Sage DVD Player vs. Zoom/TT Players

[Jesse]

Dumb question: Why are so many of us using an external DVD player instead of the DVD player in sage. I was already using zoom and DVDLobby when I found sage, read some less than complimentary things about the sage dvd player and did not want to screw around with something I already had working so I just kept using zoom. Well now that I am recording and playing back HD I am trying to have as little as possible running on my client. I have also run into a problem whereby if sage is using VMR9 with FSE then I cannot get zoomplayer to work at all. So I either abandon FSE in sage or completely close sage when using zoom. I dont like either option, hence my questions about the sage dvd player and abandoning zoom.

I would like to hear the pros and cons of the sage dvd player. I am assuming it will utilize whatever decoders I am using for normal sage playback and will use VMR9/FSE. Somebody help me get strait on this.

TIA

Jesse

[sleonard]

I have always used the Sage DVD player. It does the job perfectly well for me. Any extra features I might gain from Zoomplayer or TT are, for me, negated by not being integrated into the Sage interface.

[Jesse]

Cool. That is good to hear.

I really like zoom, but it would be nice to tie it all in with sage.

Anyone else?

Jesse

[garcia21]

I use the built in DVD player in Sage as well. Does everything I need. Now that the Winamp plugin was added for music Im pretty much set.

[Griff]

For DVDs archived to my NAS, the Sage DVD player does not work well for me. It seems to stutter and have blocky playback regardless of what decoder I use. Playing the archived DVD using the Sonic Cineplayer works perfectly. It is an issue that bothers me, because I have a remote&USBUIRT configured for Sage, and I can't use it for the Cineplayer (I don't use Girder because, with this one exception, I don't really need it -- I am looking at the possibility of using HIP, but haven't played with it yet). I wish I could get DVD playback to work well through Sage, so I wouldn't have to screw around with anything else.

[ToxMox]

Originally Posted by Griff

For DVDs archived to my NAS, the Sage DVD player does not work well for me. It seems to stutter and have blocky playback regardless of what decoder I use. Playing the archived DVD using the Sonic Cineplayer works perfectly. It is an issue that bothers me, because I have a remote&USBUIRT configured for Sage, and I can't use it for the Cineplayer (I don't use Girder because, with this one exception, I don't really need it -- I am looking at the possibility of using HIP, but haven't played with it yet). I wish I could get DVD playback to work well through Sage, so I wouldn't have to screw around with anything else.

Griff, make sure your audio renderer in the DVD setup in Sage is set to Default Directsound. I had a similar playback issue as well as others. See this thread:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...er+directsound

[motobarsteward]

I'm finding the the Sage Player is much better for live TV. If I use the WinDVD player within sage, the colour is washed out. It's so bad, even the wife notices. The downside, as far as I can see, is that the sage player does not enable the Nvidia enhanced mode on my 6600GT. I get the Jaggies on my diagonal edges. However, it may be this that creates the washout out appearence when using the intervideo player.

[Griff]

Thanks ToxMox -- your suggestion puts me on the right track. Just changing it to the Default Direct Sound did not help, but also changing it to the default video renderer fixed the problem. Unfortunately, using the default video renderer my aspect ratios are now all screwed up, and cannot be adjusted through Sage. Any additional suggestions?

[ToxMox]

I would leave the audio renderer as Default Directsound then try various combinations of audio and video decoders. Are you using VMR9 or Overlay?

[Griff]

I tried both Overlay and VMR9, but I continue to have choppy playback until I changed to default -- then I lose the ability to change the aspect ratio, and have playback with blackbox all around. What is the video renderer if you select default, rather than Overlay or VMR9? Is there a way to configure the computer so that overlay or VMR9 is the default? Maybe that would solve the problem.

[Grey_Goose]

Sage sucks at playing "archived" DVDs. I messed with it for months before giving up & using an external player. Unfortunately, Frey doesn't care that their DVD and MP3 players suck.

[mlbdude]

Originally Posted by Grey_Goose

Sage sucks at playing "archived" DVDs. I messed with it for months before giving up & using an external player. Unfortunately, Frey doesn't care that their DVD and MP3 players suck.

Sage works fantastic at playing my archived DVD's. Though I don't use ISO's which I assume is what you must be using.

[garcia21]

^ Agreed. Im curious as to how Grey_Goose plays his archived DVDs since mine play just as well as a normal DVD.

[rfutscher]

Originally Posted by garcia21

^ Agreed. Im curious as to how Grey_Goose plays his archived DVDs since mine play just as well as a normal DVD.

My archived DVDs play/or don't play just as badly as if the DVD was in the drive. One DVD plays the the don't duplicate warning and the ads then it freezes. I can't get to the main menu to start the movie. Other DVDs have a mouse offset pointer problem. Where you click is not where the pointer is located. You have to play with the pointer location until the correct selection is highlighted and then click. The pointer is not over the selection you want. The decoder I am using is the only one I have that will give me stutter free TV.

[garcia21]

Thats odd. Like I said, mine works perfectly fine. No offsets, no stutters, no freezes.
I doubt it matters but I have Sage set up to automatically play the main movie, skipping the title screen.

[stanger89]

Same here, works perfectly.

[Griff]

I cannot figure out why I cannot get Sage to play nice with my DVDs. I purchased Sonic Cineplayer specifically to try the sonic decoders in Sage. Although that did not work for me, using SageMC's option of defaulting to a third-party DVD player seems to be a good option for the time being. I took the time to configure HIP so I can use my existing USBUirt and remote with Cineplayer, and that solution seems to works pretty well (but with only very minimal testing thus far). I think I can even use the same remote control buttons that I use in Sage while Cineplayer is running in the foreground and Sage is asleep.

[Rogue9]

I can't get SageTV (SageMC) to play my ripped/archived DVD's either.

Whats worse is that when using ZoomPlayer as an external player, it says there is no DVD in the drive. Regular DVD watching is fine, this is only when trying to watch DVD's off the hard drive.

I can manually open the files in ZP and play them just fine, but to do that I have to break out my mouse/keyboard instead of using the remote. Not cool.

Is there an option or something in Sage/ZP that I can set to tell it not to look for the DVD?

[stanger89]

Those of you who have problems with ripped DVDs:

1) What's your folder structure?
2) Did you (have) to do anything special to get them to show up?
3) What are your settings in Detailed Setup -> DVD?

[Rogue9]

I used DVD Shrink to rip the DVD's directly to my server's HD. I have a folder called DVD's, with a seperate folder for each movie. Each movie folder has an AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS folder, along with a picture of the cover named Folder.jpg. I added the DVD folder to the library import directories, and all the movies are listed both on Sage Server and the Sage Client machine. Most of the pictures show up, too, although I have 2 movies that don't for some reason.

Anyway, I messed around in Sage on my client machine last night and managed to get one to work inside of Sage's DVD player. Still couldn't get it to work properly in ZP without clicking open and navigating to the movie's VIDEO_TS folder and clicking ont he .IFO file.

I had ZP set up as an external player, and my cmd file had the following parameters:
C:\Program Files\Zoom Player\zplayer.exe" /F /Q /PLAY /CLOSE %1

ZP would open, and try to play the file, but it kept saying there was no Disc in the DVD drive.

Forgot to mention I'm using GermSage on the server and SageMC on the client. I was unable to get the DVDProfiler info to work on the SageMC client, but it is showing up in GermSage on the server. Also, using an external player on ther server (Nero Showtime/WMP) gives me the same error, "No DVD Disc" or "Invalid DVD Structure."

Any ideas?