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4K doesnt work as Ive explained, yes mate its 2D.
3D bluray sorta works, after allot of hassle with nvidia drivers and using microsoft windows 10 insider builds, with remaining bugs. In 3D, the native resolution of my 65" UHD curved display for 3D mode is in fact 1920x1080. It cant do 4K in 3D. For 3D, Cyberlink swaps it to 1920x1080@24hz. The other way I should be able to run 3d bluray discs is in 4K but 2D, which also doesnt work.
cheers
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Mate it depends what you want to do with it. For example if someone wants to play high frame rate 4K content (like me) than its a GTX 950 at minimum and a GTX 960 at most. Theyre the GPUs that have the right version of nvidia pure video in their graphics video engine hardware to do full hardware decoding.
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If customers accept the marketing hype that the "worlds number 1 media player" actually isnt very useleful for stuff like interlaced content and it fails Microsts verification tests, and only use it for bluray disc playback and 3D bluray disc playback, then theres still reason to run a native display resolution on the desktop. The reason is simply one of image quality, both hardware and software on the PC does a noticeably better job at scaling and resizing than the displays internal scaler.
Beyond that, there is the realities of trade practices too. Theyre selling software where they make certain claims of what it can do, and those claims are reasonably expected to be fulfiilled by the customer. When they say 4K, when they say Bluray 3D, when they say you can have all this in the worlds best media player, customers have a basic right to expect it to be true and accurate. This wouldnt be the first time after Cyberlinks scandal with DVD Audio, but as I say, there's no real alternative for working full menu blurau playback and 3D bluray on a windows PC.
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Stewart the cost all depends on the hardware. The GTX 960 in my HTPC cost me $AUS330. The GTX Titan X in my main machine cost me $AUS1550. Beyond the GPU, if he wants a new CPU he'll also need for say skylake a new chipset motherboard that supports it, with the right CPU socket, he'll need new RAM etcetc.
Installation problems like a lack of cooling are pretty common and will still exist if he sticks with the same case and so on if thats what is at fault here. Stres testing is easy to do and establishes a known baseline thats vital for resolving these sorts of problems. Without test results users would be just guessing as to whats happening and whats wrong.
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- Subtitles wreck the video display in cases of non bluray subtitles such as from an MKV container, when using UHD displays with high DPI font scaling such as 300%. The subtitles preferences are actually ignored and regardless of what a user sets as the setting, its never respected. I've had this issue for months, was ignored in beta testing by Cuberlink, and now my support ticket has not beeen responded too despite it being weeks since they requested to raise one. They should have fixed it in beta, but didnt, and now Im waiting in their prod cycle. This is a major issue as I need subtitles for allot of content. VLC and MPC-HC just works with this.
- Years ago in powerdvd 10 I reported that deinterlacing didnt work and even supplied them sample files. I got the "our engineering team are looking at it" and after much hassle and aggrevation, I gave up because Cyberlink are utterly unable to competently do deinterlacing in their video player. For interlaced content, I now use VLC or HPC-HC which again, just works. I can even specify various software and hardware deinterlacing algorithms and balance the quality against the overhead of different methods. This again is a major issue cos interlaced content is unwatchable without deinterlacing. The original support ticket is still in the support que too.
- This is another major one, the powerdvd 15 as it stands now fails the windows platform readiness tests because Cyberlink have written special kernel mode ring 0 processes that involve illegal calls from bad programming. This is easily shown using Microsofts own test tools like device driver verifier.
- One of my biggest frustrations and the one which Ive sunk countless hours into is trying to get 3d bluray playback working reliably at UHD resolutions on WIndows 10 using PDVD15. AFter hours and hours of diagnosis and little support from Cyberlink supoport other to to firstly claim they couldnt replicate the problem (they dont even have my generation video engine GPU in their test lab, they said they have a 980 and Ive got a 960 which has a new generation of pure video in the hardware video engine of the gpu chip) to then blaming NVidia as the cause. It turned out to get it semi working I had to join the MS Windows insider programme and goto fast ring windows OS builds, work with NVIDIA on their side, and together with a new OS build from MS and new drivers from NVIDIA I can finally play 3d blurays at UHD using PDVD15 but theres still bugs and areas of failure like if I try to resume a part watched 3d disc it will all crash. Theres no way Cyberlink ever effectively tested this prior to releasing it and making the clearly false marketing claims about working features such as 4K and windows 10 support.
- Now with their latest prod build Im getting crashes once again and the cyberlink error reporter Ive been using to feed that info to Cyberlink. Something has regressed badly from the beta to the prod version they pushed out, I know there was build changes between the two and its very bad practice to not have another beta cycle with this new build. They frankly seem like a bunch of cowboys with their development and testing standards. Basic stuff like random and bizzare behaviour with their patching tools which, to Hichams credit he spotted, and I was able to uninstall and completely re-install to fix it. But the deeper issue is why cant they release software that firstly is robust and reliable enough to install, or atleast give an error message and exit instead of a silent failure and making the user think the patch is fine. Basic stuff like release practices and testing thats actually effective in providing to customers working software that actually does what they claim in their marketing it can do.
- Theres others but those are the major bugs the rest I could live with
Ive done far more than I probably should have in trying to help Cyberlink, but I guess my passion for home theatre and the promise of actually working cyberlink software appeals to me. The reality is that the open source alternatives dont reliably do bluray menu playback and 3d disc playback.
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Youve misintepreted what I said. He should be stressing the GPU using stress tests to confirm the artifacting isnt a hardware / heat / power problem. Most of the time these artifacts are caused by improper installation, improper power. Sometimes the GPU chip itself has been cooked and is now defective. He needs to stress it to prove it can operate under stress and only those stress tests I nominated will do it properly if it can survive for some hours on it. If it fails the stress test, he needs to rectify the cause of it.
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Stewart his 750Ti is fully capable of accelerating all of the possible 3d bluray disc codecs, as the purevideo hardware in his GPU is generations ahead of what is required for that. He has no reason to ever touch the CPU, let it idle and get the GPU which is far more powerful for these purposes to do it.
While your CPU is faster than his, with hardware acceleration turned on the decoding wont ever need to touch his CPU at all.
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Which PSU make and model did you change too?
You cant just assume your setup is OK, you need to stress test the GPU for power and thermals, and then run artifact scanning on it. Those two pieces of software I mentioned are free tools. Its the only way to know your GPU / heat / power is OK for sure. It should both pass the gpu stress test for a long period of time, and be artifact free when scanning for artifacts.
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Yes its frustrating when support does that. It happened to me with useless irrelevant responses and/or asking for things I'd already supplied
In your demo file, in those cases where the ratio is higher than your display, theres no way you can not loose part of the image or distort the image. Its simply not possible to display a 2.35:1 image onto a 1.85:1 widescreen display and not loose parts of the image or distort the image. I know you think otherwise, but your in fact wrong and you havent noticed it. The bloke who created this re-encode never did it properly like many pirates - as you say he hardcoded the black borders as the file is actually 1920x1080 with a display aspect ratio of 16:9 PDVD15 actually is playing it back at fullscreen its just its been hardcoded by a poorly skilled pirate to be that way.
The other problem assuming you want to put up with loosing parts of the image or distorting using say MPC-HC ffmpeg lav filters is when you work out how to deal with footage greater than your display aspect ratio, youll eventually get some content that is lower and youll have the same desire to "fix" that. This is why I was talking about 4:3 content.
Im not trying to discourage you from pressuring Cyberlink to add the feature you want mate. Go for it. Its just I personally will not to do what your doing due to the loss of image quality that unavoidably takes place.
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For 4K playback with 4K footage you need a GTX 960 or 950. If you try deocding say high bitrate HEVC Main 51 2160P60 using the CPU even the most modern and fast CPUs results in a stuttering mess of dropped and skipped frames. You simply must use full hardware decoding for these types of things and thats a 960 or 950 with the right video engine on the GPU that supports it.
Keep in mind also that 10bit high colour in PDVD15 is not GPU accelerated and the absence of this feature makes playback impossible on content such as HEVC Main 10 L52 2160P60. PDVD15 resorts to the CPU and its an ugly thing to see with drops and skipping. I suggest most of the HEVC content will be high colour as thats the UHD bluray spec. THis is why full hardware decoding is so important - no CPU on the planet will do 4K high frate rate high bit rate HEVC decoding in real time properly.
Be aware also, I've had a difficult road with Cyberlink of numerous bugs some of which are still outstanding after many months. To their credit they have fixed some, but in my current state now, I have major bugs that effectively means I have to use alternate software until its fixed. To be honest if the free open source software (which works better and has less bugs) did 3D and full bluray menu playback reliably I'd drop PDVD in a heartbeat. Since PDVD is the only real solution for this, I've tried to help them with bugs and I've spent ALLOT of time fiddling around on it. I'll be happy when/if PDVD15 is finally patched to remove my outstanding bugs.
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I appreciate the thought and sincerity that went into your post mate 
I get what your saying
The problem is, when something is produced in say a 2.35 it is not in the ratio of 16:9 which is around 1.8. If you have a display that is 16:9, only a 16:9 encoded video will fill the screen. Here's a quote from this
URL: http://www.projectorcentral.com/build_home_theater_screen_aspect_ratio.htm
"Here is a simple fact of life: Videos and movies are made in a variety of different aspect ratios. There is no standard. So no matter what aspect ratio your screen is, you will always end up with black bars at the top and bottom of some material, and black pillars at the sides of other material. The only time you don't get black bars is if you are viewing video or film shot in the format of the screen you are using--either a film done in 1.78 displayed on a 16:9 screen, or a movie shot in 2.4 on a 2.4 Cinemascope screen. In both of those cases, the screen frame will match the picture precisely, and no black bars will exist."
Where your not understanding #1: You can crop and stretch the video playback to fill the screen to suit your particular display aspect ratio but the reality is you will either distort the image or you will loose parts of the image. If you study what MPC-HC and FFMPEG does, you will see this to be true. Since you want to playback the footage and not re encode it under different settings, your stuck with the footage as it comes.
Where your not understanding #2: Cyberlink can do stretching. Because your sample file isnt 4:3 your not seeing the pillars removed. You need to understand this is source dependant on what method is needed to remove the black bars be it stretch or zoom. True theatre HD still runs on HD footage, such as MKV H.264 in 720P. However, as I say, unless you re-encode to different settings playback in stretch will always result in some degree of image distortion. What Cyberlink say about their feature:
"TrueTheater Stretch employs a non-linear stretching technique that automatically adjusts the viewing ratio of the displayed video to match the output display, with minimal distortion"
Heres a URL with some pictures so you can see
http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/High-Def_FAQ/Joshua_Zyber/High-Def_FAQ_Why_Dont_the_Black_Bars_Go_Away/764
If your willing to put up with distorted images or loosing parts of the image, then go for it and hassle cyberlink about it. You might be able to convince then to improve on their feature set of imporoving 4:3 content on 16:9 displays, to include movie like 2>35:1 as well on 16:9 displays. Personally I accept that my display doesnt have variable aspect ratios and since cropping or zooming always results in some sort of loss of image quality, I watch the footage as the director intended to see the art in.
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Hi Hicham,
I'm on the current PROD build being:
PowerDVD Version: 15.0.2211.58
SR Number: DVD150828-09 (DVD150310-04)
TR Number: TR151019-002
Today I have sent two reports with my email address used in the support tickets via the cyberlink issue reporter. In the past theres been problems with this so I just want to confirm that Cyberlink is actually receiving them.
Whats happening is that videos playback ok, including both H264 and H265 content, but as soon as I in full screen right mouse click to bring up the menu to do something like change chapters, change subtitles, view information etrcetc eventually PDVD15 will crash. I will eventually in that if I go down mouse overing the menu from the top of the menu down, sometimes it will crash on say the aspect ratio menu where if you mouse over it will spawn to the right with details, or another time when I enabled information the menu didnt crash but on shortly after having information displayed while the information shown and the video playing back, it crashed a few seconds into doing that.
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John Ive got it
On MPC-HC FFMPEG LAV Filters: You can override the aspect ratio and can also pan & scan with different settings to remove the black borders.
On PDVD 15 using the following current PROD build:
PowerDVD Version: 15.0.2211.58SR Number: DVD150828-09 (DVD150310-04)TR Number: TR151019-002
You can adjust the aspect ratio settngs. You may have missed it. Its in the settings menu, in Video, Audio and Subtitles, click on more video settings. Then in the new window goto the aspect ratio tab and you can see various settings there with true theatre and what not to override the aspect ratio of the footage. This is not pan & scan and will result in black borders.
However, none of this really helps as I dont think you understand how different aspect ratios and things like anomorphic encoding works. The thing is, the black bars are normal for theatrical aspect ratio footage in say 2.35:1 when displayed on say a 16:9 display. If you do what you try to do and override the aspect ratio, the image wont look right. It would look like 16:9 anomorphic footage forced into 4:3 - all squished up. Even though pan and scan is not supported in PDVD15, its kinda useless as a feature. If you use pan and scan to remove the black borders, you loose parts of the footage from being displayed in the process. Loosing parts of the footage is never how a director intended a film to be shown.
So in summary nothing is wrong and I see no value in features like pan and scan for PDVD15
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Quote:
I have no idea why they close tickets before an issue has been resolved or even investigated, and am very disappointed that this hasn't been solved.
Its pretty common behaviour of IT companies. The support people are usually under "performance" targets and are pressured to make the figures look OK for Management. Some support policies define "closed" to mean things like not fixable on the current build, they arent going to fix it ever etcetc. My reading of their response is they know its not a client software corruption or install problem and its not a middleware/OS problem, they know its going to take time for their devs to code a fix so they closed it and sent you a were looking at it response.
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Quote:
Well I just uninstalled PowerDVD and removed all Cyberlink folders and registry settings. I then re-installed and set up everything and noticed the flashing was still happening. I then removed all Cyberlink disc mounting devices in Device Manager (some might be hidden so select "Show hidden devices"). I then installed the latest patch (PowerDVD_15.0.2211.58_Patch_DVD150828-09.exe) and it now plays 3D ISOs perfectly.
Happy!
Do encrypted disc based blurays still work after disabling this? Cyberlink seem to use a whole bunch of ring 0 kernel mode processes to handle the copy protection in bluray disc playback. By the way, Cyberlink PDVD15 fails Microsots device driver verification tools and does not meet the windows platform readiness that comes from positive test results using Microsofts tools.
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One of the causes of this can be overheating of the GPU. Another of the causes is too high clock rates in the GPU or the GPU memory.
1. If you have changed the clock rates of your discreet graphics card, set them back to default
2. If your running the OEM clock rates, make sure you have enough ventilation. You should be able to run stress tests like furmark or msi kombustor to stress it out and scan for artifacts. Dont just assume your OK, run the stress tests and scan for artifacts, and do it for a good amount of time under stress.
3. While testing 3, watch your voltages in the stress test. It might be your PSU cant deliver the power needed. Make sure you meet the power needs.
Yoiu could try moving your drivers to build 358.57
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Can you upload a sample to a host service so I can see? I havent had similar issues with hardcoded letter boxing and I suspect your not setting it right but I need to be on the same saple as yourself as it could be the way your sample is encoded.
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An update on my mission to get 3D playback happening with 3D bluray via PDVD 15 and WIndows 10
The above fix works, but it wont fix resume. If a user watches a 3d disc and gets half way through, and then later tries to resume, it will blue screen with an unhandled thread exception in the WDDM / DirectX stack, This happens also on build 10568 of windows 10.
The only known workaround at the moment is never to resume, always to restart
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With PDVD15 you can easily upscale BD disc content to higher than HD resolutions. Or even DVD 720x576, or re-encoded footage such as h264 in a MKV container,
2560x1440p will be the max you can do given your monitor and GPU config
Simply set your native desktop resolution, bit depth, and use a supported cable to your monitor. Dont use convertors/adapters, dont use a cable type that isnt supported for your resolution etcetc.
However, some UHD displays are limited in 3D to HD resolutions only. If you capture the EDID of your monitor it will say so.
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EDIT: The support ticket for bug #4 is CS001526820
Hi Hicham,
Thats OK I can do a support ticket for bug #4.
I just finished a whole bunch of other testing. 3D bluray disc playback is working fine. This is after all the work I did on diagnosing problems that required me to goto a windows 10 insider preview build and beta nvidia drivers.
Bug report #5. Your failing the windows driver verifier tests. This is not new to this beta and Ive reported it before on this forum.
http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/45829.page
You seem to be using normal ring 3 app mode processes to run non disc content like playback of video in MKV etc. However when disc based content kicks in like trying to play bluray discs on PDVD15 it seems ring 0 kernel mode processes get involved such as clhelper.exe with the kernel.
When you test MS driver verifier with standard settings on all device drivers for the system, and use PDVD15 for bluray disc playback, it reveals that your code is making illegal calls in ring 0 kernel mode processes.
There is another set of tests from Microsoft beyond ring 0 kernel mode testing with device driver, called Microsoft Application Tester which runs through the presentation layer and has a habit of finding bugs on ring 3 application mode. This extends into the Microsoft platform ready test tools and so on.
I strongly suggest to be Microsoft platform ready you need to pass Microsofts tests and the fact is in this beta, your failing them in the beta build.
Regards
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Hi Hicham
All my HDMI cables are category 2 high speed HDMI cables with ethernet and are only 1.5 meters in length. They easily exceed the HDMI 2.0 specification. I tried swapping the one out for the 960 into the 65" curved UHD LED LCD 3D TV, and there is no change to bug #4 it still occurs.
FWIW, ffmpeg lav filters with MPC-HC does do the same video files with the same subtitles all fine without it being super large like PDVD15 so I'd be quite suprised if it was something hardware related like a cable. Whats more telling is that user preferences about what size the subtitle font in PDVD should be makes zero difference and I think that test result demonstrates there is a bug there in PDVD.
I am happy to assist Cyberlink in anyway with debug builds, providing info, remote access to my HTPC etcetc. For remote access I am in the GMT +10 timezone, I would be happy to set it so you can just log on without me being present as I suspect setting a time for all parties could be problematic. I am happy to discuss this further via email to keep it private, please use the email address in my support tickets.
Thanks
Thanks
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