searching for a more traditional cure now.

Scott Hanselman needs your help!

Are you flowin?

Ogre — Thu, 10 May 2007 19:29:28 GMT

"It's very addictive to be in (as Brad calls it) the flow of programming. You can't type fast enough and everything is just pouring out in a stream of emotion disguised as code. You are no longer looking in at the code, but you are inside it, and rather then pushing it to where you want it to go, it just flows around you. I'm sure it's exactly what a writer experiences as a novel comes gushing out, or a powerful wizard as he wreaks havoc on the village peasants." - Ron Gilbert

Hell House

Ogre — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 01:22:14 GMT

I've uploaded some pictures of the house I'm currently living in.

The only reason I've done this is because I'm sick of trying to describe what living here is like. The place is bascially perpetually being remodeled. Normally I wouldn't care because I don't venture out of my room that much, but lately (and by lately I mean for the past few months) they've decided to start working on the kitchen... without actually finishing any of the other projects they've started around the house.

So now, not only do we have no living room, and no dining room, but the kitchen is effectively unusable since they don't actually ever bother to clean up the dust after "working". I mean, I could make food in there but something tells me consuming paint-dust can't be good for you. I know its not good for my computers, so it can't be good for me.

(Keep in mind this has been going on for almost the entire year and a half that I've lived here.)

Check out the rest of the photos here.

First Post!

Ogre — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 07:07:50 GMT

First post from Windows Live Writer: http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/

Although it was designed to work with Windows Live Spaces, Live Writer supports several other blogging services and packages including Community Server (the blogging package I use). Live Writer is basically a compact word processor for blog posts. Some of the features include: previewing posts before they go live, editing entries that have already been posted, support for inserting pictures and maps, spellchecking and an SDK for developing plugins. The only missing feature I would like to see at this point is the ability to edit categories or "tags", however I believe this may appear in a future build.

One of the biggest barriers to frequent blogging, for me, seems to be the hassle of having to login to the blog's website, create a new entry, wait for pages to load, etc. With Live Writer I can casually write my entries without having to suffer through the annoyance of a "web application". So now I have no excuse for not blogging!