Having a problem with the Life Box set

[QuantumRand]

I just got BBC/Discovery's Life box set. It's a really great show, and if you haven't seen it in HD, I highly recommend it.

Unfortunately I'm having some problems playing/backing it up.

I've recently installed AnyDVD HD in order to use XBMC to watch Blu-rays. This works brilliantly for every movie I've tried except for Life (all of the disks fail to render video, but audio works). The only player I have that seems to work is PowerDVD with AnyDVD decrypting it first.

Using MakeMKV, I can backup a 1:1 copy just fine, but the resulting MKV file won't play on anything but PowerDVD as well.

To make matters worse, Handbrake errors when trying to convert it. Fortunately, FormatFactory somehow seems to work to transcode it, and the transcoded file works on all of my players.

I'd rather have a bit more control over the output file than FormatFactory gives me, and I'm also concerned what might be causing the problems in the first place.

Has anyone else tried backing up Life and had these issues?

[Asmodian]

I have the BBC Life blurays (http://www.amazon.com/Life-David-Attenborough-Narrated-Version-Blu-ray/dp/B002UXRGM0/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1330682023&sr=8-2) and I did not have any issues with them. I can tell you mine are VC1 instead of H.264 which is less common (in my limited experience). I am not sure how well FFMpegSource handles VC1 but DGDecodeNV decoded them very well.

I too use AnyDVD HD.

[QuantumRand]

Hi Asmodian, I think you're right.

After looking into it a bit, my discs are VC-1 as well. It would seem that XBMC and Handbrake both rely on FFmpeg which apparently doesn't support all types of VC-1 encodes (it does include a VC-1 decoder though, so I'm surprised).

I'm pretty sure FormatFactory uses DGDecodeNV (since it advertises GPU-accelerated transcoding), so that would explain why it's the only converter I have that seems to work. Considering that I haven't come across many discs that have this problem, I guess it's not that much of an issue to use FormatFactory instead.

Btw, I'm jealous you got the David Attenborough version. Mine are the Oprah version.

[diogen]

The only player I have that seems to work is PowerDVD with AnyDVD decrypting it first.Have you tried installing nothing but Haali splitter?
Windows own media player should play VC1 in MKV container with no issues...

Do you use XP or 7?

Diogen.

[QuantumRand]

Have you tried installing nothing but Haali splitter?
Windows own media player should play VC1 in MKV container with no issues...

Do you use XP or 7?

Diogen.

I have Win 7. And WMP can play the MKV file, but not the Blu-ray because it doesn't know what an M2TS file is. I do have Haali installed, and WMP uses it, but I'm pretty sure XBMC keeps all of its codecs and splitters self contained.

Looking through XMBC forums, it does seem like VC-1 is a known issue. I imagine XBMC must use FFmpeg.

These are the only Blu-rays I've come across with this problem, and since I can still play them with PowerDVD and convert them with FormatFactory, I'm not overly concerned. After converting them with FormatFactory, all of my players can play them just fine.

[diogen]

I have Win 7. And WMP can play the MKV file, but not the Blu-ray because it doesn't know what an M2TS file is.IIRC WMP (in Win7) can handle M2TS files without any help.
But its audio support is limited (DD, DTS, DD+).

Diogen.