MP4, MKV, M2TS, etc. issues

[O'dell™]

I've been using Sage for about 2 years now with no complaints. Most of my videos are in the format's I've listed above and some play fine, with no issues, however others will play with no audio and some will give me the "There was a Playback Error in Playback. Details: Sage.PlaybackExceptio: ERROR (-4, 0x80040218): There was a problem renering the video portion of the content for playback."

I've read probably 100 different posts over the last week on how certain people fixed this, but I can't seem to find anything that has worked for me.

Under Detailed Setup > Video/Audio my settings are as follows:

Video Renderer: VMR9
MPEG2 Video Decoder Filter: SageTV Mpeg Video Decoder
SageTV Mpeg Video Decoder uses DXVA, etc.: Yes
MPEG4 Playback: SageTV Player (have tried DirectShow as well)
H.264 Video Decoder Filter: Default (Have only tried default.)
DScaler Deinterlacing Filter: Disabled
Audio Renderer: Default
MPEG2 Audio Decoder Filter: Default

Note: I have not made any changes to Sage.properties file, or any of the other files in the Sage directory.

I don't have anything fancy either, just a Dell Vostro 400 running XP pro and decent NVidia card, hooked directly (via DVI/HDMI) to a 42" TV. Also just using the TV speakers via headphone jack to stereo cables.


I'm willing to do whatever it takes to be able to play these video's, but would like to avoid downloading codec packs or anything like that if possible, as I don't really like to install anything but the absolute essentials.

If this has been answered in another thread, please point me to it. It's been hard for me to find relative articles when searching the site.

Thanks.

[subhadipsas]

MP4/MKV are easy, but for real AVCHD 1080p m2ts content, I can only have good quality with the Cyberlink H.264 codec even on a significantly powerful PC. I have tried CoreAVC, ffmpeg etc - but the video quality suffers in my experience. Now with Cyberlink automatically removing the H.264 codec with all updates - it is becoming an issue and I had to basically stop upgrading PowerDVD. Hope someday these will be resolved.

[O'dell™]

MP4/MKV are easy, but for real AVCHD 1080p m2ts content, I can only have good quality with the Cyberlink H.264 codec even on a significantly powerful PC. I have tried CoreAVC, ffmpeg etc - but the video quality suffers in my experience. Now with Cyberlink automatically removing the H.264 codec with all updates - it is becoming an issue and I had to basically stop upgrading PowerDVD. Hope someday these will be resolved.

What are you using for the MP4/MKV files? Cyberlink as well?

[subhadipsas]

Yes. If you need to buy Cyberlink filters - make sure to buy the HD264 pack for Windows Media Player. Don't buy the full version of the player as that no longer registers the filter.

Also make sure to enable the always_use_dhow_player (or something like that) to true.