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Version: 2.0.4

Last Update: January 23, 2009
What's New

• Automatic subtitles. Displays subtitles in the preferred language when preferred audio track isn't available. This can be disabled if you prefer not to see subtitles.
• A real installer that does everything for you except install MPlayer. It will however check to see if you have MPlayer installed and pull up the website to download it if you don't.
• Better error logging. Error messages from Mencoder are now redirected to the Transcoder log. This should make troubleshooting a lot easier.
• Better defaults. The default cache location has been changed to ensure correct operation without having to change the cache location or any folder permissions.

Licensing

The DVD Transcoder is being released as trialware. The unlicensed version is fully functional, but will only transcode the first five minutes of a movie. I encourage you to try it out for as long as you like to see if it will meet your needs. If you decide to keep it, you can purchase a license for $39.95.  Once licensed,  you'll never be bothered again with licensing or registration issues. You can even move the software to another machine if you need to, since the license won't be tied to a particular system. Registered users will also have access to technical support. Please allow up to 24 hours after payment to receive your personalized license file.

Oh and any of you who sent a donation for the original transcoder are entitled to a registered copy of the new version free of charge. Just send me an email after the new version is released and I'll be happy to send you your very own license file.

Installation

DVD Transcoder requires Mencoder.exe to operate. Mencoder.exe is part of MPlayer, an excellent open source media player. The Windows executable can be downloaded at http://www.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/win32/MPlayer-mingw32-1.0rc2.zip  To install, simply extract the contents of the zip file to your Program Files folder.

To play discs in the Media Center PC's local DVD drives (including changers) on extenders you must turn User Account Control (UAC) off. To do this, Go to User Accounts in Control Panel and click on "Turn User Account Control on or off". If you only have ripped DVDs this step is optional. 

To install DVD Transcoder, download the zip file from the link above, open it, and launch setup.exe. After the installer has finished, restart Media Center and the extenders. You should now see the DVD Library item on the start menu of your Media Center PC and extenders.

Use

Select DVD Library from the start menu on any extender. You should now see all of the physical discs on your Media Center PC, either in local DVD drives or Media Center compatible firewire changers. To see ripped discs, you must use the Add Movies option on the Info menu to add the folders where your ripped disc folders are located. Select a disc and then play to start a movie. The main title will begin to play after a brief delay. DVD menus are not supported on the extenders, neither are fast forward and rewind. You can use skip forward and skip back, however the amount of time available to skip forward will depend on the speed of your system and how long the movie has been playing.

By default the transcoder will play the English language audio track. To change the default, launch the Transcoder control panel, and select the desired language from the pulldown box in "Language" section. If the transcoder can't find an audio track in the desired language, it will try to display subtitles in that language. If you would prefer not to see subtitles, uncheck the box labeled "Display subtitles when audio is not available".

As a side effect of the transcoding process, the transcoder generates temporary mpeg files, a number of which are saved to avoid retranscoding the same file multiple times. You can change the location of the folder where these files are stored as well as the number of files to store using the Transcoder control panel.

The transcoder is designed to delay playback slightly to allow Mencoder.exe sufficient time to begin writing the transcoded file. On slower systems the default value may need to be increased using the Transcoder control panel. If movies stop abruptly while viewing, you should increase the delay a few seconds at a time until you reach a value that allows the movie to play completely.

Troubleshooting

If you are having problems, your first stop should be the Windows Event Viewer, which is located in the Administrative Tools folder in the Windows Control Panel.  Open the Application log. Events from this program will have "DVD Transcoder" as the source. If there are no events in the log of this type, check the Windows\ehome folder for a file named "ehome.crash". If Media Center cannot load the transcoder dll, it will sometimes log an error message in that file.

The most common source of errors is improper permissions on shared resources, like the ripped dvd folder, or the transcoder cache folder. These will show up as "Access denied" errors in the logs. The easiest way I know of to solve these problems is to share these folders with the sharing wizard (right-click on folder then Share...). Add yourself as the owner, and Everyone as a co-owner. Another option would be to turn on public folder sharing and create them in the public folder.

Another common source of errors is the location of the mencoder.exe and mplayer.exe programs. Make sure the path in the Transcoder Control panel is set correctly. The easiest way to ensure this is to use the "Browse" button on the Transcoder Control Panel to navigate to the folder.