5D MKII FILE PLAYER FOR PC tip at DVinfo.net

John Harvey · May 7th, 2009, 01:03 AM

I recently loaded Powerdvd 9 and total media theater for Blu-ray playing on my PC. Noticed they said they played back AVCHD.
Lo and Behold! beautiful smooth playback of native MKii footage, but no sound, haven't figured that out yet.

Nothing else I have tried has played these files smoothly.

jh

Jon Fairhurst · May 7th, 2009, 01:12 AM

I transcode everything to Cineform using NeoScene. With the free player software installed, Windows Media Player works great.

Sure, I have to transcode the files, but given that the original files aren't good for editing, I transcode every keeper anyway.

Nigel Barker · May 7th, 2009, 04:51 AM

This is obviously a Windows only problem as the 5DII files play perfectly on all our Macs (except the eight year old iMAC G3:-) that includes a couple of laptops. I would have thought that any modern PC with a reasonable graphics card should play the native files OK but of course you do need the correct CODECs. VLC plays most things with its own decoders & any player that can use one of the FFmpeg packs should be OK.

John Harvey · May 7th, 2009, 10:09 AM

Have VLC, codec packs etc., still stuttering playback. the two programs mentioned smooth as butter, fast way for me now to tell which ones are keepers on my 30" dell screen before transcoding for edit with Neo.

Macs are better natively for some things I guess. I like the $100 software solution vs a $2-3k mac solution to this issue.

jh

Nigel Barker · May 7th, 2009, 11:18 AM

I have used PowerDVD as the only way to get BBC HD playing smoothly on a Windows Media Center system. CoreAVC which is just a CODEC & much cheaper is another option for Windows it is very efficient & now that it offloads some of the decoding to the hardware on Nvidia graphics cards it is even more efficient.

Ben Curtis · May 11th, 2009, 04:06 PM

For VLC playback of 5DmkII files on Windows, do this:

http://www.snappertalk.com/index.php...back-with-vlc/

...for other applications see if there are any settings along the lines of disabling deblocking filters - deblocking filters improve playback quality somewhat but are very processor-intensive, hence the jerky motion when your CPU can't keep up.

PowerDVD works well because (I think) it is able to offload H.264 decoding onto the video card, same with CoreAVC codec, instead of only using the CPU... assuming you have a video card compatible with its GPU-acceleration.

May 7th, 2009, 01:03 AM	#1
John Harvey Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: los angeles, ca Posts: 76	5D MKII FILE PLAYER FOR PC tip I recently loaded Powerdvd 9 and total media theater for Blu-ray playing on my PC. Noticed they said they played back AVCHD. Lo and Behold! beautiful smooth playback of native MKii footage, but no sound, haven't figured that out yet. Nothing else I have tried has played these files smoothly. jh

May 7th, 2009, 01:12 AM	#2
Jon Fairhurst Inner Circle Join Date: May 2006 Location: Camas, WA, USA Posts: 5,513	I transcode everything to Cineform using NeoScene. With the free player software installed, Windows Media Player works great. Sure, I have to transcode the files, but given that the original files aren't good for editing, I transcode every keeper anyway. __________________ Jon Fairhurst

May 7th, 2009, 04:51 AM	#3
Nigel Barker Inner Circle Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Norwich, Norfolk, UK Posts: 3,531	This is obviously a Windows only problem as the 5DII files play perfectly on all our Macs (except the eight year old iMAC G3:-) that includes a couple of laptops. I would have thought that any modern PC with a reasonable graphics card should play the native files OK but of course you do need the correct CODECs. VLC plays most things with its own decoders & any player that can use one of the FFmpeg packs should be OK.

May 7th, 2009, 10:09 AM	#4
John Harvey Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: los angeles, ca Posts: 76	Have VLC, codec packs etc., still stuttering playback. the two programs mentioned smooth as butter, fast way for me now to tell which ones are keepers on my 30" dell screen before transcoding for edit with Neo. Macs are better natively for some things I guess. I like the $100 software solution vs a $2-3k mac solution to this issue. jh

May 7th, 2009, 11:18 AM	#5
Nigel Barker Inner Circle Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Norwich, Norfolk, UK Posts: 3,531	I have used PowerDVD as the only way to get BBC HD playing smoothly on a Windows Media Center system. CoreAVC which is just a CODEC & much cheaper is another option for Windows it is very efficient & now that it offloads some of the decoding to the hardware on Nvidia graphics cards it is even more efficient.

May 11th, 2009, 04:06 PM	#6
Ben Curtis Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: Cairo, Egypt Posts: 26	For VLC playback of 5DmkII files on Windows, do this: http://www.snappertalk.com/index.php...back-with-vlc/ ...for other applications see if there are any settings along the lines of disabling deblocking filters - deblocking filters improve playback quality somewhat but are very processor-intensive, hence the jerky motion when your CPU can't keep up. PowerDVD works well because (I think) it is able to offload H.264 decoding onto the video card, same with CoreAVC codec, instead of only using the CPU... assuming you have a video card compatible with its GPU-acceleration.