I noticed that the initial opening of mkv files was becoming increasingly slow and that it appeared to depend on the number of mkv files in the same folder.
The culprit? A setting in Haali Media Splitter.
To prevent the scanning of other mkv files when playback begins use this setting in Haali:
Options -> Input -> Try to open linked files -> NO
Tags: Haali, MKV, Troubleshooting, Video
If you ever try to watch letterboxed video on a widescreen monitor you are given the worst experience possible: black bars on all four sides and a tiny video area.
The trick here is to stretch the video to fit the width of the screen, and allowing the top and bottom black-bars of the video to be cropped.
I couldn’t find an automatic method for achieving this, however the manual method is doable if you have a few minutes to spare. It goes as such (instructions are specific to ZoomPlayer but the method should work with any player):
Open the video in fullscreen as you would normally. Expand the video vertically until the sides of the video just touch the edges of your screen (Key: Alt-Up/Down arrows). Save this to a size preset (Ctr-0..9).
Now exit out of fullscreen and open the preset editing menu (Ctr-P). You should see the preset you just saved. Now you want to center the video vertically. Calculate the difference between the height of the preset video, and your monitor’s resolution – divide this number by two and put in the Y-Offset field as a negative value.
Return to fullscreen mode and apply the preset (0..9). Your video will now fill the full width of your screen and keep the correct aspect ratio.
Tags: Video, ZoomPlayer
Both nVidia and ATi tout “hardware decoding” support in their graphics cards for various video formats (including DVD and h264).
Both these vendors have working implementations, nVidia with PureVideo and ATi with AVIVO, however with one major drawback: you have to buy third party software.
What I don’t understand is why at this time neither of these vendors can provide a simple DirectShow implementation to support hardware decoding in a software agnostic manner. Instead you have to buy specific software that includes the necessary decoding libraries (as I recall the choice is Nero or Cyberlink).
While I am greatly disappointed with the limitations on these graphics cards, at least there is an alternative choice – CCCP provides a suite of free DirectShow filters that can decode most (if not all) video and audio codecs you can think to throw at it.
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