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I'm not sure how I could check that. I have used AnyDVD HD to copy the .ssif file to my hard disk drive (which would ignore the DRM) but I don't have anything that can play this file with hardware acceleration. (I get the same corruption if I play the Blu-ray in PowerDVD 12 with AnyDVD HD loaded, but I'm not sure if that would be bypassing the DRM or not).
Stereoscopic Player plays the video back fine but very jerkily, presumably as it's using a software decoder.
I don't think it would be the DRM in the monitor (HDCP) which causes the issue as the corruption appears in the same place in the video regardless of whether the film is played back full screen, windowed or in HDMI 1.4 3D mode.
The UK Blu-ray 3D version of "Hugo" displays flickering corruption on my screen when played in 3D (but not in 2D) on my PC. You can see it in this photo of the screen (click here - 3D on the top, 2D on the bottom) and here is a short video:
I was wondering if anyone had any ideas as to what might be causing this. I have two other Blu-ray 3D discs (Coraline and Sanctum 3D) and both play flawlessly. I have updated my video drivers to the latest version (I'm using a Radeon HD 6770) and the issue persists.
I downloaded the trial of ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre 5 to see if it was a software issue and that exhibited exactly the same problem. If I disable hardware acceleration in TMT 5 I don't notice the corruption, but as it plays back incredibly jerkily I could be missing the corrupted frames (on a side note, Coraline plays back a bit more smoothly without hardware acceleration than Hugo).
I thought it might be a disc issue so exchanged the disc for a different copy. This did not help.
My monitor (LG DM2780D) has a row-interleaved micro-polariser and supports native HDMI 1.4 3D. Switching between these modes does not help the issue, so I don't think the corruption is coming from the monitor either.
Could the Blu-ray drive cause such issues? I'm using a fairly old one (Sony BDU-X10S) which is a 2x drive and I would have expected this to be sufficient for Blu-ray 3D playback. I'd expect dropped frames or otherwise jerky playback if the drive was too slow, however, not smooth but corrupted video.
I'd greatly appreciate hearing any suggestions!
Edit: I can further report that it's only the right eye view that is affected. If I close my left eye I can see the corruption, but if I close my right eye (or switch to 2D output whilst playing the 3D version of the film, which presumably just displays the left eye's view) the video appears correctly.
Quote:You know what I don't get? Cyberlink always ships out a product half working. How can have an option on powerdvd to choose refresh rate playback off disk and not know when you play the video the audio and video are out off sync?
I guess it's because it's a hardware-dependent issue. I didn't have this problem with my old monitor as it was a plain old PC monitor that displayed video as soon as it was received rather than applying a series of time-consuming image processing filters on it that introduces a few hundred ms delay. Of course, I agree entirely that a feature within PowerDVD to compensate for this lag would be ideal.
It must be an HDCP-compatible monitor (see Wikipedia) but it doesn't need to be over HDMI - DVI should work fine, too. VGA will not work, however (and this includes a pass-through DVI to VGA adaptor - you need an all-digital link).
AnyDVD HD apparently circumvents this copy-protection so may be worth trying if you don't want to have to buy a new monitor. As a hardware alternative you could check out the HDfury.
All I can suggest is to try changing the input label of the HDMI connection to "PC" - that enables PC mode on my monitor, though only at certain resolutions.
I may be misinterpreting your setup, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you have an LG 3D TV for video, and an A/V receiver for sound, both connected to the video card. As far as the PC is concerned both audio and video leave the computer perfectly in sync, but as the monitor adds its own lag you end up with the two ending up out of sync. If you can set your A/V receiver to delay the audio then that should help.
I too use an LG 3D TV (DM2780D) with a similar video card (6770) and the input lag seems to be around 180ms-200ms when not in PC mode (based on Guitar Hero's HDTV calibration settings). The monitor doesn't seem to compensate for input lag when you pass audio directly through it, either.
The advantage of 24Hz is down to the smoothness of motion - when displaying 24Hz content (such as Blu-ray video) on a 60Hz display some frames need to be repeated. 60 cannot be divided exactly by 24 so some frames are displayed for a longer time than others, and this uneven frame time can result in apparently juddery camera movement. A side effect of this (with LG's monitors, at any rate) is that it switches the display out of PC mode, incurring the significant video lag and resulting in lip sync problems.
It's a hardware issue - the PC sends the video data to the video card and the audio data to the sound card at the same time, but if the two have different input lag (sound cards usually have very little lag, and HDTV-style monitors can have quite a lot of lag) the two end up out of sync.
This can be compensated for in software, which would be a very nice feature for PowerDVD to have, but it currently does not. By way of comparison, Media Player Classic does have an option to delay the audio to correct this problem.
I think it depends on the display device. At 1080p/60 my monitor supports "PC mode" which reduces input processing and input lag is negligible. At any other refresh rate or resolution (including 1080p/24 and 1080p/50) input processing is enabled, incurring a ~200ms lag which cannot be reduced and is extremely unpleasant to watch.
For maximum compatibility I agree that an audio delay feature would be much appreciated in PowerDVD. ReClock can resample the audio but sadly lacks a delay feature.
I recently had a similar issue - in my case, uninstalling a faulty ntk_PowerDVD12 device in Device Manager (make sure to select View->Show Hidden Devices) before reinstalling PowerDVD 12 fixed it for me.
Which video card are you using? I ask as I've used relatively inexpensive AMD offerings (3450, 5770 and 6770) and Blu-ray video performance has never been an issue. My PC is pretty long in the tooth (2.13GHz Core 2 Duo from 2007) and Blu-ray playback in PowerDVD 12 hovers at around 15% CPU usage and doesn't seem to register at all on GPU usage (even on the 3450 I never saw it reach 10% when decoding Blu-ray).
I am, however, using AMD's Vista drivers - you mention that you need to reboot to install them, which makes me wonder if you're still using XP (due to radically different display driver models it could be that the XP drivers are rubbish).
Does the issue persist if you select a different audio device to rule out driver-specific issues there?
I do find PowerDVD 12's standard user interface pretty sluggish (there's a lengthy delay between clicking on user interface elements and the relevant action taking place) so prefer to use the Cinema UI as it is much snappier. Actual video performance seems to be the same between the two, though.
Strange, I was sure I had written a final edit but it's not in my above post. I had got it working, but thank you very much for your help - it may help others in future!
I had tried uninstalling and reinstalling PowerDVD several times, but each time had the same issue. I also tried Revo Uninstaller and CCleaner to get rid of as much of PowerDVD as possible before reinstalling. What finally appeared to fix the issue was uninstalling the ntk_PowerDVD12 device in Device Manager (make sure to click View->Show Hidden Devices). I then rebooted, uninstalled and then re-installed PowerDVD 12 and the option to select a region was restored with 5 changes available. I can now play Blu-ray discs again in PowerDVD 12. I'm not sure if this faulty device was causing the problems or if it was merely preventing a clean uninstall/reinstall cycle but it removing it seemed to do the trick.
Interestingly, checking back in Device Manager I no longer have an ntk_PowerDVD12 device but I do have three Power Control devices for different dates (2012/04/03, 2012/04/28, 2012/05/19). 2012/04/28 had a warning icon next to it so I uninstalled that one too, with no apparent side-effects.
No, I have not installed that software, nor do I need it; all of my hardware is Blu-ray compatible (HDCP throughout, Blu-ray-specific video acceleration etc) and I have not imported any Blu-ray discs from outside Region B.
I very much doubt that the settings are stored in the drive as PowerDVD 7.3 still plays Blu-ray just fine and tells me I have 5 changes left. Unfortunately, I needed to buy version 12 for its 3D playback, else I'd be happy sticking with 7.3...
I tried rolling back to a previous version of PowerDVD by selecting a restore point prior to the installation of the latest patch to see if that helped - unfortunately, after the System Restore completed PowerDVD 12 appears to be completely broken (clicking its shortcut does nothing - no software ever loads) and I can't uninstall it to reinstall it ("InstallShield Wizard: Required installation file is missing (SKRSet.xml).") I'll continue poking around, but don't really want to have to reinstall Windows to fix it...
Edit: I'm back to where I was, I think - I used the cleaner (CLCleaner2-PowerDVD_12.0) and then deleted the Cyberlink directories in C:\Program Files, C:\ProgramData, C:\Users\Ben\AppData\Local and C:\Users\Ben\AppData\Roaming. I then rebooted and reinstalled PowerDVD 12 Pro. Not all settings had been deleted, however (so there's probably stuff in the registry that needs clearing out too, but I'm not sure where to start there) - when the player started it came up in Cinema mode (not the default Classic mode), though when I switched to Classic mode it prompted me to go through the initial set-up (selecting media folders, configuring 3D display). I still have 0 changes on my drive left, though, and get the following messages if I try to force a Blu-ray to play:
---------------------------
Warning
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CyberLink PowerDVD cannot access the storage device. Select another device when playback stops.
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OK
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followed by
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Information
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The integrity of CyberLink PowerDVD is at risk. Check your anti-virus software for malicious activities or try reinstalling CyberLink PowerDVD.
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OK
---------------------------
PowerDVD 7.3 continues to play back Blu-ray flawlessly - just not in 3D, the sole reason I bought 12.
Another edit: I had a look in Device Manager to see if I had any dodgy drivers installed that might be interfering with PowerDVD's access to the drive, and found ntk_PowerDVD12 had an error triangle icon on it: "This device is not present, is not working properly, or does not have all its drivers installed. (Code 24)" - is that related to anything?
I recently purchased PowerDVD Pro 12 having used the trial version to see if it would play 3D Blu-ray well on my system (I had previously been happily using the version of PowerDVD 7.3 that was bundled with the drive). However, since using the trial I have lost the ability to play Blu-ray at all (I have also installed patches since purchasing Pro, so I'm not sure if it's a trial->Pro issue or a Pro patch issue, sorry).
When I go to play a Blu-ray disc in cinema mode I get a "This is your first time playing a BD-ROM title" prompt (which is not true) asking me to select a region. Fair enough; the screen that appears has Region A selected (and greyed out) so I click the "Default Settings" button and it switches to Region B (I'm in the UK, Region B). However, if I try to apply the settings I get an error message saying that I have 0 region changes left (the only time I've changed the region was after first installing the software, where I selected Region B) and I get dumped back to the home screen.
Most of my Blu-ray discs are region free (they have the A+B+C logo on the box) - these discs will not play. Nor will discs explicitly set for region B.
Is there some way to reset PowerDVD's region change counter so I can set my region back to what PowerDVD thinks it should be so I can watch Blu-ray films? I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling the software, but it seems that whatever it is that stores the region change counter is not removed after uninstalling PowerDVD.
Thanks for the reply - I'm afraid I still get the same issue if I switch Aero off. It's not much of an issue as I can work around it by using the "Custom" TrueTheater settings, but it would still be nice if "Auto" worked.
Thanks for looking. It's a strange one, and could well be hardware-related - I'm using an AMD Radeon HD 6770 with the latest (12.3/28th March 2012) drivers on 32-bit Windows Vista.
I tried in the standard player mode (as opposed to the cinema mode, which I prefer) and the issue prevails - if I select the automatic mode subtitles are displayed once and then vanish, but in custom/manual mode they are displayed fine.
As an aside, video is not deinterlaced in classic mode for me either - regardless of the setting I choose in Catalyst Control Center. Video is deinterlaced in cinema mode.
I have noticed that the same bug also applies to subtitles and appears to be related to TrueTheater's "Dynamic Quality" setting. When "Dynamic Quality" is enabled, subtitles are invisible. If I bring up the on-screen menu (press left/right), move to "Video Enhancement", select "TrueTheater (Auto)" and press Enter the current subtitles appear on screen briefly then vanish. Every time I press Enter the subtitles appear briefly then vanish and do not appear again. If I select "TrueTheater (Custom)" the subtitles are always shown. However, when using one of the "Display Mode" comparison modes (Split/Compare) the subtitles are shown, even when Dynamic Quality ("Auto") mode is enabled. My custom settings enable all three features (HD, Lighting and Motion) so I don't think it's one of those that's to blame.
I am using PowerDVD in Cinema mode. When TrueTheatre enhancements are enabled (custom/auto) I've found that the highlights in DVD menus either vanish or appear to be corrupted, though not on first load - on first insertion of a DVD they may appear, but if I start watching the DVD and return to the menu they are either invisible (making menus very hard to navigate) or corrupted. Switching the enhancements off brings the menu highlights back, and when they are switched on again the menu highlights remain visible for a while.
This happens for all DVDs, and I have attached a screenshot from The IT Crowd Version 2.0 caused by switching enhancements off and entering the episode selection menu (menu-ok.jpg) - the green box around the top left graphic is the highlight I'm referring to. I then switched enhancements on, selected the first episode then returned to the menu (L, "root menu") which caused the corruption displayed in menu-corrupt.jpg.
Click the drop-down arrow to the right of the "3D" button and change the "Display Device" tab to "Micro-polarizer LCD 3D (Row-interleaved)" instead of "Auto detect". I believe this should keep the monitor in 2D mode when PowerDVD is in 3D mode, but is still compatible with the way the monitor displays 3D. It works for me, at least, but I have a different LG monitor (DM2780D).
I saw that TriDef had discovered a bug in the monitor's firmware (see this thread) that means that whilst software can switch on the 3D colour mode it cannot switch it off. It seems the patch just stops TriDef from ever enabling the 3D colour mode, rather than fixing the problem with switching it off (which can only be fixed by upgrading the monitor's firmware).
How have you configured PowerDVD to output in 3D? Do you still have the problem if you ask it to output in row-interleaved/micropolariser mode?
Corel WinDVD 11 is not an option for me as it doesn't support 3D output on Vista, so I'd still like to find a better fix for this. The AutoHotkey workaround works well enough for the time being, however.
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