2Windows Media Center eHome LogoFull 7MC codec setup

Published by & filed under Codecs, Misc Media Software, Windows Media Center. Last updated .

I’ve pre­vi­ously pos­ted sev­er­al times about codec issues on 7mc, but I’ve now got a solu­tion that is com­pre­hens­ive, fairly simple and works con­sist­ently.  With a few free codecs and util­it­ies you can have full decod­ing sup­port, DXVA, sub­titles and fant­ast­ic flex­ib­il­ity work­ing in 64bit (or 32bit) Media Cen­ter.  The fol­low­ing instruc­tions are spe­cif­ic to the x64 edi­tion, but should work just as well on the 32bit edition.
1. Down­load and install ffdshow

2. Con­fig­ure ffd­show settings

  • Tweak any ffd­show set­tings you want — remem­ber to do it for both x32 and x64 ver­sions — e.g. I use the “mix­er” to out­put ste­reo music to my sub­woof­er as well as the main speak­ers.  I also enable lots of addi­tion­al codecs in the video configuration
  • Open DXVA Video decoder configuration
  • Click on hard­ware accel­er­a­tion in the menu on the left
  • Tick H264 and VC1
  • Set “post pro­cessing” to “Sur­face overlay”
  • Click on sub­titles in the menu on the left
  • Tick the box at the top
  • Repeat for the x64 DXVA Video decoder configuration

3. Now dis­able the in-built Microsoft Medi­aFound­a­tion codecs (note: this does­n’t break live TV) and replace them with ffdshow

  • down­load the win7dsfiltertweaker
  • Run the fil­ter tweaker
  • on the first page, select ffd­show (DXVA) where pos­sible, and plain ffd­show for all oth­ers where pos­sible, for both 32bit and 64bit.
  • Click apply and ok any warnings
  • on the next page tick all the boxes to dis­able MF and click apply
  • on the 3rd page tick the bot­tom 2 boxes (dis­able MF and dis­able MF 64bit) and click apply.
  • OK the exit
  • Open reged­it and browse to  [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionMedia CenterDecoder]
  • Delete any entries that are present

4. Now install the required splitters

  • Down­load Haali Media splitter
  • Down­load the MPC-HC stan­dalone codecs in both x64 and x32
  • Install Haali and enable MPEG-TS
  • Extract the MPC-HC codecs
  • On x64 sys­tems copy the x64 split­ter files to system32 and the x32 files to the syswow64 folder.  on x32 sys­tems just copy the x32 files to system32.
  • The split­ter files to copy are as fol­lows: AviSplitter.ax, FLVS­plit­ter, MatroskaS­plit­ter, MP4Splitter, MpegSplitter.
  • There are oth­er split­ter files which you can also copy and register (see below) but I haven’t needed them
  • Register the split­ter files as fol­lows: open an elev­ated com­mand prompt, for each file you copied run the com­mand “regsvr32 file­name”.  If you are on x64 win­dows change dir­ect­ory from system32 to syswow64 and repeat the registering

5. Use registry tweaks to use the MPC-HC split­ter for most files and Haali for .mkv and .m2t files

  • Open reged­it and browse to [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTMedia TypeExtensions]
  • Check that their are keys for .m2ts, .ts, .mp4, .mkv, .m2t and cre­ate any new keys that are required
  • Inside each key check that their is a string with the name “Source Filter”
  • Set the value of source fil­ter for .m2ts, .ts and .mp4 to {1365BE7A-C86A-473C-9A41-C0A6E82C9FA3}
  • Set the value of source fil­ter for .mkv and .m2t to {55DA30FC-F16B-49FC-BAA5-AE59FC65F82D}

6. Enable ogg and flac audio

  • Down­load the xiph ogg­co­decs for both x32 and x64
  • Install both
  • Down­load WMPTag­Plus — oth­er tag extenders don’t seem to work so well
  • Dis­able the x64 Media Play­er by renam­ing the folder “Win­dows Media Play­er” inside the Pro­gram Files folder (on x64 win­dows only!) and then cre­ate a new “Win­dows Media Play­er” folder.  copy the con­tents of the “Win­dows Media Play­er” folder from the “Pro­gram Files (x86)” to your new folder.  This forces Media Cen­ter to use the Media Play­er 32bit engine for music — which sup­ports the tag extender.  Once a 64bit tag extender is avail­able this will no longer be necessary

7. Reboot and you’re good to go.
Any .m2ts files that don’t play back prop­erly rename the exten­sion to .m2t (which as far as win­dows is con­cerned is the same).  This will change the split­ter used and should resolve any play­back problems.

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2 Comments

Iivana

yet anoth­er set­ting that did­n’t work for me, sigh.… avi plays fine, but still no sub­titles (wmp). mp4 has no sound, no video (wmp) — obvi­ously, can­’t tell wheth­er sub­titles are work­ing or not. mkv starts play­ing video and audio fine (in mpc-hc only, wmp won’t play it at all), shows double sub­titles, then with­in seconds video slows down and finally freezes. :/

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JSJon Scaife

This is now nearly 2 years old! Things have moved on since. Get the latest ver­sions of ffd­show try­outs, lav split­ter and the Wn7DSFilterTweaker (all linked on the down­loads page). Install ffd­show and lav, and then use the fil­ter tweak­er to dis­able Microsoft’s media-found­a­tion stuff and set ffd­show as the defaults.
You’ll need to turn on sub­titles in ffd­show set­tings but that should work spot on with everything. I have TS, M2TS, MKV, MP4, AVI, MPEG, WMV, WTV files encoded in al sorts of formats and everything just works.
Why do you par­tic­u­larly want to use Win­dows Media Play­er? — there are plenty of oth­er media play­er apps. Or do you mean Media Center?

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