Technical Issues and Questions

Discuss North American DVDs and Blu-rays or other DVD and Blu-ray-related topics.
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jindianajonz
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Joined: Wed Oct 12, 2011 8:11 pm

Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1376 Post by jindianajonz » Fri Dec 25, 2015 1:31 am

Has anyone else had trouble with the Elephant DVD? Ive tried 2 copies on two different players, and keep getting skipping on the discs. Not sure if its even worth trying for a third at this point.

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Oedipax
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1377 Post by Oedipax » Fri Dec 25, 2015 2:32 am

That's odd. I've had a copy since the film first came out on R1 DVD and have never had any issues with playback.

There is a very nice region B blu (in academy ratio) that I watch now instead.

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domino harvey
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1378 Post by domino harvey » Fri Dec 25, 2015 10:10 am

It's an HBO release i.e. A Warners title. Some Warner DVDs are notorious for randomly disintegrating and not working, unfortunately, so this is probably just yet another title to add to that list

kekid
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1379 Post by kekid » Sat Jan 09, 2016 4:34 pm

I read that UHD BD players will have no region coding. Thus one can play discs from any region anywhere.
My question is, is this feature backward compatible? i.e., can one play regular BD's from region B in region A using this player?

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cdnchris
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1380 Post by cdnchris » Sat Jan 09, 2016 4:37 pm

No, it's the spec for UHD. It would be up to the manufacturers of the players to allow region free capabilities for the previous formats.

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tenia
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1381 Post by tenia » Sat Jan 09, 2016 5:11 pm

The players will still need to have BD-region locking and DVD region locking too to respect the contractual agreements with the right holders.

David M.
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1382 Post by David M. » Sat Jan 09, 2016 5:48 pm

kekid wrote:I read that UHD BD players will have no region coding. Thus one can play discs from any region anywhere.
My question is, is this feature backward compatible? i.e., can one play regular BD's from region B in region A using this player?
Nope. As Tenia said, they'll still have to follow region coding for the older BD-ROM format as per the licensing agreement.

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gcgiles1dollarbin
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1383 Post by gcgiles1dollarbin » Mon Feb 01, 2016 7:12 pm

I travel for work and watch films on my MacBook Air with a SuperDrive, but many of the DVD-Rs produced by Warner Archive seem to have encryption that prohibits play on my computer drive (a common problem, as I'm discovering online). Does anyone know how to bypass this? It's a fucking nuisance, even though I realize they are attempting to discourage reproduction by doing this. Forgive me if this has been covered elsewhere; feel free to redirect me. Thanks.

Werewolf by Night

Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1384 Post by Werewolf by Night » Tue Feb 02, 2016 12:13 pm

Is it just via the Mac DVD Player, or have you tried playing it in VLC?

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gcgiles1dollarbin
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1385 Post by gcgiles1dollarbin » Tue Feb 02, 2016 4:03 pm

It doesn't get that far; the SuperDrive spits them out after ten seconds of trying, regardless of which player software I'm using. These are not damaged discs; they play fine on DVD players. I read this online (from 11/09), regarding the problem:
The problem [for Warner] was getting CSS onto a burnable disc: the recordable DVD spec forbids it so most DVD players and readers would reject or not recognize a DVD-R with CSS encoding. In a way, the studios were hoist by their own petard: they insisted the DVD-R spec exclude any possibility of CSS encoding, thinking this would cut down on piracy options, but it came back to bite them when they finally decided burn-on-demand might be a lucrative way to market their slow-moving back catalog titles. For the last five years the studios have done endless tinkering in tandem with suppliers like Sonic Solutions, hoping to conjure a back door way to encode CSS on burnable DVDs that would let them be recognized in existing playback hardware. They declared victory with the introduction of the Warner Archives system, but it isn't really 100% compatible, especially for PC or laptop playback. Drives and software decoders for the PC are extra-sensitive to protection schemes, the Warner mods that skate by on a forgiving dedicated dvd player may not fly with your existing reader and/or DVD software player.
Don't know if this is accurate, but it reflects the problems I have had. The weird thing is that not all Warner Archive titles on DVD-Rs refuse to be accepted by the drive--perhaps half of the ones I have tried. There is a notice on the back of Warner Archive cases that warns that the disc "may not play back in other DVD devices, including recorders and PC drives," but it remains a crap shoot whether or not a disc will play. Thanks for your response, btw.
Last edited by gcgiles1dollarbin on Tue Feb 02, 2016 5:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1386 Post by Michael Kerpan » Tue Feb 02, 2016 4:52 pm

Have you checked to see if there is a firmware update for your drive?

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gcgiles1dollarbin
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1387 Post by gcgiles1dollarbin » Tue Feb 02, 2016 5:51 pm

The last update for the SuperDrive that I can find is numbered 3.0 from 2009, addressing excess noise issues; I bought my drive long after that. Unless there's some unpublicized "pork barrel" fixes on that update that have escaped recently manufactured devices (if that makes any sense), I'm not sure that's going to help. Thanks for the suggestion, though; maybe I'll try it, just in case. Has anyone else had this problem with their computer drives and Warner Archive MOD discs? Or any MOD discs from any of the studios, for that matter?

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1388 Post by Michael Kerpan » Wed Feb 03, 2016 2:39 pm

It sounds like the firmware is too old for the specific format of the disc you are trying to play. I have not run into this with more recent drives -- but I remember problems like this in the past. If the firmware hasn't been updated since 2009 you might just be sort of screwed.

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Manny Karp
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1389 Post by Manny Karp » Fri Feb 05, 2016 9:51 pm

I suppose this is a technical question, but I don't yet know if it's related to my player or the discs I'm trying to watch (or both).

Player in question is a Sony S1500 modded to be region free.

Display is a Samsung LCD with picture set to "screen fit" which I understand is (supposedly) most faithful to what is actually on the discs.

I was comparing the BFI Three Melodramas by Ozu to the equivalent discs in the Criterion Eclipse Late Ozu set.

Both company's discs (menus and films) were stretched to fill the display. This was corrected by changing the display to "4:3" -- however doing so I noticed a slight cropping, maybe 1/20 of the image.

I then played the Eclipse discs in a different, region A player (separate HDMI input but also set to "screen fit") and the menus and films appeared in the correct ratio -- and without any cropping at all.

I see no other options on the Sony player that would correct the ratio issue, and for what it's worth have not had this problem with region B discs in other ratios. If this is some kind of built-in-player overscan, not sure why it would only affect 1:33 films... wait a minute, might this only affect DVDs? The only DVDs I watch on this player are the Ozus --everything else is Blu-ray.

No idea.

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captveg
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1390 Post by captveg » Sat Feb 06, 2016 2:52 am

It would effect DVDs but not BDs. Note that all HD content on BDs are in a 1.78 image - any pillarboxes (black side bars) are encoded into the image. Contrarily, for SD content on BDs or on DVDs that are 1.33:1 the sidebars are not encoded into the 1.33 4x3 image, and therefore need to be generated by the player and/or monitor.

Therefore, setting the player to "screen fit" will stretch a 1.33:1 DVD within the 1.78 monitor. Try seeing if there is a "16:9 normal" setting; such a setting should properly pillarbox 1.33:1 DVD content.

David M.
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1391 Post by David M. » Sat Feb 06, 2016 5:45 pm

You need to find the aspect ratio setting on the player that changes how 4:3 is handled.

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Manny Karp
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1392 Post by Manny Karp » Sun Feb 07, 2016 5:29 am

Thank you both. The aspect ratio issue is settled. At this point the issue is still cropping, and it's either DVD overscan on the player, or the BFI disc itself has less info on the edges.

At 6:00 on Tokyo Twilight, Chishu Ryu sits at a bar facing the camera, two objects on the bar to his left and right. Seems like it should be a symmetrical image. On the BFI disc the right object is partially cropped. On the Criterion Eclipse disc, at the equivalent place (6:45) the right object is wholly visible within the frame (which as a result is a better composition). All the other BFI/Eclipse Ozu DVDs I've compared share a similar problem (at least on my players and drives). I think the Eclipses look better, compositionally. I don't understand why it's so hard to capture the whole image as intended by the director. Drives me craaaaaazy.

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jguitar
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1393 Post by jguitar » Wed Feb 24, 2016 5:26 pm

Not sure if this should go here, but here goes: I've received three different copies of the Media Asia/Mega Star blu-ray of the HK film Love in a Puff. All three discs have the same behavior: they start normally (with Media Asia and DTS promos, the usual warnings, etc.), then go to a sort of title screen with the film title and an animated plastic bag floating above the title -- and then it goes dark. I've tried clicking various buttons to advance to a menu screen, but those only make the screen go dark more quickly. This is on my reliable Oppo. Has anyone experienced something like this? I've given up on having the blu for this film but I'm still interested in knowing why this is happening.

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copen
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1394 Post by copen » Thu Feb 25, 2016 10:40 pm

Is there a way to extract subtitles from a laserdisc to an srt file?

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repeat
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1395 Post by repeat » Tue Mar 01, 2016 2:00 pm

I've been playing Blu-ray discs occasionally on my Mac for a few years now: some of them work perfectly fine, and some start chopping and/or halt completely during the first minute of playback. I've always assumed this issue had something to do with the codecs, but as I was watching Daniel Bird's documentary on the UK Blu-ray of Possession, I noticed that it played smoothly except during the actual film excerpts, which behaved exactly like certain discs: running smoothly for a few seconds, then started chopping, and in the longer excerpts the image would eventually freeze (while sound continued smoothly). Then when the excerpt would end, the interview footage would again run smoothly with no problems whatsoever. (The main feature itself freezes about 10 seconds in).

I understand next to nothing about the technical side of playing Blu-rays on a computer, but would I be right to assume that this points to the graphics card and/or CPU running out of steam on higher bitrate material (assuming that the film excerpts are encoded in higher quality than the rest of the doc)? I've never had any problems whatsoever with DVD playback (which I do a lot), but high-resolution streaming tends to be choppy even on a 100Mb connection. I'm on an oldish Mac mini (late 2009), 2 Gb RAM. The graphics card is GEForce 9400 256 Mb, which sounds kind of crap - could that be the bottleneck here? And if yes, should I get a new graphics card and what would be the minimum requirement for Blu-ray playback? Thankful for any insights as I really don't know much about this stuff.

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fdm
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1396 Post by fdm » Tue Mar 01, 2016 3:30 pm

You're probably pushing beyond the limits of your graphics card, given its vintage. Doing a few googles, your card seems to benchmark slower than the card in my wife's 2007 imac, so yeah, probably not going to deal well with hidef video, since it probably wasn't meant for much more than dvds. (These are probably PC benchmarks, but you get the idea.)

wife's 2007 imac card

your card

Notice some of those other benchmarks that show up. Granted you don't need that much horsepower, but the card I put in my 2009 mac pro last year when I also replaced it's cpu, between the two it went from sometimes jerky GUI to smooth, but even before those bumps I don't recall any problems keeping up with hidef video (but also I don't watch much of it on my computer).

my mac pro now's card

my mac pro before's card

(Streaming hidef video via my crappy internet connection, that's another can of worms.)

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TMDaines
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1397 Post by TMDaines » Tue Mar 01, 2016 6:49 pm

Do you have any high bitrate HD video files? MKVs or AVIs etc? How do they play?

You really need relatively little resources to play HD video, even if it is upscaled or descaled to your monitor's resolution. That's where some resource load comes in. Playing back 1080p video on a 1080p display requires less resources than upscaling 480p content on the same display, for example.

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repeat
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1398 Post by repeat » Wed Mar 02, 2016 4:28 am

Never had any problems with local files (1080p MKV plays smoothly even from an old USB hard drive), only Blu-rays (and HD streaming, but that's probably a different issue).

The discs that chop/halt on the MacGo app refuse to play at all on VLC (despite the latest codecs), which is why I always assumed this had something to with the AACS codecs - but now I'm completely baffled by the behaviour of that documentary I mentioned. I mean, surely AACS affects the entire disc and not just selected bits? That's why I'm thinking it has to do with the bitrate (which if I understand correctly can vary quite a lot within the same movie) - but then again there's the fact that some discs work just fine. (Off the top of my head, those include the Spanish Cure plus Carlotta's Lucky Star and I Only Want You To Love Me; all of my Criterion and Arrow Blus exhibit the chopping/halting problem. I can watch the Arrows on by region B player, but have stopped buying region A discs until I can figure this out.)

I'm having the hard drive replaced with a solid-state drive soon, I guess I could ask them to upgrade the graphics card at the same time if it would solve this issue, but not keen on spending that money if it won't. Would be interested in hearing if anyone's had similar problems...

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TMDaines
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1399 Post by TMDaines » Wed Mar 02, 2016 6:27 am

No experience with MacGo, so I cannot really comment on whether that is the culprit.

You can try and get VLC to play your Blu-rays by doing the following: http://vlc-bluray.whoknowsmy.name/

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repeat
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1400 Post by repeat » Wed Mar 02, 2016 7:03 am

Yeah, I have VLC with the latest codecs, but at least the Possession disc won't work (it says that the AACS library doesn't contain the required keys), haven't tested the other ones lately. I'm far from happy with MacGo, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was indeed the culprit (maybe it's just a particularly resource-hogging application?), but it still wouldn't explain why those other discs play perfectly... If the problem has to do with the decryption process, is it somehow possible that those Spanish and French discs are not AACS-encrypted at all? (But once again, why would the documentary only freeze during the feature excerpts? I've played it several times now to eliminate any random factors and it always chops only during them.)

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